Every morning, I wake, shower, dress and sit with a cup of hot choc in front of the television for some quiet time to relax and get ready for the day. I have found myself more often infuriated than relaxed, more often going to work in a rage instead of calm. I blame television.
When I was young, turning the television on at 4 AM would yield one of two possible fruits: Either I would find myself looking at a still photo of a flag or I’d be watching the farm report. Now, with the dominance of infomercials and cable, I can watch VH1 showing the latest Goo Goo Dolls or Dave Matthews Band inanity, the ProActiv acne solution or, most alarmingly, the ad for the "Girls Gone Wild" series.
It is about these girls, apparently gone wild, that I wish to write this week.
For those of you who have been living off-world and managed to escape the "Girls Gone Wild" phenomenon, let me describe it: Some enterprising people take a video camera to Mardi Gras, nightclubs and frat parties, and watch "normal girls" get "wild."
These girls, it is stressed, are "not models or actresses." One can only guess that they are strippers who have become so defeated that they no longer claim to be either. Heavily made up, heavily augmented, and dressed in animal prints that no animal would be willing to claim, these women express their "wildness" by making faux-lesbian love on the dance floor, pulling their pants down to reveal the waistbands of their thongs, and, repeatedly and emphatically, showing their breasts.
Interspersed among this wildness are interviews with pathetic, fat teenage boys claiming that their girls are the wildest, do the wildest things and have gone irrevocably wild. Then they chug a beer and go to their rooms to frag away on "Quake III."
The first thing that occurs to me is the hollowness of the word "wild" in our generation, and how little it means. There was a time when wildness and savagery implied a discarding of civilization and its accessories, for both good and bad. It meant living in nature, free of the constructed responsibilities of the city.
We invented videotapes and decided wildness meant pinching one’s nipples so that they could be seen through a shirt. We think getting in touch with the fundamental essence of the human animal lies in sex for sex’s sake, drinking for drunkenness’ sake. We have decided the unadorned core of humanity lies in activity that justifies itself - that life is meaningless and is justified only by itself.
When I see the "Girls Gone Wild" jiggling their breasts to bad techno, what I see is a depressingly empty account of our souls. I also find myself aroused, which is the other thing that bothers me.
Words cannot adequately express how embarrassed I feel when I realize how perfectly easy the male attention is to snare. We can be caught in any thrall that has pert breasts and a bottom, and it drives me absolutely crackers to realize this.
Girls Gone Wild? More like Guys Gone Stupid.
There is no reason for this drive. The urge sparked by the sight of the female body has no endpoint--it can never be satisfied. It isn’t even a motivation that can be completely explained. Men don’t want to possess the female body. They don’t just want to be near one. It’s not even accurate to say that the sexual act satisfies sexual attraction, because the former simply intensifies the latter.
It’s not as if the female body is useful. Breasts will never drive you to the airport, or keep you company. You won’t find a woman’s bottom helping you change a tire or boosting your Trivial Pursuit team to victory. And yet we very much desire these body parts, independent of the occupying soul.
We just want - with no logic, no reason, no meaning and no satisfaction. We don’t know why we want, or even what it is we want. We just perceive the female form, and we feel desire without anchor. It is the thrall of the purely biological, and it is wilder than any party or beer bong.
So I’ve found early morning television and, particularly, "Girls Gone Wild" has evoked more contemplation than I expected. In it I see my generation’s perception of wildness, and how far split from primal nature it is. And I simultaneously see the true evidence of our wildness, how it totally seizes the male mind without heed of logic. The truth is that while the video may claim to show "Girls Gone Wild" its founding principle is really the wild instincts of men - and how they may be manipulated.
I would think the same is true of women, but if there’s a "Boys Gone Wild," it airs earlier than 4 in the morning. (Thank god!)
--annonymous