Sexuality in Lieu of Creativity

Women have always had the daunting task of painting, polishing and pushing up what God gave them in order to look fashionable and desirable. Female entertainers have long relied on accentuating their femininity and sexuality to garner mass appeal. Desirability is huge money maker in the entertainment industry, but lately artists are depending more and more on looking sexy to sell records and less and less on having talent to sell records.

It’s not just the new-comers and scantily clad pop princesses who fall victim to objectifying themselves for attention. Established artists such as Sheryl Crow, Jewel Madonna, and most recently Janet Jackson have all sexed up their image and produced sub-par albums. Unfortunately, instead of trying to out do one another with vocal range and poignant songs, female artists are trying to shock the public into being interested in them.

As with anything, the public has grown jaded which forces performers to go even further and be more outrageous. Male artists can still be shocking and left of center with the usual rock and roll antics, drug use, profane lyrics, and the like. While their male contemporaries can shock and get attention while keeping their cloths on, women often have to resort to nudity to be edgy. With Crow’s embarrassing Stuff magazine cover last year to promote her album “Come On Come On” and Jewel’s new uniform of sky-high skirts and tube tops, Madonna and Britney Spears forced Sapphic kiss at the VMA’s, there was no where for Miss Jackson to go but even further.

This year’s Super Bowl broadcast turned into a gratuitous display by the celebrated singer. With her career in the decline from earlier days, Jackson seemed to be making a pathetic attempt at grabbing the spotlight. Like someone sinking into the ocean she was grasping at every possible media-attracting flotation device. Her buoyant saline implants happened to be her device of choice. While the stunt caused more harm than good, resulting in Jackson being banned from the Grammy awards, she accomplished her goal and is plastered about the media to this day.

Negative attention is still attention in the entertainment industry. This unneeded encouragement for the already doomed “Girls Gone Wild” generation who are, horrifyingly enough, the next generation of mothers and role models. Placing undue emphasis on sexuality and the body as a product is old marketing scheme that has worked thus far. Our art had suffered and so will our morals if the media continues to but into it. Perhaps it is time to do some mothering of our own and say of all the naked song birds out there “just ignore her and maybe she’ll go away”.