The Devout and the Dirrty: Consumer Choices in Bewildered Times

“I just wanna say, it’s not bad to wear a promise ring because not every guy and a girl wants to be a slut, OK?” (Jordin Sparks at this autumn’s MTV awards). Stirring sentiments there from the American Idol winner. But wait! Before we rally ourselves accordingly, Sparks has issued the following amendment; “I wish I would’ve worded it differently. Someone who doesn’t wear a promise ring isn’t necessarily a slut”, (Entertainment Weekly).

Phew! Okay, we unenlightened many who roam the bleak wastes outside The Church of Teens and Trinkets, put down the cat o’ nine tails for a moment: We are not necessarily sluts.

With their air fisting enthusiasm and Mickey Mouse Club soundtrack The Silver Ring Thing, True Love Waits and other such US chastity movements have met with a luke warm reception across the pond. Pah! “Americans”, we scoff, with a Clarkson-esque roll of the eyes. For one thing, our reality pop stars know to speak when spoken to. We can scarcely imagine Simon Cowell and the good people at Syco Records tolerating this kind of backchat from Leona Lewis.

But like it or not, religious youth movements preaching abstinence are on the up in the UK too, albeit in our more characteristically sombre stylings. And in youth culture more broadly, terms like ‘slut’ and ‘ho’ have never been more in vogue. You can scarcely saunter through the Internet blog spots or gossip sites without the accusation being pelted from every quarter.

It’s all too easy to dismiss these devout younglings as hormonal half-wits as yet incapable of rational thought. But in these hedonistic times of fast love and fluid morality, what can this rising minority teach us about the world we live in? Clean cut and covered up, they face us: Today’s new rebels.

So what’s prompted this mutiny from the good ship decadence? What of our dreams of sexual freedom when young people are taking refuge in the promise ring or hijab? And why has the sexual revolution not relegated terms like ‘slut’ into the dark prudish past of sexual censorship?

In terms of sexual liberation, we are a people confused. The non-pious female majority of today will wear their Playboy bathrobe with pride. When our men, bound by lad’s mag obligatories, are out of action on a Thursday, we don’t complain. We’ll even have a sneaky peak when he’s out the room, (“fake, fake, real, fake”).

But Tina from finance snogs two men at the same Christmas party and her status as super-slut is unshakable. Even as men renew their yearly subscription to Razzle and women fall over themselves for the Carmen Electra Aerobic Striptease video; we hold on tenaciously to our right to brand one another as sluts.

Why are women of this “post-feminist” era, supposedly free to frolic the pastures of empowerment, not snuffing out such terms as the enemy in their midst? Because of course, the word ‘slut’ is never used without deploying a certain contention; that promiscuous, or seemingly promiscuous women are cheap and worthless. Without this belief, the word collapses, meaningless.

“But men can be sluts too!” I hear you cry. Are you sure? Occasionally, and with all the thrill of the truly novel, the claim might be leveled at a fella. But not without “man” in front, (male-whore, man-slut, etc) to signal this quirky departure from the norm. And so it’s not just the religious among us casting the eye of condemnation over female sexuality.

And yet clutching onto the motifs of pornography is now a mainstay of female celebrity success. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and The Pussy Cat Dolls are prime exemplars. Christina Aguilera has succeeded in selling Dirrtiness as a “post-feminist” template for sexual empowerment. She has taken the torch from Madonna and pushed the goal posts akimbo. Long gone are the arty, iconoclastic nods pivotal to Madonna’s erotic licence.

The tendency to herald pop’s recent freak-athon as erotic empowerment is widespread. Out with Reclaim the Night demos and in with the clear heels! As the heroines of popular entertainment engage in ever-intensifying playoffs, thrusting their crotches at us in a frantic bid to prove themselves the ‘Dirrtiest’, they are being awarded subversive status, as defiant exhibitors of “raw…sexual expression”, (Lesley Robinson, Mediations).

Who needs feminism when you have ‘Dirtiness’? Amongst this pantomime of orgasmic moaning, pole dancing and faux lesbianism, we are being encouraged to a-spy the enigmatic form of gender equality. That’s right! Here comes liberation as you’ve never seen it before, “gift wrapped” in a red PVC cat suit. If this is how notions of sexual empowerment have been hijacked, is it any wonder young people are scrambling for the nearest chastity belt?

No question, in pop music today we are witnessing an aggressive sexuality which has oft been frowned upon as an unsightly deviation from “natural” femininity, that loathsome serpent threatening to undo civilized society. The figures that have a long while lurked omnipresent in the erotic consciousness, confined to the shadowy recesses of the horror/porn genres, now swarm out into the daylight of mainstream lucrative success. This ‘Dirrty’ phenomenon marks a further flushing out of these shadows. And as consumer culture usurps and suffocates other political manifestos, we are being besieged by old sexist myths, rising from the earth un-dead.

Clean cut and covered up, they face us: Today’s new rebels.

Condemning those who don’t jump aboard her bandwagon of emancipated womanhood as “not here to party”, or “uptight”, Aguilera’s crusade is pitched as the struggle of freedom versus conservatism. One of the most potent and whimsically dispensed themes in western culture, the brand is sold as the next frontier of personal liberty. Alongside freedom of speech and a fair judicial process sits ‘Dirrtiness’, our right as citizens of a free democratic society.

In her racily entitled Stripped album, Aguilera works hard to sell herself as the genuine article, (“No hype, no gloss, no pretence/ Just me/ Stripped”, intro Stripped). The title is intended as shorthand for her supposed authenticity; the stripping away of clothes, a metaphorical shedding of pretence and inhibition. The theme continues, with her 2006 album, Back to Basics.

For a world drowning in simulations of itself, veneers of authenticity are clung to for dear life. Just like the new religious youth, we all wade through the swathes of artifice, searching for something real, however flimsy. But with ‘Dirrtiness’ there is nothing behind the metaphor. The liberal assault on traditional morality has been rendered a shallow eagerness to get ‘em out for the lads.

This trend needs to be recognised for what it is: Not the defeat of traditional morality at the hands of freedom and truth. Rather the defeat of traditional morality at the hands of consumerist gratification. Whilst the force of this defeat has been occasionally positive, winning certain oppressed groups greater recognition, here it greets us at the most trite and impotent chapter in its demise.

What is the secret of ‘Dirrtiness’ as a marketing heavy weight? Aguilera and her subsequent torch carriers summon “red-blooded males” with the moaning, thrusting nympho; at the same time women are appealed to with the visage of the strong and feisty goddess, resisting the rules without having to contemplate the murky realms of unkempt body hair. Contrasting against the classically modest and demure maiden, Dirrtiness has succeeded in claiming the monopoly on sexual empowerment. Making other forms of erotic expression invisible, this trend spits in the face of the very freedom it claims to stand for.

Younger and younger girls are invited to share in the power possessed by the alluring vamp, exploiting and controlling modern man, held captive and enfeebled by his libidinal cravings. To control the penis is to control the man and therefore triumph in the gender wars. Well, it certainly beats having to wilfully incinerate costly undergarments. But what confronts us here is equality’s hollow husk: The forever available yet “feisty” vixen, guiding an enslaved lad’s mag generation by its penis.

Men and women should stand side by side in their discontent at this insulting tableau. Deeply ingrained sexism was never going to be shooed away by this dumbed down, tarted up simulation of sexual liberty. And neither does it have the brawn to launch an ethical blow at religion. The once discordant call of conservative morality becomes ever more appealing as ‘Dirrtiness’ lodges itself in our ears as its front running competitor.

Other than an aversion to this hyper eroticism, what lures so many young women into the arms of the chastity movement? Does it offer a nourishing alternative to ‘Dirrtiness’? Woven intimately into their rhetoric is the language of valiant princes and damsels in distress waiting to be “saved and “discovered”.

In the world of The Silver Ring Thing and other such groups, every female is a “princess”. Chastity makes it case by appealing to romantic ideals more heavily than it does moral ones. Rather than the quest for enlightenment or virtue, leaders talk of the quest for True Love. Not unlike Aguilera, chastity promises a truth and authenticity so scarce in Western society. The inevitable hangover from a culture where sex has become tawdry and love fleeting, comfort is being sought in the fairy stories of yore.

Glance at the mainstream romance genre and we are reminded these are fairy stories which few women have fully put to sleep. Even the cynical can sit contentedly through the latest Julia Roberts or Cameron Diaz offering without having to make a dash for the vomitorium. And our fondness for Jane Austen style corsetted romance shows no sign of waning. (Women may have loved and admired Sex and the City’s Samantha, but more of them identified with her drippier cohorts.)

True love, says Jason Evert, a leading spokesperson’s term for female immodesty, can only be achieved when women accept their delicate nature and forever relinquish the crime of “man-begging”. There is nothing new being offered by the chastity movement. Just the same oppressive and stifling gender roles repackaged in a hyper modern exterior. Roles which women only a generation before had fought so hard to throw off.

Youth cultures can have dangerously short memories. Evert makes no bones about his stance; “personally I love gender stereotyping. Men should be men and women should be women”.

Never one to miss out on the latest trend, the hot language of empowerment was more than the movement could pass up. Their success has been in convincing girls that in the role of the modest maiden lays empowerment: A defiant stance against the voracious decadence of modern society. Which again is nothing new.

Throughout the centuries philosophers and religious thinkers have encouraged women to feel grateful for their subordination. It’s only against the red light of ‘Dirrtiness’ that the chastity movement could ever have struck us as fresh.

How can our love of Dirrty culture exist as we continue to wield the slut stick? We have embraced the consumerist fantasy but not the flesh and blood reality. We adore and revere the hyper simulation but fling into the stocks any woman who embodies the example. Exhibitionist videos, nude photo shoots and turbulent publicly aired sex lives are lapped up hungrily.

But the music stops, the makeup smudges and a hostile silence falls. Britney, Madonna, Jodie Marsh and Lindsay Lohan are just a few examples. One moment, inducing fond stirrings in our hearts and loins and the next toppling from the tightrope at a great height. The mask slips somehow. We glimpse their crude organic mortality or their personal vulnerability and the appeal sours: They are sluts. And for sluts no punishment is too brutal.

Our acceptance of these celebrities is tenuous, our adoration shallow and our respect almost non-existent. Like any other consumer goods, we toss them to the wayside the moment they become outmoded or worn. Purchasing something and respecting it are not the same.

Men need no longer be clandestine about their penchant for pornography and strip clubs. But most would still shiver at the prospect of their daughter, sister, or any other woman they deem worthy of humanity taking to the porn set or pole.

To consume something is to posses it. As viewers bask in the dominant role of consumer, the threat posed by woman as sexual aggressor is muted. Emasculating anxieties are extinguished. The vamp can be enjoyed, conveniently freed from all the probing questions and power struggles which the lesbian, the nympho and other “dangerous” women would have once impelled. Synthetic sexualities packaged for mass consumption, the status quo is only sated. Women remain the spectacle and men the autonomous spectators.

And of course the versions of “sexiness” being celebrated by stars such as Aguilera are lifted straight out the pages of FHM and Nuts. Since the mainstreaming of Dirrty, we size one another up with a stricter and more infectious scrutiny. It is the male voyeur who continues to set these rigorous physical standards. For those judged to be too old, too fat, too frumpy, or just too unattractive, the door to this somewhat exclusive club of “empowerment” slams closed.

Never far from Dirrtiness is the scent of its intimate bedfellow, consumerism. Fall short of this unattainable physicality, as women are bound to, and out billows the genie from the bottle, the omnipresent beauty industry, promising miracles. And herein lays the logic of this new flavour of “post-feminism”: Identity, power, self worth, all accessible through the radiant avenues of consumption. In other words, you can be the saucy and strident lipstick feminist, providing you can fork out the £15 for the Max Factor lipstick.

In the everyday world of girl meets boy, sexually assertive women can look forward to the age-old catalogue of onslaughts. Dispelling the nagging weight of their own conflicts, women have turned on one another. In this modern day witch-hunt, we cry ‘slut’ to save our own skin. The ethos of empowered, postmodern sexiness has failed to deliver where it really counts.

It’s worth mentioning the beacons of light bucking this trend. Missy Elliot and Peaches are two of the best. Both use their wit and imagination to probe the politically charged terrain of female sexuality, unintruded upon by the male gaze. Invaluable is their contention that erotic exploration might amount to more than a shopping spree down Ann Summers. Let’s hope for more pop icons that encourage women in their right as sexual subjects.

Consistent to both warring youth camps is the overarching grasp of consumption. Sociologist Max Weber famously linked the protestant ethic with the spirit of capitalism. Never have they been more entwined than with this new religious youth.

Peruse the websites and you’re met with the trappings of any successful media product: Bright colours, seductive language and a heavy emphasis on merchandising. The silver ring is only the most notorious of a host of commodities allowing kids to pledge their religious devotion.

The immensely popular Christian rock stars of the US and UK will not be caught dead riding into town on any donkey. Rebelling against sexual frivolity, these teens remain obedient to the god of spending. Just like their pro-raunch cousins, they trade in add-to-the-basket identities.

In a world of infinite choices, where fluid selfhood is supposedly up for grabs, women are still caught between the Madonna and the Whore. The Whore might enjoy mainstream stardom and the Madonna access to a snappier wardrobe, but the bind remains.

As the economy falters and our spending powers are curtailed, it will be interesting to see whether cracks appear in this shimmering façade of freedom. But for now the game continues, business as usual.

Silver Ring Thing – Promo