The clip shows a balding middle-aged white man in the center of a circus ring. He looks nervously around, and the camera pans to show the aggressor: a black panther-woman in a gold bikini. She commands him to "dance... to the rhythm... strip!" while repeatedly calling him "baby." The cat-woman growls at him and cracks her whip while he strips down to his socks and awkwardly sways back and forth.

It's pretty clear that this man is not enjoying the experience. Melissa McEwan from Shakesville notes that the selling point is apparently that "Orangina Red will turn you into a sexually aggressive monster." She argues that there is no ambiguity to this scene of assault:

And before anyone gets it in their head to argue that this isn't a sexual assault, but instead a scene of a dominatrix and a consenting customer, I'll just note that the setting of the ad is a circus ring. She's literally treating him like a performing animal, and he appears to be utterly terrified. I am acquainted with someone who worked as a professional dominatrix for many years; men went to her to be punished, not petrified-and if someone had become visibly frightened of her, she would have stopped. Images of dominatrices thrilling in hurting scared, vulnerable men are images of sexual assault, not of anything a consent-insistent sex worker does.

However, many people will probably see this ad and think it funny, not offensive or strange. Yet try imagining it with the genders reversed: A terrified woman strips uncomfortably while a large, muscular man-animal growls at her and commands her to dance. My guess is that far fewer people would find that humorous. Once again, sexual assault committed against men is viewed as hilarious - as are violent and aggressive women.

Even without the violence, this ad is full of problems. There is the woman-reduced-to-a-cat theme, which by this point is just getting kind of tired. Call me when we start seeing some sexy rhinos (although there is a hot M&M, so I suppose even this is possible). Copyranter, posting on Animal New York, also suggests that there is an element of racial tension underlying the exchange:

It's the latest spot in Orangina's animated anthropomorphized nympho animal campaign, where we previously witnessed a giraffe-girl sniffing a rollerblading guy's ass. Now, a buff busty melanistic big cat (I'm envisioning Naomi Campbell) dominates a stereotypical White Man in a big tent setting. Is that a penis peek I spy? The spot sizzles with sexual and racial tension, RAWWRR!

That panther-thing reminds him of Naomi Campbell? This may say more about the author's views than the agency's. Either way, we can probably all agree Orangina has unleashed something that is all-around disturbing, and not at all appetizing.

Today In Rape Culture [Shakesville]
Orangina's Black Panther Dominatrix [Animal New York]

The sexy pictures are part of a newly-launched campaign designed to appeal to both potential FSU basketball players and fans. The new website for the FSU team features many pictures like the one above. In the "meet the team" section, each player has her own profile page, which is overwhelmingly dominated by a shot of the athlete dressed in a satin dress, exiting a limo. Although some clutch basketballs - the only nod to the fact that these are basketball players, not debutantes - others are straight up glamor shots (the most obvious example is the image of Kayli Keough, guard/forward). The main page shows the entire team in a limo, perfectly coiffed and smiling at the camera. Yes, they look great. They fully live up to their claim of "Confidence. Strength. Beauty. We've got it all." But it is hard not to wonder, what does beauty have to do with anything?

This is the question posed by Jayda Evans. In her column for the Seattle Times, Evans examines the re-designed site for the No. 15 team, ultimately coming to the conclusion that the emphasis on femininity and beauty indicates an underlying fear of being viewed as anything other than straight. She mentions the documentary Training Rules, about former Penn State coach Rene Portland, who allegedly had just three rules for her players: No drinking, no drugs, and absolutely no lesbians. Portland may have been more explicit about her homophobia, but the FSU website reveals a certain desire to move away from the actual game - where players are sweaty, strong and accomplished, perhaps frighteningly so - towards a much more polished image of female athletes as celebrities first, players second. Evans points out that attempt to make female athletes appear "powerful, beautiful, strong and accomplished" is just another way to gloss over the fact that they are being overtly feminized. For Evans, "beautiful" is translated as "attractive to men," and implicitly, heterosexual.

In a press release for the newly launched website, FSU coach Sue Semrau explains their decision to depict their players en route to some fancy shindig: "We feel it is important to set ourselves apart as much as we can... We wanted to have a product that would stand out to the people we are trying to reach." The "product" being not only the game, but the individual players. At Carnal San Francisco, editor Tim McElreavy suggests that Semrau's attempt to "sell" the game reveals a disheartening focus on the bottom line: "While it would be naïve to believe that college sports isn't or shouldn't be concerned with the bottom line, such words, especially from a coach, really seem to instrumentalize the players' achievements. Add to this business rhetoric the stereotype of the pretty woman, and women's sports marketing moves further and further away from the actual sport," he writes.

And to drive home this point, take a look at the website for the FSU men's team, where the players are portrayed in a rather different light. There is no doubt that this is about the "actual sport." Their website features pictures of the players in action. Their faces are contorted into grimaces of concentration while sweat pours off their bodies. Okay, it's not unattractive, but it's also not purposefully sexy. The emphasis is on the game, not the dolled-up players. While FSU women have to be "sold" and "appeal" to the public, the men's team can safely coast on the knowledge that people watch them play for reasons other than their sex appeal.

Women's Hoops Media Guides And Web Sites Getting Sexier [Seattle Times]
Glam Photos Show The Ugly Side Of Women's Basketball [Carnal San Francisco]
Glammed Up B'Ball Stars Spark Uproar [Newser]
Florida State University Women's Basketball [Official Site]

Last week, Caster Semenya's gender identity made big news as people began to question whether a woman, who "looks like a man," as everyone kept reminding us, could really be such a good athlete. It seems that female athletes are either A. too manly, B. sexualized to the point where their athletic prowess no longer matters, or C. portrayed as suffering from the ultimate female problem: how to juggle work and family. In the past year, much of news about women in sports focused on the significance of sex appeal for tennis players, the size of Serena William's butt, Candace Parker's maternity leave, Olympic moms, and of course, Semenya's "manly" body. Of course, there are some sports writers who focus on their achievements, but it is still notable how many profiles of female athletes highlight their uniquely "feminine" struggles.

Compare lines from two articles about women in sports:

First, a quote from this Sunday's New York Times, which begins,

Sybille Bammer always wished to be a mother, but first she wanted to be a tennis star. History and conventional wisdom told her she couldn't be both at the same time.

And an article from the Daily Beast on female surfers, which opens with the subhead:

The women's surf tour has never been more glamorous and the new generation is getting recognition beyond their sport. So why are sponsors bailing? (Plus: A gallery of teen stars.)

And continues with:

"You have to wear brown eyeliner, because the black smears really bad," Sage Erickson explained. And waterproof mascara."

It was a hot, July afternoon in Huntington Beach, California-a.k.a. Surf City, U.S.A.-and Erickson, an 18-year-old pro surfer who was competing in the Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing, had a few things to say before hitting the water. Standing beside her surf board, which she'd personalized with paint pens-a cartoonish Barbie on a cell phone with a dialogue bubble that read: "Blah blah blah."

Each article goes on to portray the strong women interviewed as characters as two-dimensionally cartoonish as the Barbie doodled on Erickson's board. The New York Times is much kinder, yet the focus here is primarily on how she was able to give birth and play tennis. It seems that the answer to this riddle is her supportive boyfriend, who gave up work to support Brammer, and play "Mr. Mom." "So many people made jokes," said Bammer's boyfriend, "I think this was a big deal to them because they think it is not that normal that the man stays home and watches the kid and the woman goes for work." Bammer, ranked No. 29 in the world, is seen as remarkable not just because of her skill, but because she manages to have it all, a child, a boyfriend, and a career.

The Daily Beast draws attention to a different way of selling the female athlete, which we can probably all recognize. The surfer girls in this piece are unmistakably girly—they are young, pretty, "glamorous," and friendly. However, women's surfing is still in trouble. But the new "crop" of women may be able to solve their funding problems with good looks and charm. Hurley International marketer Pat O'Connell sums it up:

"These girls are legitimately amazing surfers," he said. "For me, there's marketability and visibility-I think this new crop has both. They're good-looking girls, they're very likeable, and their ability levels are so high that they're catching everyone's attention."

Throughout her story, writer Nicole LaPorte never lets us forget about this fact, the "effortless sexiness that comes with having a killer bod." For these women to sell, and to be interesting to the general public, they have to be sexy. At least until they give birth, and then we can start puzzling out the difficulties of that equation.

And Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon points out yet another example of female athletes being viewed as somehow dangerously masculine. She quotes the Concerned Women for America website, which features a blurb about the new book God's Girls in Sports:

With the advent of Title Nine, girls have more opportunities than ever to participate in sports. While the social, physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of sports are frequently discussed, Coach and mom Holly Page says there are also pitfalls that are too often overlooked. In her book God's Girls in Sports, Holly discusses hard issues like demanding training schedules that compete with family and church time, male-oriented coaching styles that force more masculine behaviors on girls without meeting girls' needs for relationships, the quest for scholarships, and lesbianism in college-level sports. She also talks about when it may be time to quit. Holly discusses these issues with CWA Policy Analyst Martha Kleder, as well as other ways parents can help their daughters maintain a life balance and get the most out of sports, without sports getting the best of them. (Emphasis Spaulding's)

Women who play sports, and do not conform to either the relate-able modern woman mold of the working mother or fall into the curvy sex pot role, must be either lesbians or secretly male.

Female athletes seem to serve as a never-ending well of material for those obsessed with both the female body and the importance of femininity. There seems to be a real difficulty marketing athletic women to the general public without resorting to these tricks, which continually reiterate that this is about a woman in sports, a female athlete, someone with two X chromosomes. In a way it makes sense that a physical career would lead to coverage that is so heavily centered on the body, but the emphasis on womanly-ness and athleticism undercuts the fact that many women are naturally athletic, that it is not impossible to be both.

Sybille Bammer's Tennis Career Is A Family Affair [New York Times]
Surf Girls: The Next Wave [The Daily Beast]
Concerned Women For America's Oldie Stereotype [Pandagon]

•  Egyptian tycoon Hisham Talaat Mustafa has been sentenced to death for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim. • Breitbart has posted a preview for the documentary "The Iraqi Workout," which is a 45-minute study of the a women's gym in the north of Iraq. • A new (no shit) study has found that fathers respond to the risky sexual behavior of their teen offspring by increasing parental supervision. This contradicts an earlier study which indicated that parents tend to pull away when teens engage in sexually uninhibited behavior. • Two children of Martin Luther King Jr. have threatened to sue over a film that is currently in the works about their father's life. Dreamworks currently has the rights to King's story, but Bernice and Martin King claim they did not give their approval for the project. • In response to an uptight grandmother's complaints about a picture of a little girl breastfeeding her doll, Babble states what should be obvious: breastfeeding is not a sexual act, and it is not obscene. • Click here to read an interesting article from Time Mag about sex, consumer culture and how the two became so intricately linked. • As if us hypochondriacs didn't have enough to be worried about: in 2006 Swedish doctors discovered invisible chlamydia, which can escape detection on routine tests. The good news? They have developed a way to screen for the dangerous strain. • According to new data, women in Japan have the longest life expectancy out of any group, with the average lady surviving to see 86, while men in Sierra Leone have the shortest life expectancy (only 39). • A new drug usually used to chemically castrate sex offenders has been deemed by some a "miracle" cure for autism. However, many say that the use of the drug is "medically indefensible." •  Today Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox, announced that Ursula Burns will be named CEO of the company on July 1st. Burns will become the only black female CEO among Fortune 500's top 150 companies. • Scientists have discovered the genetic mutations responsible for the unusual appearance of Julia Pastrana, the famous "bearded lady" from the 1800s. •

For whatever reason, Cody inspires curiosity and strong feelings (positive/negative) in people who care about the entertainment industry, but at this point — two years after both the release of her first book and the premiere of Juno, and almost a year after she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay — she's an established success... as a screenwriter. People need to give the woman some credit for her current career, and interviewers (especially late-night talk show hosts) need to stop asking her about her brief stint in the sex industry. The continued attention to this issue reduces her to a cute, sex (anecdote) machine and distracts from the fact that she's a success in a segment of an industry not known for its positive representations of women — behind the keyboard or on-screen. Who knows, maybe Diablo Cody and her handlers don't mind the continued fuss; after all, sex sells. But it's getting annoying.

This "extra-hot guy issue" is chock full of ways to turn your man on and insights into what he thinks about a wide range of naughty topics. Careful, Glamour. "How to please your man" is Cosmo territory. This town (and our patience) isn't big enough for the both of you. [Just Jared]

Clark-Flory talks to Carmine Sarracino, coauthor of a book called The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture, What It Means, and Where We Go From Here. Sarracino says we have no one to blame but ourselves. He writes:

Over and over again, we follow this cultural pattern of elevating sex symbols, especially blond bombshells like Marilyn Monroe and, lately, Pam Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith — even Courtney Love was such a sex symbol in the '80s — of elevating these women to exalted status when they are at the peak of their sexual allure, and then just trashing them when they begin to lose some of that allure. So we go from adulation to disdain.

Even Britney, Paris and Lindsay went from being put on pedestals to being torn down — and their response? To flash their crotches in paparazzi shots, which Sarracino calls "clearly returning disdain for disdain."

Sarracino also talks about how things are just getting worse: "One of the essential things in an entertainment culture such as ours is that the shock bar just has to constantly be raised. People's heads turn only when you offer something like '2 Girls 1 Cup.' That's what traditional porn used to do and that was just two people engaged in a sex act. You can't get attention with that now — any more than Marilyn Monroe could get attention for showing her panties if she were to come on the scene in 2008."

And the truth is, there's money in porn. We keep hearing "sex sells." You know how feminist magazine Bitch was in financial trouble? They're apparently co-sponsoring a strip show with um, Hustler. But like the title of Sarracino's book: Where do we go from here? When porny images get more and more mainstream, what does the underground look like? And if kids today are growing up where fetishizing the female body is par for the course, where will we be, as a society, in 40 years?

America, Sweet Land Of... Porn [Salon]
Girls! Girls! Girls! Bitch Magazine’s “Feminist Response To Pop Culture” Is To Co-Sponsor A Strip Show With Hustler [Feminist Law Professors]
Earlier: Advertising Taking Cues From Porn: What Is The World Cumming To?
Sex Sells. Or Does It? Can You Guess The Products Behind The Porny Ads?
Hot For Fall: Toplessness!

If you want to change grouches to grins — give that man of yours Del Monte Pineapple Juice. Cater to his fondness for flavor. Men like the rich, ripe taste of this juice — the definite pineapple flavor it has. They like its freshness—the bracing refreshment it always brings. You'll know how extra good this juice must be!

We would just like to add that we eat pineapples for breakfast everyday (and we drink up the juice), so if there are any non-gay fellas reading this, holla at your girlz.
Ad: How Would You Like To Put This Smile On Your Husbands Face? (Dec, 1936) [Modern Mechanix]