Lunch is Not a Date

(An interview I did with Network-Twenty went up today. Came out well; check it out.) 

The FCC has proposed fining ABC stations $1.4 million dollars for airing a scene of nudity in a 2003 episode of NYPD (oh, that’s what they’ve been up to; good to know they’re busy doing something constructive). I remember when NYPD was on the air; ABC promised the show would push the envelope some and it caught heat from the FCC and various concerned citizen groups several times, as well as media attention. You can read about the specifics and watch the clip of NYPD here. The show also showed male characters’ bare butts from time to time, but I don’t recall anyone complaining about them–despite the fact that they were hairy and fat, far more egregious than the posterior resulting in the possible fine. Such scenes were usually just made light of in the news, if anything. (Men should be naked, that’s funny; women shouldn’t, that’s dirty? Appears to be the message.)

A few years ago in the Super Bowl, we all know how upset the FCC got when Janet Jackson flashed a nipple faster than the sight could arouse a teenage boy (meaning it was faster than the speed of light–sorry Einstein, you were wrong). I remember a congressman and the FCC complaining not only about Janet’s faster-than-light nipple flash, but also about CBS Super Bowl commercials in general. They complained that there was a commercial for Two-and-a-half Men, in which a sexy women–an overnight guest of Charlie Sheen’s character–reaches up to get some cereal out of a cupboard. She was wearing only a t-shirt and panties; when she reached up to get the cereal, the bottom of her buns showed. This was apparently extremely inappropriate, both for the show and commercial, especially because a young boy was in the kitchen and observed her buns. CBS was fined for the Janet Jackson incident. 

The following Super Bowl, GoDaddy had a commercial axed when the GoDaddy girl–a busty lass–had a shoulder strap on her shirt snap, revealing a naked shoulder. The commercial was supposed to air twice but the second airing got scrapped by the network airing the game, as they received a call from the FCC. (I guess they just sit there and watch the commercials, thumbs hovering over their speed dial numbers for networks.)

Apparently, all these scenes constitute indecent content, as defined by the FCC. To achieve such an honor, the broadcast must “depict or describe sexual or excretory activities in a patently offensive way” and ”be aired between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10p.m.” Interesting.

Approximately a month ago, I was watching an episode of Criminal Minds, which airs 9pm Eastern Time. They showed the body of a half-naked woman, staring straight ahead with lifeless, fatigued eyes. Later, on the coroner’s table, they cut open her stomach. Blood squirted out and they removed severed fingers from within. They held these fingers up for a clear view. Don’t worry; they weren’t her fingers. Nope… they were the fingers of her attacker’s previous victims, which he forced her to swallow after weeks of endlessly torturing and repeatedly raping her. Her torture included beatings, being forced to watch videos of previous victims being raped and tortured, and electrocution.

Each week, shows like Law & Order–SVU, CSI, CSI–Miami, CSI–New York, Criminal Minds, Numbers, and others push the envelope and become more and more violent toward women. Female victims are raped, beaten, sodomized, raped with candlestick holders, and so forth. Not only that, but the attackers often blame the woman and the shows often depict some action of hers as having led to the crime. Perhaps she tells the attacker she doesn’t like him or teases him about a bad haircut. The authorities on the case often banter about how the victim will think twice–or should have thought twice, if she’s dead–before making such a statement or turning down a guy. Yup; tease someone for a bad haircut or dorky shirt and you deserve to be raped, then have your brains bashed in. By the way, these shows often show women naked on coroner tables; but, they have been dead for a day or two, and their bodies are cold and gray, so it’s okay if they’re shown naked, because they have makeup on to capture the accurate appearance of death.

These shows mostly air between 6am and 10pm. If they happen to air at 10pm Eastern Time, they still show at 9pm Central Time. Oftentimes, the shows are re-run–the Law & Order series frequently re-air on Saturdays, starting at 8pm Eastern Time.

My question to the FCC: Are you fucking kidding me? What do you have up there in your heads, just a few rats running on wheels? Buns peeking out from panties, a bare shoulder, a flashed nipple, and buns “depict sexual activities in a patently offensive way” but inhumane rape, degradation, and mutilation are not depictions of sexual activities in a patently offensive way? (To my knowledge, the FCC has not proposed fines for any of these criminal shows.) In fact, a bare butt, flashed nipple, and a woman reaching for cereal don’t even depict sexual activity; they simply depict nudity or near nudity. The crime shows have plenty of sexual activities and I can’t think of one of them which wasn’t patently offensive.

What does this say about our society? About our government? About us? When simple nudity and the idea of consensual sex are “patently offensive,” but extreme sexual violence against women is simply good entertainment?

I’m not saying the crime shows need to be taken off the air or censored. I like some of them myself. I am saying that there needs to be more of a balance; that if you allow these shows, you must allow shows depicting consensual sex and brief nudity. Otherwise, you are sending a horrible message.

I wrote God is a Woman: Dating Disasters for the seventeen and over crowd. Every now and then I receive an email from someone as young as fourteen, telling me they loved the book, thought it was hilarious, and thanking me for giving them direction. At first this freaked me out; I felt they were a little young. Later, though, I realized that we don’t give our teens any direction. We educate them about the biology of sex but that’s it. We don’t tell them how to get a date, interact with the opposite sex, describe what they will be feeling, or any of that crap. Nope, we just tell them the biology. Then they go home and watch these violent shows. A lot of them, not knowing how to go about dating or sex, or even realizing that what they feel and want are what they should feel and want, turn to drugs and alcohol to provide them with courage and excuses for acts of sexual and dating stupidity. (Before you say that isn’t true, how many times have you joked about people being better looking when you’ve had more beers or said, “I had a little more than I should have and things went further than I wanted?” Drinking to get laid is a common theme of jokes, and, incidentally, a lot of the crime shows depict the woman using drugs or drinking too much, helping to lead to her rape. So, we teach kids about sexual biology, then tell them to just get drunk and figure it out for themselves. Considering how much teens and kids are coddled today, protected from everything–we never wore bicycle helmets, or protective goggles in floor hockey when I was a kid, or outlawed tag because it hurt the feelings of some of the kids–that’s fucking insane, by the way, it surprises me that we don’t prepare them properly for dating and sex.)

We have to be more willing to share our stories of dating flops and sexual failures with our teens, maybe not personally as a parent to a kid (that could really freak both out), but in our literature and advice; in our sexual education of them. Why don’t we? In the end, after all we’ve been through and no matter how big we talk, we are chickens. That’s really all it boils down to, doesn’t it? We are too afraid to admit to our failures (even though they lead to our successes), and fear the discomfort of discussing sex and dating so much, that we are willing to just let our youth go out there and fight it out surrounded by a world of misconceptions, where sex and nudity are deemed “patently offensive” and extreme sexual violence is entertaining. 

Perhaps it’s time to make a change. Swig a beer to get some courage (if it works to get laid, it will work to talk about getting laid), strap your teens’ bicycle helmets on their heads, and explain to them about the other heads out there in the world of sex, as well as how to protect them and their feelings. (Grandparents seem to be better at this than parents; most of the young teens who have emailed me received my book from a grandparent who read it, I kid you not.) As for you folks at the FCC, I think it’s time you gave those rats in your heads some fresh water.