This is not what sexy looks like to me

Why is this racist, sexist, heterosexist, capitalist, fundamentalist Christian terrorist organization sending its pornography to my mailbox?

 

 

Racist because the object partially depicted in this direct mail piece is white, the white woman presented as the idealized object of desire for the male gaze.

Sexist because a woman as an object for the male gaze is not subject, an equal partner in a respectful, loving relationship where sex is a union between two intersubjective, mutually desiring human beings. The poorly drawn caricature included on this direct mail piece lacks figure structure, or bones beneath her flesh. The curve of her shoulder and neck disappears into the fog of gradation or drop shadow beneath her jawline. Without eyes to meet the viewer’s gaze, this boneless woman is reduced to nothing more than a gaping hole, a receptacle for the phallus. Had this amateur illustrator paid more attention in life drawing and anatomy classes, he – and I use the masculine pronoun intentionally rather than generically here – might have noticed that lips meet at their outer corners. On the body of a live, sexy human being, the corners of the upper lip do not extend beyond the corners of the lower lip. The vampiric red hue selected for the lipstick color and emphasized in the text sexy and new sermon series not only objectifies but also demonizes Woman, casting her as an object of both desire and fear. All that is missing are peek-a-boo incisors from the rack of pristinely white teeth. Outside of toothpaste commercials, teeth in the mouth of a live, sexy human being are never so white as to be the highest highlight of a composition, and that is because, unless the figure is lying prone on her back at midday with her mouth open and teeth bared to the blazing white light of the sun, teeth are always in shadow in the recesses of the mouth, nose, and skull structure. As it is rendered, with the upper lip scaled larger than the lower lip combined with the placement of the highlight on the upper lip, the present location of the highlight on the lower lip should be in shadow, overshadowed by the larger upper lip, thus the organic light shape on the lower lip instead visually communicates seminal fluid spilling from the hole of this pubescent male fantasy longing to fornicate with his mother or substitute womb-object rather than join in joyous, mutually pleasurable union with another human subject.

Heterosexist because woman-as-object-for-the-male-gaze does not allow for the full range of human sexuality and desire.

Capitalist because these cartoon notions of sexuality dependent on fear of the other benefit no one other than those who stand to profit. Here a terrorist organization posing as a place of worship. There a cosmetics manufacturer. Over there a manufacturer of violent video games. Jesus is not bringing back this definition of sexy. This definition of sexy never left. This definition of sexy has not disappeared since the birth of patriarchy. This definition of sexy already proliferates in our capitalist rape and war culture.

Terrorist because, in a nation finally returning its military from a decade of war declared on another nation for no more than a lie by a president not initially elected by its citizens, a man suffering what I term an unresolved Oedipal complex, anxious to outperform his father, and you know what that means he wants to do to his mother, a nation with a military incited into combat by pornographic imagery, a military where an estimated 19,000 of our military women were raped by our military men in 2010 alone, and a nation that sadistically and sexually tortures its captives, images like these that objectify and demonize women propagate that war of terror on its own wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, nieces, cousins, aunts, grandmothers, women citizens.

Jesus is bringing sexy back?

Hope his back is sexier than his front.

When will that arrive?

The stark black and white of the corresponding billboard campaign is lost in translation on this direct mail piece, where the line of grammatically challenged copy exceeds the blank it is intended to fill. Immature and offensive concept, badly executed.

 

 

This racist, sexist, heterosexist, capitalist, fundamentalist Christian terrorist organization failed to correctly identify its market. This is not what sexy looks like to me.