TINA TYLER TALKS

By Tina Tyler

Monthly Column Exclusively at JasonCurious.com

Column #19: “The Party’s Over”

I miss Samantha Jones!

About 6 months ago, I realized that I was hooked to too many television shows, so I decided to quit... cold turkey. I had my cable disconnected and only watched DVDs. The first week was tough, but after the initial withdrawal, I came to a place of freedom from regularly scheduled programming.

I recently moved to a new place and thought, what the hell, I’ll get basic cable. I’ve been back on the glass teat for about 6 weeks now and something has become quite disturbing to me: Female sexuality is shameful again.

Two years ago, the biggest thing on TV for women was Sex and the City, a show that celebrated strong, self actualized, sexually active and proud women. This show was letting American women know that it was a good thing to own your sexuality and that’s a big part of what I loved about it. The biggest thing on TV for women right now is Desperate Housewives, which in itself is a fun, salacious, guilty pleasure, but the sex that takes place here is shameful and bad; an affair with an under aged boy, cheating, lying, greed etc. Even the show’s title calls them “desperate.” In no way are these women being celebrated.

One of my favorite women on the planet, Oprah Winfrey, explored female sexuality on her show this week. The title of the show was “Releasing Your Inner Sex Pot” and she had a panel of 3 sexperts on with her, one of whom was Kim Cattrall (another of my personal favorites). The show began with a warning to get the kids out of the room as the discussion was to be of a frank sexual nature. There were segments on pole dancing and tantric sex. The whole panel was preaching knowing your body and communicating to your man what you like, but even as the women were telling us to ask for what we want, the delivery was very hand covers mouth, tee hee, aren’t we being naughty. Not once was the word penis uttered and the female genetalia was referred to as “DOWN THERE”!

I was horrified! How on earth are the women who need this type of teaching going to feel comfortable talking about sexuality with anyone, if the so called experts can’t even get over their own shame? Oprah kept mentioning that they were going to take the discussion a lot further on her Oxygen show, After the Show, so I thought, maybe this was just ABC’s meddling. I tuned into Oxygen at 7 pm for the supposedly less censored cable version. This was not much better. Oprah opened the show by asking the audience if it was tasteful and opining that she’ll still get a lot of letters. Now, her daytime show runs an hour and her after the show runs another 30 minutes and after 90 minutes on the topic of female sexuality the only real interesting thing that was said -- and it’s quite a telling tidbit -- was that female sexuality is so powerful that it must be squelched because men feel afraid that they won’t be able to control it. Truer words were never uttered. But let’s take this one step further, shall we? HETEROSEXUAL men are afraid of the innate sexual power women have, but they’re also afraid of gay men and lesbians (although, not the lipstick kind). Generally they’re afraid of anyone who can freely express their sexuality publicly because they have a tendency towards sexual insecurity. Now, I found it very ironic that Oprah drove this point home twice during a show that referred to the vagina as DOWN THERE! Can you say mixed message?

Moving on to the gay men, it seems that television will be saying goodbye to Queer as Folk and Will and Grace next season, leaving us with only Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and reruns of the Isaac Mizrahi Show every morning on Oxygen. I find the timing of these cancellations interesting. I bring this up to demonstrate my point regarding the fear of the good old boys network that runs things.

This “cleansing” of American society through television saddens me deeply and I can’t help but be reminded of the movie Pleasantville, in which the men of the town fight inevitable change and freedom vehemently, while the women embrace it.

In the opening of the aforementioned Isaac Mizrahi Show, he states that he loves women because they’re fearless. Let’s prove him right.

Tina

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