No

by Lawrence George

Created on: May 24, 2010   Last Updated: July 12, 2011

Once upon a time, society was outraged by the sight of Elvis Presley wiggling his hips.

Now, children regularly watch music videos with women in bikinis gyrating, rubbing something, or imitating sex with whoever is supposed to be singing the song. And no-one bats an eyelid.

The question of whether we need it misses the point: of course we don't need it. We don't need the iPhone either. But we're not driven by needs anymore - the relative affluence of the West, despite pockets of poverty, means that culturally we long ago stopped thinking about what we need, only what we want.

We clearly want these videos, because videos of tattooed women in bikinis climbing into the back of big cars with winking men are unbelievably popular.

Are they harmful? It's probably too soon to say. Statistically, there's unlikely to be any evidence linking these videos to anything.

But it can't do the fragile self-image of Western girls any good, can it? Here they are, already so worried and angry about their bodies that in the UK the single biggest issue teaching PE to girls is to get them to do it in the first place - and they turn on the tv to see plastic-enhanced, body-modified women all over it. Women with beautiful bodies, women with surgically improved bodies. Making ordinary girls feel even more inadequate and obsessed.

And what do they say about gender relations? You really do not have to be a feminist to see that even if they claim it is all cloaked in irony, or whatever stupid excuse they use nowadays, women acting as tools of men, there solely to be sexual - and nothing else, as in at least one Dizzee Rascal video, and the Benny Bennassi version of Satisfaction that Youtube reckons is too rude for under-18s - that these videos are simply exploiting women for money. Or rather, they are exploiting the female body and sending a powerful message both to teenage girls and to teenage boys that they are in a game of sexuality, where the woman is a toy, to be used and looked at.

In this most modern of "art" forms, we find ancient gender stereotypes hard at work. That cannot be doing anyone any good.

Finally, these videos are rubbish. They have no imagination, no originality, no concept of artistic endeavour. The director simply says - "here, darlin', put this bikini on and shake it about a bit". Probably. There's the expense of filming in Californian mansions or Caribbean paradises to cover, after all.  What is there that is good, thoughtful, humane, thought-provoking about any of this? That doesn't mean it should be banned of course - it should not - but it doesn't mean it should be guaranteed an audience.

We don't need these super sexy videos. Should they exist at all? It's a free country. Should we ignore them and leave them to rot, until the record companies decide to make something more intelligent? Definitely.

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