Glee’s GQ Photos Only ‘Mildly Pornographic’ — That’s Comforting
What the recent GQ racy photo shoot involving Glee stars reemphasizes is the fact that GQ only knows one way to photograph women: As sexual objects.
The poses and outfits hit a couple of the usual pornographic themes: One guy (dressed in normal street clothes) with two women in sexy outfits; sexy school girls; and a locker room scene.
As Scott Mendelson points out in Huffington Post, only the women are photographed in sexy outfits. NPR picks up on that point and has a more critical opinion of the entire shoot.
On one hand, we have come to expect this from magazines such as GQ, which really shouldn’t continue to pretend that the “G” in its title stands for “Gentlemen.” Dianna Agron, who apparently had some regret, might have realized this was a possibility going in.
It’s of little consolation that the photo spread has been labelled as “mildly pornographic” by the L.A. Times. How jaded does one have to become in order to use “mildly” as a word describing “pornographic?” Those two words don’t belong together in the least.
Also of little consolation is this defense of the pictorial. This quote is of particular interest:
Teenagers are already familiar with “racy” pictorials and other stars with more than “sexy” images.
The fact that teens are familiar with these sorts of pictorials doesn’t justify them. Teens are familiar with many things which are not healthy for them.
And, in truth, this isn’t simply a “teen issue” anyway. The real conversation is about the shaping of our culture where men and women are told repeatedly that who they are is defined in terms of sexual fantasy.
Intentional Warriors 
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