The Naked Truth
"Jana's View" Phoenix Magazine
July 2003

Girls who bare their breasts for film crews are "dumber than duh"

OK, I’m forced to make up a new word in order to write this column, because none of the words I already know do justice. Oh, I’m well aware that there are lots of words that others might suggest for the story I’m going to tell, but I feel they’re inadequate.

I’m going to write about young women who claimed they were “liberated” enough to get drunk, take off their tops, pretend to have sex with each other, and dance wildly for a throng of men — the ratio being 200 guys to every gal — in a Tempe nightclub earlier this year.

I’m writing about women who fought like cats to get filmed in the Girls Gone Wild series, which has made an enterprising young man a multi-millionaire because he’s found that young women think it’s “cool” and “fun” to flash their breasts and other private parts in bars full of drunken men.

Yes, there are words to describe this behavior, several words, actually, and most are usually said with force and spite. I’m also aware that this is not a new phenomenon. Women have been stripping for men for centuries — remember Dance of the Seven Veils? But I’ve tried each of the existing words and they don’t seem adequate for describing the women whose night of breast-baring was well documented in The Arizona Republic.

Women like ASU freshman Shannon McGuire, 18, who was so into it, she was chosen as the “wild girl” to represent Tempe in a pay-per-view episode of Girls Gone Wild.

And Chandler’s Erika Vega, 24, who had been helped out of her bra by another woman as they gyrated in a cage, and was quoted as saying: “It’s just fun. It’s not like I’m a porn star.”

And 26-year-old Kari Bernhisel, a Phoenix retail associate, who debated the propriety of stripping with a girlfriend waiting outside the bar. “I would do it in a heartbeat,” she squealed, while her friend said it was degrading and that it was just about “horny guys.”

“No it’s not,” Bernhisel responded. “It’s all about control. The girls have control.”

And that’s when I really lost it. Because if there were ever a moment when the girls weren’t in control, this was definitely it. But they actually thought they were. And they didn’t see themselves as one-night porn stars, and they didn’t realize they were putting themselves in a situation that was ripe for danger. Because of all of that, we need a new word, and the one I’ve made up is “titches.”

Here’s proof that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to get rich: Joe Francis, 29, of Los Angeles, is now wealthy well beyond his wildest dreams, because he’s the brainchild behind Girls Gone Wild. In the last year or so, he’s sold

$90 million worth of his 83 videos, which have a simple gimmick: Get “real girls” to show “real breasts” in “real bars” with “real guys” egging them on after they’re all liquored-up with “real booze.”

Francis can’t believe his dumb luck, he admitted in a lengthy interview with Republic reporter Megan Finnerty in January as he and his film crew hit Tempe’s Graham Central Station during a two-month, 31-city tour. “I have seen a noticeable change in society in the last five years,” he told the reporter. “Girls are much more free and open now than they were before I started. Girls wouldn’t think about doing that kind of thing, and a guy wouldn’t think about asking for it in the past. As far as I see, almost every girl will do this at some point.”

In short, Joe knows a lot of titches. And has witnessed a sad throwback to the time when women were seen as only meat. Great. Just what we needed.

His theory was proved right in Tempe once again, as the girls boozed-up on Finlandia vodka and Red Bull energy drinks in the video bus before being led into the nightclub.

Here’s how Finnerty described the scene: “Once the chosen women made their way into the Tempe club (flanked by a VH1 camera crew, several Girls Gone Wild cameramen, Francis’ entourage and hundreds of chanting men) they walked into a private area where filming began. Suddenly, three young women wearing only jeans and strapless bras were laughing and gyrating in a cage. They took off each other’s bras, giggling and tripping over each other and hugging as the camera crew shouted directives.”

OK, right here, remember the comment about “it’s all about control — the girls are in control.” What planet did that titch come from? Not from Mother Earth.

And right here, remember the girl who didn’t think she was a porn star, when it’s obvious that that’s precisely what she was. This was about “fun, not exploitation,” Francis tried to convince the reporter.

Great line. Especially when you rem-ember that Francis has become a multi-millionaire using women he hasn’t paid a dime. Part of the definition of titches, besides believing it’s “good clean fun” to show your breasts to any camera, is that you’ve simply gone stupid.

The day I first read about Girls Gone Wild, I spent about 12 seconds wondering if I’d become a prude. I even jotted that question down on the story as I tore it out of the paper.

Let me say, I’ve never had much of a problem with women who make their living stripping. I even had a stripper sister-in-law once. It’s not a profession I would choose, but then I had other options, most of them based on what resides between my ears rather than between my armpits. But I respect that adult women have lots of reasons for making decisions about how they support their families.

But my objection to Girls Gone Wild is not just that they’re freebies, in the most debasing of ways — not getting paid isn’t the reason I think they were so foolish and reckless. What sickens me the most is that they apparently don’t even understand how used and degraded they were. And some of these women are taking up valuable space at a reputable university.

No, I certainly haven’t become a prude, but I’m definitely not a bimbo, either. And that’s what separates real women from titches.

Thankfully, some “former titches” are seeing the light. Finnerty reported that while Francis claims all his girls have “consented” to having their images used, women in several states have sued him, saying they were too drunk to consent or didn’t even know their images would be used.

In Tempe, she reported, there were dozens of large signs telling everyone that by entering, they were consenting to being filmed. But she said the “screening process” for the flashing girls was “spotty at best.”

But get this: “With or without giving verbal consent, dozens of women flashed the cameras,” Finnerty noted. “But raw nudity isn’t what Francis thinks makes his tapes so popular. The key part is in the push-pull between the cameramen and the girls.” In other words, they don’t just want to see flesh, they want to see women demurring and pretending they’re not going to strip and playing sassy. They want their titches to perform.

We fought for women’s rights for this? We struggled for liberation so that girls like this could prove they’re little more than pieces of meat? We’ve spent a fortune and thousands of lives trying to teach men and women about the dangers of domestic violence — a crime rooted in men’s belief that they control women and can do with them what they want — so that these women can shake their breasts at a camera?

We’ve built an entire social service industry dealing with the ravages of rape so women like this can put themselves into situations any fool can see are dangerous? We’ve worked for decades to overcome hackneyed ideas about “women’s roles” and “men’s dominance” only to teach a new generation of men that there are plenty of women who will bare their flesh for the fun of it?

Imagine what message the men came away with that night: that “real girls” have no problem exposing their body parts — removing a shirt, moving aside a thong. Now they probably think it’s “normal” for women to take off their clothes at parties.

And obviously, I have to ask this question: Were all of these women orphans raised by wolves? Do they not have fathers who cared enough about them to teach them about respecting their bodies? Do they not have mothers who cared enough about them to teach them about self-respect and the dangers of lecherous amusements?

The Republic editorialized about this ghastly display of stupidity, and I had to agree with every word they wrote. “They are silly little girls whose bodies matured before their brains did,” the editorial said. “Can any of them imagine how they’d feel seeing their mothers doing similar things in a 20-year-old film? Talk about embarrassing. Now fast-forward to the explanations they’ll come up with in 20 years when one of their sons downloads a Golden Oldie and recognizes Mom. Proud moment, eh?”

I don’t think these girls will have to wait 20 years to find out they’ll be haunted by being bandied about the world on videotapes that trade in flesh.

I’m hoping — no, I’m praying — that the morning after, they hung their heads in shame at allowing themselves to be so used.… I’m hoping they realized, as the Republic editorial chastised, that they acted “dumber than duh.”

If they didn’t, if they still think it was “fun and cool” to be a porn star for a night, then I’m not sure my new word is strong enough to describe them.