October 11th, 2010

THE AGE OF THE SKANK

For years on the Rob, Arnie and Dawn show we have been openly wondering what has happened to the Great American Sex Symbol.

Every decade of the 20th century had one or more undeniable, enduring bombshells for the time; Marilyn Monroe, Farrah Fawcett, Raquel Welch, Morgan Fairchild, Cindy Crawford, Cheryl Tiegs, Cheryl Ladd, Heather Thomas, Heather Locklear, Pamela Anderson, all come to mind immediately. Regardless of whether or not every single man found every single one of those women attractive, there is no denying that each and every one of them were acknowledged world wide as class-A sex symbols for more than a decade each.  
Now quick; name the 21st century’s undeniable sex symbol….

Still waiting…

The last thing we had that was even close was Angelina Jolie and her run lasted 3 years, tops. Then she opened her mouth, starting talking politics, had kids, vacationed in Pakistan, and went straight into the “I wouldn’t kick her out of bed but I certainly don’t envy Brad Pitt” file.

Name even 5 women that the overwhelming majority of men today agree are super hot. You can’t do it. Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Eva Mendes, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, and Charlize Theron are all too big for many men. Scarlett Johanson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kate Beckinsale,  Natalie Portman and Jennifer Ansiton each appeal to very specific tastes; Aniston to the “girl next door” or “cougar” followers, Johanson to the men that like longer, more elegant faces and Parker to men who have horse fetishes. Either way, if there’s a loud, legitimate, ongoing debate (and there is with every name above), then they aren’t sex symbols.

In the past decade, tons of women have had their 15 seconds of sexual fame and lost it as quickly as they gained it; none more famously than Jessica Simpson who got into the best shape of her life to play Daisy Duke, gave the entire nation a hard-on as she washed a car in a bikini and then seemingly overnight ingested the entire gross national product of Botswana and has never returned from the land of the pasty, wide-hipped, loose skinned, cottage cheese monsters. Others have come and gone as quickly, including Halle Berry, who simply got too late a start to hold the reigns for more than a year, and Eva Longoria, who for 18 months was shoved down the American male’s throat as being uber-hot and the consensus reaction was “who?” 

The truth is, though, that the overwhelming majority of women who have been ordained temporary bombshell status in this decade, including those who pass for “sexy” today in 2010, do all share one undeniable quality; they are skanks.

Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Heidi Montag, Carmen Electra, Audrina Patridge, and Megan Fox all are “10’s” on the skano-o-meter; and they are what passes these days for sexy. Each and every one of them are easy to picture on the main stage at any strip club in America; and as a man who has had his share of strippers, let me be the first to say there is nothing that personifies the word “skank” more. Well, except maybe Courtney Love.

So we have finally cracked part of the secret of the missing bombshell; we live in the age of the skank; and with skanks, come no sexiness, just raw, raging disrespect. A skank is the dirty, loose, STD-ridden bad girl that any guy will gladly hump in a dark alley with the smell of rotting onions from the dumpster he has the skank pinned against wafting over the both of them. There’s not a chance in the world that skank is going anywhere near his mama; not to mention his sister, his boss and even most of his friends. Skanks are the reason throat gagging was invented; skanks scream out “treat me like I am garbage,” and we men love it…for one night or even a few weeks, but beyond that, skanks are more than just disposable, they are worthless with an expiration date, thus the inability of a skank to carry the sex symbol torch for more than the length of an NFL season.

True appeal comes with more than just the awesome body and pretty face; true sexiness ALSO possesses attitude, confidence, some form of intelligence and certainly some class. By the way gals, remember that the previous sentence contained the word “also,” meaning that you are not sexy if you are confident, intelligent and classy, yet also fat and ugly. You have to have the whole package, sweetie. Hit the gym and get back to us next lifetime.

The old adage is that men want a lady in the ballroom and a whore in the bedroom; there is something about a woman’s ability to embarrass the hell out of a guy that makes the woman disposable. Marilyn Monroe was a true tramp, but she could also dine with the most powerful people on earth and hold the room’s attention with her class. Imagine dropping Shakira into the middle of a White House dinner; she’d do a little “hoochy koochy” with her hips and down a shot of tequila before stripping to the tune of Green Day’s “American Idiot.”
So, how did we get here? It’s a combination of things that really aren’t that hard to piece together now that we have cracked the code:

- We have spent four decades emasculating men in America; through everything from TV sitcoms to very public proclamations, men have been told that they are bumbling, evil idiots who can’t balance a checkbook, raise a child or clean or a toilet. The only thing men are good at, fighting, has been demeaned as “barbaric,” and the very problem with our world today.

- Meanwhile, we have spent the same time unleashing women and their sexuality; telling women to be proud of their bodies and the power that comes with them; don’t be afraid to flaunt your wares, and if you need to use them to get to the top, do it! A man would!

- The American family unit is all but a memory; divorce is as easy and common as it ever has been, and many of the families that do “stay” together, don’t actually spend much time bonding and re-enforcing positive images of their children and of the relationship between mom and dad. There’s no time for that when there’s karate practice to get to or a Face book page to be updated during dinner time.

When you combine those three basic truths about our culture’s shift, you create men with very little self-worth, women with false self-worth (based entirely on their bodies), and an apathy towards traditional values. Over time, that creates weaker men who feel they deserve or want less, empowered women with no actual belief in themselves other than their bodies’ power, and a culture more and more accepting of women who wear only underwear to formal events.

This has, of course, evolved over time. The only difference between Marilyn Monroe and Pamela Anderson was that Marilyn had a sense of humility and propriety. The slow disintegration of the sex symbol into the skank can be easily mapped out similar to the Neanderthal charting of man’s evolution from fully-furred gorilla into a Geico caveman:

Marilyn Monroe evolved into Farrach Fawcett, Loni Anderson and Suzanne Somers; women who were still aware of the cultural import of class, but were totally unafraid to be known as abjectly stupid and nothing more than a “hot piece of ass.”

Fawcett, Anderson and Somers evolved into an entire decade of fishnets, skin and an explosion of the porn industry nationwide, all led by only one woman; the queen of the skank movement, herself, Madonna; no one woman has had more of a cultural impact on how society views women in the last fifty years than Madonna; a semi-attractive young woman at best with a body that looked like it had spent its teen years being poked by everything from a penis to a hypodermic needle; yet she engrossed the world as “sexy” with her skanalicious attitude which said “take me and love me as the piece of trash I am,” and the race was on.

Madonna morphed us into the golden age of the skank to end the 20th century; while Pamela Anderson ruled the 90s as queen skank, plenty of other semi-attractive yet skank-worthy starlets gained prominence; Cameron Diaz, Denise Richards, Liv Tyler, Sharon Stone and a host of other women who looked as though they belonged in line in front of a methadone clinic became various forms of meat for a time and then we became the lackluster nation of non-sex symbols we are today.

In such a culture, it is no wonder that certain factions of our society have desperately tried to take semi-attractive, girl-next-door-types and turn them into the true sex symbol of the decade; Reese Witherspoon, Sandra Bullock, Faith Hill, Jennifer Aniston and Taylor Swift amongst others have all been thrust upon us in an attempt to make a more wholesome woman attractive to all; but you can’t fight nature. Men are, on an organic level, responsible for two things; hunting and screwing. We can hunt on our own, but screwing is no fun without someone and men are visually stimulated first; thus, the girl must be hot. This is nature…we as a species evolve beyond nature when we “get to know someone” and find other things about them attractive, but the catch 22 is what man has any desire to “get to know” a skank like Heidi Montag? 

American has been Skank-o-fied; the likeliness that we will come back from it anytime soon is low; girls that show any potential of being both attractive and classy almost always turn out to either devolve into the skank world (Katy Perry, Fergie) or turn out not be talented enough to hold the nation’s attention (Katherine McPhee, anyone named “Kardashian,” Keira Knightley, Kate Bosworth), or simply are exposed as not being that attractive (Kellie Pickler, The Olsen Twins, Pink, Nicole Richie,  Jaime Presley, Hayden Pennatierre).

There is one more category;  semi-attractive women who turn out to be total C-words, but that classification is reserved for only Jessica Alba and Katherine Hiegl. 

America’s sex culture has become like America’s politics; the system is so dirty, so far gone and so corrupt that it appears, by all accounts to be unfixable.