I'm a straight 40-year-old male who doesn't much like Madonna and isn't still nursing psychic wounds from being profoundly tortured for his lunch money in the 9th grade -- which means that I couldn't care less about Glee.
That said, it's entertaining the level of at best concern, at worst outright indignation currently being voiced over a new GQ pictorial which features a couple of members of the Glee cast cavorting around in fantasy tart-wear on a set made to look like a high school hallway. The arguments seem to be that a) showing grown women who play teenagers on TV sexing it up is creepy/sick (the straight female argument), b) it's sexist and entirely unfair that Lea Michele and Dianna Agron strip for the photos while hunky guy Cory Monteith remains predictably clothed (the gay male argument), and c) "Arrrgh!!! No!!! Sex and television characters!!! What about our children?!? GOD SMASH!!" (the Parents Television Council argument).
For the life of me I'll never understand the current pop cultural obsession with Glee; it's not an awful show by any means, but it's a damn near perfect example of a phenomenon that's taken on a life of its own and which is now wildly out of proportion with the thing that spawned it. To its legion of rabid fans, Glee is critic-proof; try bringing up the show's many flaws to any self-proclaimed "Gleek" and you may as well be at a Tea Party rally trying to reason with an obese woman on a Hoveround.
But back to the photo shoot: Artists have been creating and patrons have been commissioning images of attractive, underdressed women since just about the dawn of time. Jesus, at least Michele and Agron are actually legal, as opposed to, say, Miley Cyrus, who has no issue giving potential pedophiles real spank material by posing topless before the age of 18. And that's really what it comes down to anyway: Whatever you think of the pictures, even if you've got a problem with the fact that the photographer who took them is kind of a notorious letch, the fact remains that the two adult women -- and one adult man, for that matter -- willingly went along with the shoot and did it for a magazine aimed at fellow adults. If they don't have an issue with posing that way, I can't bring myself to raise holy hell about the fact that they did.
Plus, at least something finally made Glee, and these characters, interesting for me.
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1. Girls making out - with girls.
2. Britney Spears dancing in next to nothing.
3. Rachel in a leather bodysuit.
4. Mostly naked men cavorting with Olivia Newton John.
Glee is not marketed to children. The pictures aren't either.
I used run to the other side of the house and my family when that show
used to start BUT NOW I'll check it out after those pictures!
Thanks GQ I thoroughly enjoyed the pics :-)
But I do have a problem with the photographer getting a free pass in this. Yes, he was probably hired by GQ for exactly the kind of photo shoot he is known for, and that is what he gave them. Fox keeps their actors on a short leash, and there you have three corporate entities with a financial stake in this. You can bet they just love all this controversy, no matter what anyone says.
It's as if they believe the fact that women on average have less body mass than men that they are literally less of adults than men are and as such can't make informed decisions about how much or how little they want to wear. Wait,but wouldn't that make all heterosexuality pedophilic molestation?
On TV, they are in high school. In reality, the are almost 30 years old!
What's creepy is not that they portray teenagers on tv. What's creepy is that they portrayed teenagers while posing nearly-naked. It's no more or less creepy than producing images of sexualized underage girls by drawing with a pencil and paper, or by playing with Photoshop, or any other method that doesn't involve any actual underage girls.
Fox did
Their advertising campaign for a show targeted towards 12 year old was highly sexualized
It received criticism
I don't see what's so strange about this story
You guys are pretending like these girls did these photo shoots themselves. That's just not the case. This is the official advertising campaign for the show
These pictures were arranged by the producers of the show. It is the official advertising campaign for Glee. If it were just the actresses posing by themselves as self promotion not tied to the show nobody would have said anything