THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR
[Letter to the Editor, Sunday Star Times, 20/06/2010]
As a 'Grumpy Old Man', I alternate between loving and loathing Rosemary McLeod's 'Grumpy Old Woman' columns in the Sunday Star Times (see article below).
She is obviously one of the girls that I remember from the 1970s who would berate you for looking down their blouse and then steal your Speight's from the fridge.
But just for the record, she has got it all wrong on the Scarlett Johansson and Sandra Bullock 'Girls' lip lock' issue.
It has absolutely nothing to do with Red Blooded Males and their sad "Can I watch?" fantasies in lonely hotel rooms - regardless of who picks up the tab.
Get real Rosemary, these girls are your true 1970s offspring and they apparently need men like a shubunkin needs a mountain bike (or motorbike in Sandra Bullock's case).
The message is clear – I can always unicycle or tandem if need be.
And by the way, kindly make sure in future that the fridge door is shut and the toilet seat up!"
Rosemary's article:
GIRLS LIP LOCK – TIME TO CHANGE THE SCRIPT
[By Rosemary McLeod, Sunday Star Times, 13/06/2010]
'First there was Britney and Madonna, and now there's Scarlett and Sandra. I wonder how we ever coped before girls started snogging in public.
Surely there's never been a better time for the "Can I watch?" fantasy so beloved of a certain kind of man, with starlets all slathering each other in lip gloss.
Once you had to hire videotapes of this sort of thing from seedy old men who kept them in curtained-off areas of sex shops, but that was when people thought Brazilians came from Brazil and the sound of hardware clinking from multiple piercings wasn't yet an essential accompaniment to lovemaking.
Is it an assertion of some kind of newly rediscovered 70s feminism, empowering women to express their true sexuality? More about teasing the boys, surely, in a tired old way but true, because the essential ingredient of this scenario is the mighty male who enters the room, rips down his daks, and shows the girls a thing or two that – oh my lord! – they never imagined, not even when they were vacuum cleaning in the nude while carrying feather dusters.
They're all at it: big hair, big lips, big smooch. Last week it was Sandra Bullock and Scarlett Johansson at the MTV awards, in what looked like a totally choreographed, scripted lip lock.
There was no need for Johansson to be present otherwise; she wasn't handing over the trophy; but she said she'd wanted Bullock to win the "Best Kiss" trophy, "hinted" that she wanted to snog her, and Bullock generously obliged.
Oh wow, two really famous women and they're kissing! But they'd spring away from each other like terrified cats if one of them accidentally touched the other in the washroom.
The trend dates back, I guess, to Madonna's kiss with Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV awards, which Johansson and Bullock just reprised.
Then there was Katy Perry with her 2007 hit, "I Kissed a Girl". You may recall that she followed through coyly with, "I hope my boyfriend don't mind it." Mind it? He's gagging for her to do it again. Or, then again, maybe he's reading a book.
This is all harmless enough, but there's something about serious actors and singers having to titillate like this that isn't all that playful, and isn't great as role modelling.
Aren't we tired yet of expecting talented women to perform nearly naked to prove that their bodies are as great as their voices – like Beyonce, so embarrassing at the Video Music Awards earlier this year, or Lady Gaga in her many incarnations?
And, can't a girl sing without pelvic thrust anymore? Besides, there are women who rely on these activities to earn a living, and it's hardly fair to strip income from the pockets of needy sex workers and strippers.
Whoever you are, it's a basic rule of the workforce not to do the other man's job'.
