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lierdumoaOkay, so am I the only one who found the Details photoshoot disturbing?
I read some fanfiction that made mention of the pictures and I wanted to see what the buzz was about, so I put "details adam lambert scans" into a google search. One of the first links that popped up was this:
Adam Lambert – Poses with Naked Woman on Details Magazine – NSFW ...
I think the wording in the link says it all. She has no name, no identity, and she's wearing no clothes. That's all we need to know about her.
Of course, I wasn't going make any assumptions. I tracked down the photos and took a good long look at them. Every picture in a magazine is designed to sell something. If I were to infer a message from these pictures, I would say they are trying to sell the idea that Adam Lambert, despite being gay, is still a strong suave bad ass manly man. He's got slicked back greaser hair and stubble dotting his rugged jawline and he's wearing a muscle tee. But of course, that's just the icing. So what's the real treat? What image are we using to illustrate Adam Lambert's towering masculinity?
That of him fondling a naked woman in a proprietary manner.
We've come so far! Oh, brave new world!
Now gay men can objectify women too!
The image of a naked woman entwined provocatively with a fully clothed man is disturbing in and of itself. And I know what you're thinking. Hey, wouldn't it be clever and ironic if we turned a misogynist cliche on its head and made the man gay? Look! He's crouched over a naked woman palming her breasts and her ass and he doesn't even want her! She's not really an object of desire at all!
It's all very poetic, isn't it? Details named their article "Idol Worship." And history assures us there's no better way to worship an idol than by sacrificing a naked woman.
ETA: Full article with photos can be found here.
ETA2: Let me clarify. I don't think Adam is a woman hating misogynist now. I *know* he's not. I know because he's a singer, and in an interview when asked to name his musical idols, he named three men and seven women. I know because when his private accounts got hacked into, he automatically assumed the culprit was a man despite the majority of his fans being female. I know because of a million other throwaway comments he's made.
I'm less mad at him than I am disappointed that he gave in to peer pressure. He did the equivalent of getting drunk and laughing along with the rest of the football team at the lonely nerd, or more accurately, spray painting "SLUT" on some poor girl's locker as part of a hazing ritual to become one of the popular kids. I suspect he felt dirty when he did it, and I dearly hope he never does anything like this again.
I read some fanfiction that made mention of the pictures and I wanted to see what the buzz was about, so I put "details adam lambert scans" into a google search. One of the first links that popped up was this:
Adam Lambert – Poses with Naked Woman on Details Magazine – NSFW ...
I think the wording in the link says it all. She has no name, no identity, and she's wearing no clothes. That's all we need to know about her.
Of course, I wasn't going make any assumptions. I tracked down the photos and took a good long look at them. Every picture in a magazine is designed to sell something. If I were to infer a message from these pictures, I would say they are trying to sell the idea that Adam Lambert, despite being gay, is still a strong suave bad ass manly man. He's got slicked back greaser hair and stubble dotting his rugged jawline and he's wearing a muscle tee. But of course, that's just the icing. So what's the real treat? What image are we using to illustrate Adam Lambert's towering masculinity?
That of him fondling a naked woman in a proprietary manner.
We've come so far! Oh, brave new world!
Now gay men can objectify women too!
The image of a naked woman entwined provocatively with a fully clothed man is disturbing in and of itself. And I know what you're thinking. Hey, wouldn't it be clever and ironic if we turned a misogynist cliche on its head and made the man gay? Look! He's crouched over a naked woman palming her breasts and her ass and he doesn't even want her! She's not really an object of desire at all!
She's just.Now these photos have shown us that even a gay man can command power over a woman. In fact, he's even more powerful than a straight man would be, because she commands no power over him in return.An object.
It's all very poetic, isn't it? Details named their article "Idol Worship." And history assures us there's no better way to worship an idol than by sacrificing a naked woman.
ETA: Full article with photos can be found here.
ETA2: Let me clarify. I don't think Adam is a woman hating misogynist now. I *know* he's not. I know because he's a singer, and in an interview when asked to name his musical idols, he named three men and seven women. I know because when his private accounts got hacked into, he automatically assumed the culprit was a man despite the majority of his fans being female. I know because of a million other throwaway comments he's made.
I'm less mad at him than I am disappointed that he gave in to peer pressure. He did the equivalent of getting drunk and laughing along with the rest of the football team at the lonely nerd, or more accurately, spray painting "SLUT" on some poor girl's locker as part of a hazing ritual to become one of the popular kids. I suspect he felt dirty when he did it, and I dearly hope he never does anything like this again.
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Date: 2009-10-21 10:41 am (UTC)I think you're completely right about what the photo series is trying to illustrate. The woman in the pictures is objectifying Adam, and if you look at the martyred faces he's pulling, she's victimizing him too. What pissed me off me about the photoshoot in tandem with the article was seeing an already disturbingly objectified prop model being framed as a sexual predator. She might be on her back and naked, but she's clearly the criminal here. In the context of an article that describes teenage girls and their moms as "groupies", I can't see this as a subversion of the traditional woman-as-object scene, just a reinforcement of the same old shit. For bonus girl-hating points, it's just as invested in _vilifying women as it is in dehumanizing them.