Joking, I’m joking. But really, I’ve seen a fair amount of videos and heard a lot more songs where the male lead singer is yearning after a woman who won’t “give it up.”
Let’s not forget that men are objectified also, but in a different way. In a recent interview, Li’l Kim asserted that, “the man ain’t got no money, he’s gonna lose his girlfriend.” I worked with a woman who had just gotten a half-carat diamond engagement ring and was regretting the fact that it wasn’t a full carat. “It’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?” I asked. She looked me right in the eye and snapped, “No, it’s not!”
I, personally, believe that a man is more than a wallet with legs.
The videos, as described in the OP, are a marketing tool. They are put together by small armies of skilled, talented professional people (producers, camera operators, lighting technicians, make-up artists, dancers etc.) who are just as smart, sensitive, caring, enlightened and mature as you are. These marketing tools are very expensive, and this small army of people are all concerned to do a good job and deliver a marketing tool that works. If you can come up with something better, please do so - the industry awaits your creative contribution with open arms. Until then, kindly don’t presume to tell other people how to do their jobs.
The old ‘degrading to women’ rallying cry. Yeah, right. Listen, if cultural artefacts such as these videos exploit and degrade anyone (which is by no means sure), it’s the audience, not the participants. Sorry if this doesn’t mesh with your personal life-time’s collection of hang-ups, but a reality check won’t hurt.
The participants, you see, take part voluntarily, on a professional basis, and because they want to. They do a good day’s work, and get paid the going rate. You can bet they are also proud of their work, and will hawk reels of it around to anyone who may have another professional engagement for them. If you want to see any exploitation, then you could argue that the audience are having their (natural) libido ‘exploited’ such that they’ll be interested in buying crap because the marketing package was sexy. I don’t take that view, but it’s there if you want to feel aggrieved about something or other.
Talk to some of the women who do this kind of work. I’ve met them and worked with them. They feel successful, independent and strong, not exploited. They tend to think that if any women are being ‘exploited’, it’s those hacking away at 9-5 office jobs for far lower rates than they get.
The people who make these marketing tools are guided by market forces. If these sexy vids didn’t shift merchandise, they wouldn’t make 'em that way. But they do, so they do. Which means there are a lot of people out there, male and female, who purchase the goods. There’s no evil sexist cabal exploiting and objectifying women. It’s just free trade and market forces in action. You don’t like that principle? Come up with a better one. We’re all waiting.
You seem a little touchy about women who are attractive, sexy and in-shape enough to earn a living dancing. A little insecure, are we? Hey, gym membership is open to all…
It’s a huge gap. Admittedly, commercials and/or music videos might be biased. But the evidence on the street is pretty incontrovertable. If male skin turned women on, you’d see guys everywhere wearing short shorts, sandals and muscle shirts. You don’t see that.
If I’m going out to pick up girls, no matter how hot it is, I’m wearing a nice pair of pants, a nice pair of shoes, a nice shirt, and a nice watch. The idea is to give women the impression that I’m successful and confident. That’s a lot more important to women.
Somebody above pointed out a few music videos that had naked men in them. Another one is Hey Baby by “No Doubt.” I suspect that most women perceive such nudity as silly rather than sexy. Also, I imagine that most women who watch the No Doubt video are looking at Gwen Stefani, not the naked guy.
I concede that there is a certain level of interest among women at looking at naked or scantily-clothed men. Thus we have chippendale clubs. Also, a few women read Playgirl. (I understand that most of the readership is gay men). But it’s virtually nothing compared to the interest among men in looking at scantily-clad women.
Allow me to point out how utterly wrong-headed the logic is in the above by asking a simple question: Who is this “marketing tool” for? Perhaps changing a few words around would clarify what I mean. “Marketing tool” is just another term for “advertisment.” Music videos are essentially advertisements for albums.
That doesn’t seem like a big logical leap. Now, what is the point of an advertisement? Obviously, to increase sales of a product. Are any of the people who are alienated by the videos going to go buy these albums? Definitely not.
So there goes any idea of this marketing tool’s being one “that works” as far as the people in this thread are concerned. How can a marketing tool/advertisement said to be working when it actually alienates potential customers and makes them less likely to buy the product?
Since the people in this thread are the same mass market that record companies want to sell albums to, it is our opinion that matters, and not anyone elses’. Not the people who make the video, or the artist performing in it. They can sing and dance all they want, and if we don’t like it they won’t sell a single disc.
It’s true the videos in question are most likely made to appeal to a specific market that does not include the people posting here. But so were Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation. Try getting THOSE on primetime TV. As consumers, we have the right to evaluate the artistic merit of anything submitted for public scrutiny via the publicly-owned airwaves, and not watch and not consume it.
Well, it may be true that women are used to market to women for the reasons you state. But that doesn’t mean that women are turned on by naked or scantily-clad men. Note that there is a difference between “hot men” and naked men. I’m sure that women are turned on by the former. The latter, well . . .
Do you agree that if women were majorly turned on by male skin, more guys would wear more revealing clothing?
Teens, as was stated before, are the power that keeps this kind of thing going. Teen guys want to be like the men in the videos with women swarming all over them, and teen girls want to be like the women, being around a big, strong powerful man and getting plenty of attention. It’s just what teens want to see, sadly. And it would also be pretty hard to get teens to change their minds about that kind of stuff.
Wow. That’s pretty depressing. If what you say is true, as a gender we are rather dull. Based on a lot of threads I’ve seen, I’d like to think female dopers don’t have repressed libidos.
Seriously, I think it’s a cultural things. Guys have traditionally been encouraged to be the agressors. Music videos not being too original, I think that view has just spilled over. Deep down, hopefully we’d all like to see some naked skin.
Well, not necessarily repressed - just different. It’s hardly news that men and women are turned on by things that aren’t exactly mirror images of eachother.
(It’s interesting that a lot of totally straight women are turned on by looking at other women. For example, Mrs. Lucwarm loves to watch award shows to see how the female stars are dressed. Those are the best nights for me to get action. Well, that and when women’s figure-skating is on.)
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For what it’s worth, I think that there’s a biological component. The difference dovetails too nicely with the “mixed reproductive strategies” that sociobiologists love to crow about.
If the man’s goal, evolutionarily speaking, is to copulate with lots of different women, it would make sense that seeing an unclothed woman would cue him to get ready to get it on.
Similarly, if the woman’s goal, evolutionarily speaking, is to find a good provider for her offspring, it would make sense that wealth and power would turn her on and that nudity wouldn’t matter as much.
As to seeing naked men–yes, indeedy, male nudity or semi-nudity turns me on; in fact, it turns on a lot of women I know. I still remember and drool over Pete Burns on the cover of the Dead or Alive album, Nude. Oh, my…
People need to turn their McKinnon/Dworkin meters off and start realizing that women can be sexual, can even allow themselves be objectified without losing their power.
You only lose your power when you give it away. Even through an assault or abuse, you can choose to give up your power, or you can hold on to it. It is a choice and is how you deal with the situation.
Yes, of course women can be sexual without losing their power. The women this thread is talking about don’t have any power, from media puppets like Britney Spears to the hoochie mamas in rap videos these are women who demean themselves for cash.
I am no fan of Madonna, but at least she controlled her own image and presented herself as a woman rather than as a girl like Britney “no, really, I am a virgin” Spears.
I find the videos in question to be offensive because they lack inspiration. On the first day of marketing school, everyone learns that sex sells. This approach is always right at the top of the list because there is always a significant audience for the lowest common denominator. Clearly these videos targeted at that specific audience. It has been my experience, however, that people who have learned to control their urges are typically immune to such a crass approach. Which is why DeBeers commercials don’t feature bikini chicks draped in diamonds.
The people this type of approach work on are the uninformed, the uneducated, and the dim-witted. That group is largely very young and impressionable, still think fart jokes are the height of humour, and consider the highlight of their lives to be the first time they saw naked boobies. And that is the part which makes this sort of thing truly loathsome: it preys on the weak-willed and the young and teaches them that this is acceptable or even to be aspired to.
From what I can see, most of the Dopers find this stuff, at best, a waste of video tape and, at worst, sexist and exploitative. Clearly this is a group of people who are intelligent enough to recognize when they’re getting manipulated. My concern, as always, is what about the children? How do we steer them clear of something that is so pervasive in our culture and so seemingly acceptable? How do we teach them that objectification is wrong when all they see when they turn on the TV is half-naked Britney being licked by her dancers or Lil Kim jiggling about in pasties and stilettos?
Oh please. While the music videos may be obnoxious, if you don’t think the DeBeers commercials are pushing the most basic Ur level female buttons (and by extension male buttons) in just as crass and manipulative a manner you must be a very young man.
I find this type of video degrading because I want to be just a person, not a woman or a man and be limited by the connotations of the specific gender I belong to. The prevailing mentality for these videos - I have ten gold chains around my neck, and ten nearly-naked women in my video. See how successful and powerful I am? This is pure objectification, and objectification is degrading. It involves the denial of the humanity of the person being objectified; the women aren’t treated like human beings - they’re treated like another status symbol.
Women objectifying themselves are no better; these women are willingly presenting themselves as nothing more than sexual objects as if that’s all women have to offer the world. Li’l Kims of the world play to that; being wanted on any level is good enough for people who can’t see to set their sights higher than that. I want more for women; I want all women to be valid as people. I want more for men, too; I want men to want women as valid, complex people, not simply as hoochie-mamas.
I find this type of video degrading because I want to be just a person, not a woman or a man and be limited by the connotations of the specific gender I belong to. The prevailing mentality for these videos - I have ten gold chains around my neck, and ten nearly-naked women in my video. See how successful and powerful I am? This is pure objectification, and objectification is degrading. It involves the denial of the humanity of the person being objectified; the women aren’t treated like human beings - they’re treated like another status symbol.
Women objectifying themselves are no better; these women are willingly presenting themselves as nothing more than sexual objects as if that’s all women have to offer the world. Li’l Kims of the world play to that; being wanted on any level is good enough for people who can’t see to set their sights higher than that. I want more for women; I want all women to be valid as people. I want more for men, too; I want men to want women as valid, complex people, not simply as hoochie-mamas.
‘Marketing tool’ is not a synonym for ‘advertisement’. I suspect you haven’t the faintest clue how to use these words appropriately.
‘Marketing’ is the optimisation of a trading entity’s relationship with its chosen market or markets. A subset of ‘marketing’ is selecting which marketing channels to use, and how to use them. One possible marketing channel, used by most but not all companies, is advertising and promotion. Advertising can be ‘below-the-line’ or ‘above-the-line’, these terms being trade jargon for ‘involving brodcast media’ or not, respectively. With respect to broadcast media, advertising involves paying for space or time. A pop video is not an advertisement.
A pop video is a promotional giveaway. It is supplied free to people who may want or care to broadcast it.
Wrong again.
The point of advertising and promotion is to encourage sales among a targeted group of potential consumers, and to build a favourable relationship between the product or brand and those consumers. The fact that some people may not like the promotional video is not to say it has failed its purpose. All that matters is that it appeals to those to whom it is designed to appeal.
The videos in question are not designed to appeal to people with your sensibilities, or people who kick-off Pit Threads to parade their own collection of hang-ups about sexy-looking women and to propagate the myth of ‘objectification’.
It is true that a small number of potential consumers may like the product, but not the promotional tool. However, marketing professionals accept that no promotional tool is ever going to be targetted with 100% successful accuracy. What matters is achieving the highest possible percentage, even if 100% is unachievable. The particular vids attract more of the targeted consumers than they alienate. That’s why they make them the way they do.
If you think you can design promotional tools that work even better, the industry would love to see you try. It’s always quite amusing, in a wry sort of way, when ‘armchair experts’ who have never done a job think they can do better than those who have done it, and done it well. Try to learn some respect for skilled, hard-working professionals who have the talent and experience to do a good job. Try to appreciate their talent and artistry rather than pontificating from the comfort of your armchair and ignorance.
This is from someone who questioned my grasp of logic?
I’ll let you and Featherlou thumb wrestle over the rest of the issues but on this point I think you are making a somewhat pedantic distinction that 99% of people outside of Advertising Theory 101, and even people in the music promotion business would not recognize as meaningful.
While it is important not to be sloppy in defining terms I think the process of distributing (for free) a music video that the owners of the content intend to be seen, desired and purchased by a targeted audience does constitute “advertising” in the general sense of how most intelligent and reasonable (non-advertising insider) people define the term.
Some videos are incredibly tasteless and annoying but the TV is too attractive and powerful a babysitter for most parents to even think about monitoring and controlling viewing in any meaningful sense. The flip to side to this is that your Wernher von Braunish separation of process and product impact is also somewhat intellectually disingenuous. This is understandable as creative types are relatively oblivious to just how short their real world leash is until little old ladies like Featherlou legislate content controls. But then whoever said a moral or taste compass was a necessary (or even desirable) part of a successful advertiser’s toolkit. I do wish she would take off her silly “objectification” shawl though and just own up to be a stalwart, socially necessary prude.
Well I’m having a hard time seeing how anyone could see these video’s as anything but degrading to women, and men too for that matter. According to MTV, women are good for nothing but sex–and that’s the way they want it–and men don’t want any sort of emotional attachment to their mates. What’s wrong with showing women being in positions of responsibility, or looking intelligent, or doing something other than totter around on spike heels doing some sort of strange gyration/convulsion which seems to pass as dancing nowadays? They’re not controlling their sexuality by parading around half-naked in front of men any more than prostitutes or women in a harem did: hell, they can’t even walk!
And what’s wrong with showing men being responsible and intelligent rather than just being a penis with a wallet attached? I’d like to think there was more to life than just getting a big house and some bizarre looking car with gold hubcaps. Quite honestly, I find these sorts of video’s incredibly boring; you’ve seen one 99% nude woman gyrating around on 9" heels playing the fool, you’ve seen them all. I’d pay good money to see a video with no half-nude folks in it at all at this point!
ianzin: let me ask you a question–do you think that these video’s are sending healthy messages to our kids? Or do you just judge things by how effectively they sell things?
Uh-oh, the “won’t someone please think of the children” angle.
The means to influence what your children watch have always existed. It was always possible to not get a television, or to get a television with channels locked out, or (perhaps the most effective but also the most labour intensive) watch the material with your children and point out how stupid it is, thus giving them a healthy sense of contempt for the attempted manipulation (by the video producers, not by you).
Hmm, “seen one 99% nude woman gyrating around on 9” heels playing the fool, you’ve seen them all." I guess if I’ve had one cheesecake in my life, that should be sufficient.
I’m an adult, so I’ll watch what I please, thank you very much. I’d hate to have to tell an adult woman “No, you can’t dance for this video; it would be immoral.” She could rightly tell me to fuck off.
Ironically, that’s kind of how I feel at this moment.
(note: I didn’t even bother getting any music video channels in my cable package, but that was because I find the music boring, not the videos offensive).
And we’re not? 
