Sex to sell sexual shame

I had started to read this article at Pandagon because the whole Prejean thing is just so bizarre to me. I could care less if she made a gagillion sex-tapes. I mean, really, who cares? Well, apparently right wingers and christian fundies have all lost their shit over it, because they were more than willing to use Prejean to sell their own agenda, and then got shocked when she wasn’t as squeaky pure as they’d like to present. Are they ever? It’s always the ‘wingers and xtians that get caught doing the weird stuff, am I right?

Anyway, in reading the article, I came across this, and I’m nodding at the screen, and even pointing, like there’s someone sitting beside me *rolls eyes at my weird internet behaviour* but what I’m getting at is that Pandagon has hit the nail on the head of just what’s wrong with these people and their need to sanitize and “fix” women. Read the whole thing of course, but here’s a bit:

…it’s not “sex” that’s used to sell, but a specific kind of sexual imagery, one that erases men’s bodies as objects of desire, and focuses strictly on highly airbrushed female ones.  And modern American fundies, being highly pro-capitalist, have decided they can embrace the “sex sells” mantra to sell their own worldview, up to and including their anti-sex message.It’s not as contradictory as it seems.  The advertising industry version of “sex” is actually pretty prudish, as I theorized in my post at Double X about plastic surgery for female genitalia.  Female bodies have to be sanitized and morphed to an unrecognizable shape before they can be deemed safe for sexual objectification.  What I said then:

The airbrushed plastic perfection promoted by Playboy and Maxim magazine are to sex as EPCOT Center is to world travel: experience simulation for those too cowardly to truly dive in, but too egotistical to admit their cowardice.

Plastic surgery, airbrushed images, and the extremely lucrative hair removal market are our modern version of the menstrual hut—ritual purification in order to prepare the female body for sexual use without getting the man fucking/looking at it dirty.  Taboos prey on the human mind very easily, which is why the Brazilian went from unheard of 15 years ago to something that many young men feel is mandatory so that touching a ladygarden isn’t gross.

In this atmosphere, the Christian fundie tendency to fetishize virginity, and to use sexual objectification to sell itself and an anti-sex message makes perfect sense.  On top of plastic surgery and Brazilian waxes, virginity is no big thing, right?  That’s why our minds aren’t actually blown by a woman in high heels and a bikini talking up the strict Christian message about sexuality.  They’ve been using sex to sell an anti-sex message for a long time now…

Read more here, from The Pursuit of Harpyness:
Our Labia Look Just Fine, Thanks.