PopSmartsZen

Oops!, pouty teen girls draped on school lockers did it again. That is, made ya double take with fascinated (or –ingly faux) shock, and then stare blatantly. Parents groups are going bonkers and for the Parents Television Council, GQ’s November photo spread “borders on pedophilia” by sexing up the teen characters (played by Lea Michele and Dianna Argon, both 24, and for which Aragon somewhat ramblingly apologizes) of the hit high school TV show ‘Glee’. A show about an underdog clique. Huh. For those unfamiliar with the show, these images are absolutely not truth in advertising. Furthermore, as if illustrating how conflicted and split our culture’s views of sexuality (and girls, and youth) are, the day after the cover was announced, People’s reader poll was a close shave at 51-49% Yes the photos are too racy.

But all this hoo-ha isn’t as much about a men’s fashion mag (GQ: Look sharp, Live smart) sexualizing female youth (‘Glee’ male co-star Cory Monteith is fully clothed, with his hands on his co-stars’ booties) in a medium readily accessible to impressionable children’s eyes and minds — it’s predominantly a really, really great press stunt to sell more GQ mags at the expense of sexualizing female youth and warping impressionable minds of future loyal readers.

If this was really about borderline pedophilia, where was the outrage over actual teenaged Taylor Lautner’s (confusing because like Michele and Aragon, he’s of age at 18) bemused but non-patronizing profile and spread this summer pimping sartorial porn ($625 button downs and $745 six-pack-hugging T-shirts, and jeans that have such difficulty staying buttoned, apparently the wearer would be wise to lay down on a bed topless to do so)? Ever since I was an impressionable child under the 18-end of GQ’s 18-49 year old demographic, my vague sense of GQ was that it was a men’s fashion magazine with eh-so-what metro sexual (just not labeled that then) if not biblically strongly homoerotic leanings. To both, so what? If I equally vaguely recall feeling that it was cool guys had a mag that told them how to rag fashionably (if a bit staidly back in the day), I do clearly remember semi-gloating that its great looking glossiness would never evoke emotion (precisely because of its staid airs and implied correct rules of dressing) as much as the pervasive women’s pubs that did the same thing (albeit with a lot more pink lipstick) — and isn’t that how we buy something/-one?, via emotional impulse/response?

So is this new fangled trend all the kids are doing now of selling things with sex going to irrevocably warp their minds and provoke the ire of sexist terrorists the world over? I say: probably, because if it ain’t broke… The one thing I’d like to see change is our culture’s attitude that a young girl/woman’s sexuality needs more lamblike protecting than that of our young boys/men’s minds, attitudes, and actual sexuality (Mary Kay Letourneau/Debra Lafave much, anyone?).

How does the GQ sexed up images of styled-as-under-aged girls in an adult men’s magazine make you feel? Will you let your young son or daughter look at it? Why or how is the sexualization of young girls/women worse than that of their male counterparts?  — PopSmarts

Image: Terry Richardson/GQ

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