I haven't posted in over a year (I said this blog would be random -- I meant both in subject and time, apparently), but I feel this needs to be commented upon, so here I am.
I saw Rashida Jones's documentary "Hot Girls Wanted," and I have to say that I was not impressed. That said, this interview makes up for it. Jones makes some very crucial points here that I feel were lost in the process of the documentary production. It's definitely worth the watch.
The treatment of sexuality Jones gives in this interview is bright and accepting, but it also serves as a cautionary tale against sexualization and explains the difference between the concepts. I only wish that this message could have come through more strongly in the documentary, which to me came across a little too much like a conservative news piece about "the destruction of our country's morals," and unfortunately, I'm not the only one who has felt as much about it. This interview makes up for that and allows Jones to put much needed context to her work. I'm actually interested in rewatching it, now fueled with the director's perspective.
I do have one point of disagreement with something Jones says in this interview, however. Jones states here that we were basically presented with a new level of sexualization without first having a "conversation" about it. This -- her documentary, her interview, my reaction to it -- is part of that cultural conversation. We're having it now. Culture evolves through a push and pull between exportable thought and the people who utilize it. We're on the right track with this "conversation," I think, but there are a few points I'd like to make as an anthropologist about how I think we've arrived at this point which may help us direct ourselves in the future:
1. Feminism did it. I'd say that Jones is 100% correct in her assessment that the growth and normalization of the porn industry and the sexualization of popular culture is a direct result and outgrowth of feminism and the sexual revolution (a revolution that, I argue, is not a thing of the past but is something still happening, still active). This development, honestly, could have been predicted (and, in some cases, was) by observing trends in human behavior in the US across the last century. That's not a bad thing, just a predictable thing. As she points out, it was an inevitability, but I argue that the particular shape that this development has taken is due to a particular constraining factor that is still very much active in our culture in determining how we deal with the very concept of sexuality, which brings me to my next point:
2. Christianity did it. The part of the puzzle that many are missing is the religious angle. We live in a culture (the West) that was formulated by and continues to be shaped by Christianity. To ignore it's influence on our culture's attitudes regarding sex would be a mistake. So how does Christianity, with its rather prudish approach to sex, create the type of sexualization we are seeing? The somewhat oversimplified answer is that Christian culture has eradicated the tools we, as a species, need to cope with sex and sexuality. The active pursuit of dualistic and ascetic thought in Christianity created a culture which abhors the very nature of the animal, seeking "loftier" thought and action through negation of our baser instincts. By eliminating the mental toolset needed to process sexual thought and action, we've set ourselves up for failure -- for rape, the sexualization of children, and a further disconnect between our bodies and our minds. The need to understand the difference between sexuality and sexualization, between being a whole person and being an object, is paramount, and that brings me to by final point:
3. We did it. We have ignored ourselves for far too long. We ignore the basic reality that we are sexual beings and replace that understanding of ourselves with a sense of objectification and possession that is unhealthy at best. We infantilize our children -- it's a defining factor of Western culture -- actively denying their existence as human beings with developing sexualities and understandings of themselves, and yet simultaneously subject them to a sense of sexualization so disconnected from its nature that they are left feeling like objects, ashamed and confused over who and what they are. The truth we ignore is that even children are sexual beings. We don't like to think about it because of our aforementioned cultural hangups related to sex, but it is true. And instead of exposing our children to healthy attitudes regarding sexual thought and behavior, we teach them a duality of shame and abuse surrounding their bodies and sex, a system that encourages rape culture, objectification and possession of another's body, and a level of despondency and depression regarding themselves as sexual beings that ultimately results in the vast majority of body image issues we see afflicting our culture today.
So how do we fix it? We're doing that. It's not a quick process. This "conversation" is the method to achieve a better, more unified humanity. Our culture *needs* to talk about sex, not villainize the conversation (I'm looking at you, news outlets). We need to eliminate the taint of social conservatism that teaches us that sex is "wrong," that women are somehow "less," and that young men are beasts lacking self control. We must actively seek to change the status quo through acceptance and not shame, through education and not objectification, through sexuality and not sexualization. Our freedom as sexual beings depends on it.
