Fitness Clubs and Flesh Pimps: they have more in common that you think…
I go to the gym every morning. I always use my iPod to listen to music. Why? Well, I am always listening to my tunes, but there is another reason: I need to drown out the shit-storm of sounds that blurts out of the gym’s sound system.
Wow. It is just repulsive. Mostly it is “B”, “C” and some “Z” level pop-star videos that throbs from the speakers. This is the shit that never makes it to the airwaves or gets its heaviest rotation on a lonely MySpace page. LA Fitness has decided that these no-talent, pop-hack wannabes are the perfect soundtrack to my trying to give it my all in the gym. I’d rather sweat to the oldies.
The cruelest punishment is when you hit the cardio equipment. No iPod can save your eyes from spontaneously combusting in their sockets when you have to stare headlong into the idiot screens filled with idiots gyrating and dry-humping each other for three minutes and forty-five seconds. These videos are the last desperate attempt to get noticed. Nine out of ten are filled with failed porn stars and anxious call girls. It is a shame that this shit is meant to pass for sexy. Seriously…I think I would rather watch scrambled porn in a fleabag motel room than watch these supposed sex goddesses.
To be very honest…I feel bad for the chicks in these videos. This is all they can muster: wear as little as possible and sell your sex parts for cents on the dollar. Adult-like Comment Alert: no wonder pre-teen and teenage girls have bad self images. They think this is their goal. Pitty the poor little fat girl! She really must hate herself.
And it is not just the bit part back-up dancers. Have you seen that “She-Wolf” video from Shakira? Do you think she finished that and said, “Yes, another artistic statement for women everywhere to look up to”…or even better…”Yes, I am proud of that”…or what I would say if I was her…”I look like an idiot. I am firing all of my Managers, PR people, Handlers and Chief Ass-Kissers.
She is not the worst of it.
The Pussycat Dolls: Oh. Fuck. Me. They remind me of the one girl in junior high school that was putting out way before the other girls even considered the thought of some punk jamming his tongue down their throat. Everyone knew she would put out and they wanted to get with her. EVERYONE. But, as time went on, she turned from one man’s treasure to EVERYONE’s trash. That is the Pussycat Dolls: Has-been High School Jezebels….used tires.
OK…and I didn’t even touch on the music. Personally, I don’t like it…but that doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t. I like Ledbelly and Bluegrass; that doesn’t mean someone else does. But in this day and marketing age, the video is supposed to sell the song. If we didn’t know it already, the music industry is in a lot of trouble.
But, hey, sex sells…and pop music is the world’s oldest profession…
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So true about my gym also. This is the laugh that I need this morning.
Luke, thanks for having a read. That’s really all you can do…laugh. Or slip your sweatband from your forehead over your eyes…heh.
Nice Wiki link. Had me thinking about Sherry Rivers in the Junior High stairwell…. You mean she was doing “it” with other people besides me. I thought i was special!
Too true Juddmeister! Occasionally I click over to the music vid cable channels to take the creative pulse. Nothing but tripe swimming in a diarrhoea jus. Very sad given the video creativity we marvelled at thru the 80s/90s. The tweens are doomed . . .
Kip – “tripe swimming in a diarrhoea jus…”: mad genius
Gilly: You special, you were one of the first 15.
@neil_mccormick covered this topic (“Flesh Pimps”) much more eloquently than I did: http://bit.ly/51jFls “This is supposed to be year of the female pop star. We’ve been hearing a lot about this new breed of independent, artistically confident young women……Sex is a big part of pop music, of course, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But on the other hand it makes my heart leap when a female artist comes through who refuses to pander to the (forgive me) bottom line”.