I find the trend in this direction to be troubling, but then my views on pornography are very clear. I do not thing that "evening" this playing field by exploiting and objectifying men as much as we do women does anyone any good at all.

That said, I must confess I saw the same "Best Week Ever" and the #2 reason to go see GuysGW: "Because I have a pooka shell necklace and backwards baseball hat fetish" had me cackling for several minutes.

I have always thought that having equal rights was to be treated w/the same about of respect not disrepect. When Christina A. sang a song about the way women were treated (and by the lyrics that Lil' Kim sang which sounded that she wanted to be as proudly promiscuous as men) seems to come off as women should treat men a sex toys instead of as people.

Both sexes should never be expoited for entertainment purposes.

my brief comments are here.

You raise a good point. This makes me think of a party that I went to last weekend where there was a male stripper. A few of my coworkers seemed to turn there nose up at it (said they thought it was degrading for women to strip, and therefore couldn't have a double standard for men who strip). Yes, yes, yes...I agree that women who are forced to go into the sex industry because of the lack of good-paying jobs is a huge problem---especially in third world countires where young girls are forced into this field. But, we need to also realize that many women do prefer to do this as a profession, and it wasn't always considered a bad thing. I suggest reading Inga Muscio's book "Cunt,"---especially the chapter entitled "Whores." We got to remember who villified selling sex or offering sex as a service. Ok-got a little off point. Back to this double standard thing. I seriously think that the girls gone wild videos are shit, we have seen this little piece of shit white guy make millions off of young girls getting drunk to show thier tits. I seriously doubt the person making money off of boys gone wild is a woman. I think this is an even bigger issue than sexist exploitation---it's capatalism---and it's controlled predominately by white powerful men, and if they can make a buck out of exploiting women or men---they're gonna' do it.

I started to write something here in the comments, but ended up with a lot more to say: on my blog. I actually think objectification of men is a positive sign of progress in some ways, even though we have cultural problems around sex and the body that we're now including men in.

My ramblings are here.

Wow, VH1. I cant think of anything that has less impact on my life. They are all about image, posing, entertainment for the pubescent crowd. They pander to their audiences taste and desires. And there are lots of raging hormones in that crowd.

I have a small conflict with this. First, I assume that people grow out of the "musician worship", "model worship" and self image promotion as they grow up. In this sense, it doesn't bother me to hear that VH1 would promote men as boy-toys.

On the other hand, I did scan through the listings on the TV guide channel and found that there seem to be an over abundance of what I can only describe as "misery promotion". The reality shows where people are forced to do degrading things, or eliminated, insulted and exploited seem to be everywhere. The dating shows, fear factor, cops, you name it. And its gotten much worse than the last time I turned on a set.

It seems like the only people who get on TV are the ones who subject themselves to someone else's power. You gotta be abusable, exploitable, desperate or a criminal. Not much of a choice.

Better to turn the damn thing off.

I had to chew on this one a little bit - that means it's a very good topic! Here's my take.

I just wanted to say thanks to Kerri for posting the topic for me and to everyone who responded thoughtfully. Here is my response; I'm anti-sex work and I'm very snarky about it.

Yes, I think men should step up for their turn to be sexually objectified. Shows like that are garbage, but I'm not deeply offended by them. I don't like that they promote a very limited standard of attractiveness. I don't like their lack of artistic and intellectual content. But, I don't have as big a problem with "objectification" as many people. We all look at each other as sexual objects sometimes. How do you distinguish exhibitionism or art from exploitation? The fact is, they overlap and coexist in similar work.

Oh, but I think it should be "boys gone wild." What's this b.s. with girls=men? :-)

My response, finally, is up here. I hadn't read the comments before I wrote mine, and I totally missed the "girl" versus "men" juxtaposition in the names of the shows. Yes, that alone, shows the inequality of it.