Lindsay Lohan goes with the (blood) flow
[Trigger warning. Images of violence, self-harm]
It seems nothing is off limits to be sexified for the purposes of grabbing attention and flogging stuff, whether it be a company’s products, a music video, or reviving a celebrity’s flagging career.
Glamourising violence against women as sexy is the latest trend. Blood has become the new black.
Violence. Fear. Threat. Torture. Scenes depicting rape. Women murdering each other. Women who want to die. Suicide porn. It seems the world just can’t get enough of women made submissive by fear, battered women, women seeking self-annihilation, dead women. Nothing like a hot female corpse (and so much less trouble than the real thing, don’t you think?).
And now it’s actress Lindsay Lohan’s turn. In a photo shoot and video clip, just released, Lohan is dressed in dominatrix style lingerie, black stocking and boots.
Lohan is smeared in fake blood. In one scene she holds a gun to her mouth. In another a man standing over her points a gun at her as she lies on the floor.
Deeply disturbing are what could be read as indications of self-harm on her arms, especially around her wrists. There is a trickle of blood at the side of her mouth. The photo and video shoot take place in front of a blood spattered wall: a mural of sliding red. Though about to be killed, or about to kill herself, Lohan is also shown as sexy, prone, arching her body, breasts pushed out, legs spread. Lindsay, do you not care about the message this sends?
Even murder and suicide are sexy.
This is just the latest in a towering monument to the celebration of violence against women.
I’ve written here before about how violence is being made sexy. I’ve highlighted t.shirts celebrating brutality against women with slogans like “It’s not rape if you yell surprise” and “It’s not rape, it’s surprise sex”. Another t.shirt says “I like my women battered”.
In March 2008 I wrote about a shoe company, Loula, which ran a full page colour ad campaign in Harper’s Bazaar, featuring a murdered woman trussed up in the boot of a car. Just in time for International Women’s Day. For a store opening just blocks from where exactly that happened to a real woman, Maria Korp.
Fortunately, thanks to a campaign against the ad by a number of anti-violence women’s groups, it was pulled.
But of course, this wasn’t a one off.
We’ve seen Vogue Italia’s ‘terror porn’ fashion shoot which showed women being terrorised by security guards and German Shepherds.
And Dolce and Gabbana’s ads depicting a woman pinned to the ground by a bare-chested man while other men who look like they are waiting their turn, look on (the ad was banned in Italy).
Then there was America’s Next Top Model’s ‘Crime Scenes’ episode in which the aim was to look at sexy as possible – dead. To add to the appeal, the models were depicted as having murdered each other. Electrocuted, poisoned, stabbed, drowned, organs harvested, decapitated. Ooohh, cat fight – to the death!
All this at 6.30pm on a Sunday night, just before Australian Idol.
And then there’s these taken from Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Me Softly 3. The caption on the second says ‘Great hair never dies’.
And now Lindsay Lohan, soaked in blood, showing us you can still sell yourself as a sex object while threatening to kill yourself. Self harm is the highest cause of hospital admission for girls aged 13 to 19 in Australia. Should it be treated so lightly? Should it be seen as something you do if you want to be seen as hot and sexy? Branding yourself with blood as some kind of artistic statement?
All these images and messages make a mockery of global campaigns to stop the abuse of women. They feed violence, fuel violence and contribute to an environment which every day becomes more dangerous for women and girls.
Lifeline: 131114
Now in its second printing!
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Thank you Melinda for continuing to raise awareness about this issue. There is nothing sexy about violence and galmorizing it in this way is highly dangerous. I find myself between anger and despair at the continual need to point out the obvious, as I am sure you must too!
I am especially repulsed by celebrities (like Lindsay) who choose to promote themselves in this way. They justify their poor choices in the name of freedom of expression, yet they also happily cash in on the teen-gal dollar through marketing films and products that directly appeal to this demographic.
You’ll be pleased to know that in our work with teen girls we help them deconstruct campaigns like this and they are invariably suitably outraged.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:59 pm
typo above:I find myself VACILLATING (omitted) between anger and despair at the continual need to point out the obvious, as I am sure you must too!
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Thanks Melinda….. Where is all this going? The real worry is the damage these teen heroes such as those depicted in your blog are doing to our children. Just this weekend there were pictures posted of Christina Aguilera’s video for the new single, “Not Myself Tonight” in what could only be described as a cross between Madonna and Lady Ga Ga, Her video appears to be more of a sex video then anything else. Aguilera sells out to the “I will do anything” to get attention and dollars and prostitutes herself to pushing the boundaries of what is decent (Sic) in order to make a dollar or two. Its appears to me that week by week, the lines in the sand as to what is right for public viewing and what our children will watch is being re-drawn. Somewhere and somehow we need to stand and say enough is enough…..Our children are too important to us and to society to stay silent any longer!!!
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
I recall a fashion spread a few years back, where each page featured a model who had been murdered through a different technique, including one who had been strangled
The level of desensitisation to these sorts of violent images is very disturbing to me.
I am only 24, so it was not toooo long ago, but i remember not being able to watch certain movies at age 14-15 due to their high ratings (M, MA, or R)- now just 9 years later, my 9 year old sister can watch them as PG rated movies. Video game rating have also been coming down VERY rapidly, with all sorts of violence & sexualised images & themes now available to be played by young children. Kids don’t bat an eyelid at these sorts of things anymore. Things i would have been disgusted by, or scared of, or sad by, rarely elicit such an emotional response from kids these days.
Aside from all that, i think it is absolutely appalling to be glamorising self-harming type behaviours, which, whether intentional or not, they are doing. As you said, these are serious issues, & relate most commonly to the target market of these videos.
Maybe it’s that idea of danger as being sexy? I don’t know. I suppose it’s hard not to link the two, when you have a lingerie-clad young woman writhing on the floor, while having a gun pointed at her……
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Simply horrifying!
And on Today Tonight this evening they did a piece on women turning more violent and only got as deep as calling them “a ladette culture” as opposed to identifying this element of sexualised violence …
Perhaps you could be featured in their follow up pleeeease Melinda?
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Music videos by far contain some of the most disturbing sexual garbage in the media today. 2 minutes jammed packed with hideous messages! Whether to glamourise mass-murder (Beyonce and Lady Gaga) or to outwardly promote a “Boom Boom” violent sexual experience (Rhianna). Seems violence and sex are a popular cocktail in the latest hit music trailors. Celebs are abusing their stature and sending a message to young men and women that it’s ‘ok’ to mix violence and sex in conquest for some kind of ‘new exciting experience’.
According to Australian statistics, 1 in 5 women (from the age of 15 yrs and over) have experienced sexual violence (secasa.com.au, 2008). What are these celebrities telling the men and boys, (who are the 93% of sexual offenders) about their role in sexual relationships? They are saying that it’s not only ‘ok’ to mix sex with violence, but the act is a ‘popular’ style of sex – ‘everyond enjoys it’. An experience to be had? Try telling that to rape victims!
I appreciate that MTR has drawn light to the constant bombardment of hypersexual violence on our culture. These examples are just another facet to teaching men (if they don’t already believe it) that women are a walking sex service station. Not to mention the girls who are falling for the glamourised rip-off that these ’stars’ are selling them.
It’s about time that the censorship authorities took a long hard look at today’s overwhelming self-destructive generation of ’sex-seeker’ teens and work out where their inflouences are coming from! And then do something about it!
A great piece by MTR.
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Great post Melinda.
The glamorising and sexualising of violence seems to have increased in recent years and it’s so vital that we continue speak out against it.
Photographer Tyler Shields said of the photo shoot with Lindsay Lohan: “Everyone has an idea of Lindsay Lohan and last night I had the pleasure of working with her- she is a huge art lover and simply wanted to create some and that is exactly what we did!
Amazing what you can get away with if you call it ‘art’.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:00 am
I am assuming Lindsay would be ‘against’ violence to woman as a principle, she may have even participated in a few fundraisers who knows, yet how has she fallen into a world where violence is glamorized, death no longer repulsive, but seductive? She’s just landed a new porn role as well. Be *still* my beating heart.
May 14th, 2010 at 10:42 am
After walking into Bras n’ Things two months ago I was surprised to see how mainstream the idea of sexual violence and X-rated toys/lingerie has become. As I entered the store I was bombarded by a wall covered in dominatrix whips, handcuffs, sexy role-playing costumes and other assorted sex ‘toys’. For a moment I wondered whether I was actually in the right store! Five or ten years ago you’d have to go to an adult shop in Oxford Street or Newtown to find these kinds of things. The encouragement of sexual violence – even in ’supposedly’ subtle ways – seems to be everywhere.
May 21st, 2010 at 7:27 pm
“I am only 24, so it was not toooo long ago, but i remember not being able to watch certain movies at age 14-15 due to their high ratings (M, MA, or R)- now just 9 years later, my 9 year old sister can watch them as PG rated movies. Video game rating have also been coming down VERY rapidly, with all sorts of violence & sexualised images & themes now available to be played by young children. Kids don’t bat an eyelid at these sorts of things anymore. Things i would have been disgusted by, or scared of, or sad by, rarely elicit such an emotional response from kids these days.”
Blame your Attorney Generals for this, the OFLC have been practically pinned to the wall with abuse because the SA AG thought a R18 rating will have ill effects on kids.