From the WSJ Opinion Archives
DE GUSTIBUS
Do You Love Paris?
A nearly naked woman can sell a hamburger. A nearly naked man never could.
Had it not been for Bill O'Reilly--once a breath of bracing air on television, now just a gust of halitosis--I would not have seen the ad in which a thong-suited Paris Hilton, overdressed by her own recent standards, touts a burger so brazen that it looks like the patties have had silicone implants.
Paris writhes frontally for the camera, hoses herself down as she washes a car (burger in hand, naturally), and then assumes a horizontal position as she takes a climactic bite, rump arched skyward. Mr. O'Reilly's plaint was that the ad, put out by a fast-food chain called Carl's Jr., was inappropriate for a family restaurant: "Mr. and Mrs. America, and four little kids screaming for a little burger and fries. Now, they're going to see this, and they're going to go, 'What?' " Yet how does he manifest his disapproval? By airing the eye-catching spot on his show not once, but twice--all the while tut-tutting and huffing like some suburban Savonarola.
How to have your burger--and eat it, too.
There's no point in asking why Carl's Jr. deployed Ms. Hilton. It is perfectly obvious that she appeals to a healthy muster of young men (and to more than a few libidinous geezers). She will shift a few million burger combos for the company. Why? "Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact." (Marlene Dietrich said that, in case you thought it was Ms. Hilton.)
The more interesting question--at least to this male writer--is whether Carl's Jr. could use a bare-bodied man to enliven the sales of its $6 jaw-stretchers. Picture this: A Denzel Washington (or Jude Law), kitted out in a black silk tanga, shimmies around a Harley-Davidson going mano a mano with a burger. Cut to the next frame: Denzel (or Jude) drenches his torso with the contents of a Slurpee cup. Then he cantilevers himself downward, legs hoisted up on the bike, elbows on the ground, and bites deeply into the burger. In the background, music throbs: "Bad to the Bone." B-b-b-b-bad. How many burgers would you say this might sell?
I asked a female colleague whose judgment in these matters I trust. Her answer: "There is no man alive who could do that [Paris Hilton-type] ad and strike those poses without traumatizing most women at a very basic level . . . though some might laugh to cover their repulsion."
There is a plain truth here. Women are just much less interested in--and buoyed by--the sight of the opposite sex unclothed than are men. One senses that this is as nature intended it, although feminists of the Betty Friedan school will argue that this imbalance is the result of patriarchal dictation over generations. The female eros, they say, has been suppressed.
Whatever the explanation, it is empirically demonstrable that men yearn--lazily--for that which is garishly available (cf Paris Hilton, Carl's Jr.). Women, for their part--at least in the Western world--understand that the social contract ensures safety and filters out brutishness. To fall, simplemindedly, for the naked male (cf Denzel/Jude in thong) is to be lured into an open Darwinian zone. This zone--these images--offer prospects of coupling without nurture or long-term guarantees, without the implied masculine pledges on home, hearth and the support of offspring.
In backward cultures, women are overprotected and invisible; so men lose all resistance to images--and all self-restraint. In downtown Kandahar, for example, a display of female ankle is proof of flooziness most damnable. In that world, men are rarely required to resist temptation. Consider this clip from Dubai TV, in which an Egyptian rapist on death row is interviewed:
Rapist: Even if she's unmarried, or a little girl, when someone sees her short clothes, he will find the courage, and won't leave her alone. A girl like this makes a guy. . . .In the West, by important contrast, men modulate their behavior when faced with seductive images. They have to. Women judge them by their ability to do so. And they are trained, at an early age, to take responsibility for their own lust.Interviewer: She seduces him?
Rapist: Yes, she makes him take her, even if it's in the middle of town. Even if he has to kill or die, he will still take her.
Everywhere, and rightly, there are limits. Paris Hilton is not selling herself: She is merely selling burgers. Tawdry though it may be, there is proof in all this of the distance we've traveled from a barbarous state. And there's proof, also, of the humor we've acquired along the way.
Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.
