If you're to believe the Herald Sun people are supposedly up in arms about Hungry Beast's segment on vaginas, labiaplasty and magazine censorship which aired last night at 9pm and is repeated tonight at 8:30pm on ABC2. Obviously the Beast is attracting a good audience these days - has everyone forgotten a rather confronting feature documentary aired on SBS last June titled The Perfect Vagina? It showed far more graphic scenes of the surgery and of the female anatomy in general. There has also been a similar documentary regarding male genitalia aired several times over the last few years on SBS.
So why has Aunty showing us a few "graphic" images got everyone's knickers in a knot?
So why has Aunty showing us a few "graphic" images got everyone's knickers in a knot?
Let's see, is it that Gen Y (Hungry Beast's target demographic) are prudes when it comes to female genitalia? Doubt it.
Is it that no one actually watches SBS? Refuse to believe it.
Or is it that people are quicker to make complaints about the ABC because it's the main public broadcaster and clearly should not be using its funding to educate the masses on the correct representation of the vulva? Methinks it's the latter. After all, it's your ABC, you pay taxes, so you get to put your two cents in about every little thing that may or may not be to your tastes.
The thing is, it is our ABC - as a collective - and most people on Twitter thought the segment was informative and gave it much kudos. Who are the people that found it offensive? Are they not aware of anatomy? Should their children not be aware of the misrepresentation that the censorship laws are creating? Perhaps they should spend their time complaining to the commercial stations about music videos or to their local service station for shoving Krystal Forscutt in their children's faces.
The thing is, it is our ABC - as a collective - and most people on Twitter thought the segment was informative and gave it much kudos. Who are the people that found it offensive? Are they not aware of anatomy? Should their children not be aware of the misrepresentation that the censorship laws are creating? Perhaps they should spend their time complaining to the commercial stations about music videos or to their local service station for shoving Krystal Forscutt in their children's faces.
God forbid the kiddles see an anatomically correct vulva without diamantes or a playboy bunny symbol anywhere near it.
I thought the segment was well made and not at all innapropriate. I'm not sure whether the magazine censorship laws can be blamed entirely for women's warped visions of what we are supposed to look/act like - but it was a reasonable argument expressed well. Perhaps the sensitive dears not wanting to view the female anatomy could have changed the channel after the first, or second, warning.
Here's Kirsten Drysdale's blog re the issues of censorship covered in the segment.
I thought the segment was well made and not at all innapropriate. I'm not sure whether the magazine censorship laws can be blamed entirely for women's warped visions of what we are supposed to look/act like - but it was a reasonable argument expressed well. Perhaps the sensitive dears not wanting to view the female anatomy could have changed the channel after the first, or second, warning.
Here's Kirsten Drysdale's blog re the issues of censorship covered in the segment.
I did see it - and I was appalled. Not at the fact that tweenage girls are so vacuous as to have their genitals sculpted, but at the very real hypocrisy espoused in that piece of journalistic irrelevance that seems to have gone unnoticed.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand porn is ‘wrong’ and ‘demeaning’ to woman, while at the same time porn is also wrong because [we are assured] only men read it - thus men form unrealistic expectations of just what they should be seeing [or touching if a vodka red-bull is involved].
I know no men [yes, it's a subjective point] who would ever consider having their partner mutilated to full-fill some bizarre fantasy of 'the perfect woman'.
Oh yes, I hear you say - what about breast augmentation? Well, what about it? Woman seek out the surgery for their own twisted egomaniacal means… does anyone really believe that all those woman who have the procedure done do it due to patriarchal pressure?.
Women’s magazines are for more dangerous to women's health than men’s magazines are ... but we don't seem able to face that fact yet ...
Perhaps we should be censoring womans day - the womans weekly and vogue … but nah - that’d be silly. After all, they have recipes and articles about sick bloody children in them…..
Love the blog mate - good work.
Crash
It wasn't really a moral-panic piece though - and I think to cover the fact that pornography itself is negative would have made a 5 minute segment into a whole episode and raised a lot of topics that would need to be covered; objectification, sexual crime, feminism, etc.
ReplyDeleteYes, men aren't the only ones that look at pornos - girls look at them too. In my high school there were always mags being passed around and we were constantly judging the women in them and comparing ourselves to them.
This was the point of the piece - not that men are developing unrealistic expectations of their partners, but that women are developing unrealistic expectations of themselves. You're absolutely right - few men would insist their partner get radical surgery on their genitalia - but plenty of women are under the impression that men won't find them attractive unless they are "perfect" - whatever that is.
I think the vox-pops with the men were unnecessary - the story would better have been served with vox-pops of women talking about what they thought was a perfect vulva.
And yes, I think most, if not all, women get breast augmentations to be more attractive to the opposite sex - for the same reason that women are getting labiaplasty; because mass media glorify a mostly unachievable ideal of what a woman should look like.
Some women will say "I did it for myself because I didn't feel feminine" ... just like strippers will say "I do it for myself to feel more powerful" - but ultimately it is a result of a male dominated society that uses women as currency and where a woman's worth is the sum of her physical attributes.
It's certainly interesting to hear a male perspective on the piece - and I agree that the women's magazines are sabotaging their own sex. It doesn't have to be one or the other though - they're all bullshit as far as I'm concerned.
Cheers!