Uh oh. Girl in her underwear. Hide your children. SIGH.

So, I'm moody today.

Sigh. Work's been a busy pain in my ever-expanding @$$.....AND....I saw some pictures of myself from two years ago and realized the steady weight gain I've been allowing this year is disgusting and needs to stop.....AND....I'm wearing uncomfortable pants....AND....I didn't get my coffee this morning....AND....I'm having one of those "why do I look so TIRED?" sort of days where I can't pin down what's OFF, but something about my face is DEFINITELY off.....

Take your pick.

OH, also:

Olivia Munn on the cover of Maxim is generating all sorts of righteous indignation from people who are afraid of seeing girls in lacy panties, basically.

Here's the scandal:

Olivia's undies are sort of see-through.

AAAAAAAND Fox News' entertainment blog found some guy named Dan Gainor, Vice President of Business & Culture at the Media Research Center, who is making a huge deal over this, squawking about how the cover is "disgusting" and suggesting that "Any store could have children coming in. If I were a parent, and I walked into a store and saw that cover, I would make a scene until the manager hid it." 

And then the snippet goes on to explain the history of Walmart's decision not to sell the magazine in it's stores.

I was explaining this entire debacle to Mr Wonderful last night and he started chuckling before I'd even finished my rant. Said he could imagine himself being one of those disturbed parents who didn't want their kids to see celebrity camel toe while waiting in line to buy the dog food and the Gatorade. I got typically obstinate (ugh, major weakness....) interrupted and blabbed about the fact that she's so PhotoShopped you can't even see anything in the first place, but that's just a tangent. My real point:

I have three issues with this sort of underwear fear-mongering and the Uptight Fox Response:

One: this Dan Gainor fellow must never have seen a Maxim cover before. Because guess what, Dan? THEY FEATURE SEXY LADIES IN TINY CLOTHES. How ELSE are they going to sell pages of Fossil ads and boring faux-articles about hoverboards to bunches of dudes without the promise of serious cleavage on the inside? If you're going to make a big to-do about THIS cover, you'd better be prepared to make a big to-do about EVERY Maxim cover.....

Two:  And warning - my whiny soapbox is about to become ten feet tall here - WalMart has NO problem exposing your child to FIREARMS, to ammunition, or to violent video games and films. BUT, a girl in sheer undies is NOT an option. Cleavage and shiny abs are NOT an option. One of our nation's largest retailers will jump up on their moral platform about sexually suggestive material, but they'll let your kid buy startlingly realistic video games in which they get to practice killing people. WHY IS SEXY WORSE?

Actually, this is a pretty pervasive American cultural phenomenon. Two examples. First is personal. I remember being a little kid on a family vacation - maybe 9 years old? The family was watching the movie "Dragnet." There was a scene in a strip club where a woman wearing nipple tassels crawls along the bar. My  uncle jumped up and dove for the TV where he stood strategically in front of the screen until the offending scene was done. BUT, when tanks roll through town wreaking havoc and pagan rituals are on screen and guns are blasting - no problem. Because starting out kids out with violent images at a young age is OK. Sensuality is NOT.

Same thing happened on a larger, international scale when an ultra-violent French erotic film called Baise Moi was released. I've not seen the film, but read that it was WIDELY banned in MANY countries (the UK, Canada, Australia). However - the US was the only country to ban it due to sexual content. France went so far as to ban the film from theatre release as well - in fact, it was the first film they banned in a solid 28 years. BUT, they deemed it too explicitly VIOLENT for release.

So, the standard in American Cinema is that we're prepared to subject movie-going audiences to extreme, gratuitous violence, but sex - not so much. Now, in the spirit of transparency I have to give the caveat here that most of the sex in the film was also exceptionally violent. There was a rape scene. The "heroine," if we can call her that, went on a vigilante revenge rampage killing men following her attack. SO - it's a flawed example because the movie was gratuitous in MANY ways - BUT, the rationale behind banning the film was telling. Americans didn't take exception with intense violence the way other nations did.

THIRD - The very act of bringing this up is drawing more attention to the cover and selling more magazines than saying nothing, Mr Dan Gainor. Notoriety is still a great marketing tactic. Maxim doesn't care if people buy the magazine because they want to read about the nations best beers or if they buy the magazine because they want to see more pictures of Olivia inside OR if they buy the magazine because "someone said there was a big deal over it in the media." A sale is a sale. I can't see many folks saying, "well, I was going to buy the magazine, but since Fox found this guy who thinks its inappropriate, I think I'll hold off....."

So, Mr Gainor, you've just done more good for the big, bad, dirty magazine than you have good......

AND this ended up a lot longer than I'd planned.

An additional observation, however - she's been so airbrushed and photo-edited, she resembles a Barbie doll more than an actual human being, complete with sort of plastic looking lady-parts. So, how angry can we really get about exposing our kids to naked ladies when the ladies have no visible anatomy, anyway???? Right????