Additional Requirement for Snagging a Man?

Earlier this month I was killing time wandering around the local mall trying stay out of the record breaking heat. I went into the well known adolescent popular retail chain store known as Spencers. It is always fun to browse the gag-gifts and look at the nostalgic "old school" lava lights and black light posters. But this same poster display never fails to get me grumbling.

Out of the 60 or more posters, I would say that at least 10 of them featured extremely scantly clad women in sexual embraces of an equally scantly clad female. Some of them had girl on girl action of more than three or four and a few of them had a male or two thrown in with them. There was plenty of deep kissing and groping between the top-heavy, nearly nude, airbrushed women. There was the well-know and very popular “Lesbian Love” poster as well.

So, what is my problem with this hugely popular art form? I am not homophobic; I am certainly not a prude. My son had plenty of bikini clad sexy sirens adorn his walls when he lived at home. I think what goes on sexually between consenting adults is nobody’s business but their own. But I do believe is our sexual choices should be of our own internal feelings; instead society is now calling the shots for our youth. When you look on the MySpace and Facebook pages and 14- and 15-year-old girls are posting pictures of themselves kissing and necking with their best (girl) friends, claiming they like it even though they are "straight" - you have to assume something might be amiss. What seems wrong is the push to make it normal (even expected) for girls to engage in sexual activity with other girls because the guys think it is cool. This truly is a form of conditioning of both young girls and boys to do or try things they otherwise wouldn't, just to win approval.


These posters are telling boys that sexual encounters between straight girls with other girls is normal; even better if they do it while allowing the boy to watch or participate as well. This is more than just portraying women as sexual objects. This is influencing not just what these young girls think they must look like or wear; this is telling them that to compete for male attention they need to willingly participate in sexual activities that might be contrary to their sexual orientation.


This has been a trend for a while with college-age girls. I have heard many say "ya, I have made out in a bar with my girlfriends because it gets the guys' attention." Usually they will mention they were drunk or had to be "pretty messed up" to do it, but they will do it just the same. Girls and women have suffered for a long time with self-esteem issues in this hypersexual media driven environment. Most women, me included, never feel we are thin enough, sexually attractive enough or pretty enough. We worry about everything. Really, who can measure up to the latest centerfold, movie star, Hooter’s Girl, or this year’s crop of Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders? Now, through movies, music videos and these posters, we are given a new standard to attain in becoming sexually attractive and alluring.


I know this won't change; not with the direction our society is moving in portraying sexual normalcy. As long as there are women willing to strip down and fondle their breasted counterpart in front of a camera for money, these posters will be produced and sell. Every time a totally straight woman attracts the interest of a man by implying her willingness to participate is pseudo-lesbian activity, we all lose a bit of the original sexual creatures we are. It is a process of society creating what is normal instead of looking inwards, to our own desires and finding just what we want to be. And that is what I find the saddest statement of all.