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 y sixtysomething mother's favorite show this spring was Dancing With the Stars. "It's fun," she explains — because anyone watching Dancing With the Stars better have some excuse. "That Apolo, he's a hot little number."That's what she said: Hot little number. I'd like to think she didn't raise her eyebrows, but it's possible she did. It was hard to see while cringing. She was speaking, of course, of Apolo Ohno, a pocket-sized Olympian with a killer cha-cha and a tight little ass. I'd seen Dancing With the Stars, too. (My excuse? It's my job.) And I also found myself transfixed by Apolo's wiggling, orb-like rear. If someone would just introduce his chin to a razor, that kid might
Over the next few Monday nights, I noticed something about Dancing With the Stars: there was an awful lot of skin on display. Jiggling boobs and grinding asses and contoured, suntanned abs. Yes, Apolo wore clingy pants, and Ian Ziering flaunted his gym-fed pythons. But really, it was all about the women. Dancers with names like Cheryl and Julianne stalked the stage in stilettos and fishnets, cleavage bursting through sequined mesh tops, generous swaths of nylon cut from their midriff. It was like stripper wear meets jazzercize. Forever 21 on Ice. No wonder my father watched, too. I know Dancing With the
Baywatch hasn't been on for years, but television, for all its trashiness, never found a replacement. It wasn't for lack of trying: MTV alone filled out its roster with reality shows about hot young things who just happen to enjoy hot tubs, hookups, and getting naked. But it was all too obvious. It lacked the sly, bawdy tease of Baywatch. Slut from the Midwest stripping to her thong and making out with strangers? Not sexy. Pamela Anderson running valiantly along the bleached white sand to save a poor drowning man? Sexy. Or, at the very least, fun. And this is another thing that Baywatch and Dancing With the
Of course, Dancing with the Stars isn't nearly as over-the-top and salacious as Baywatch. Its boob and crotch shots have a veneer of class. And for that reason, I have been calling it the "wartime Baywatch." (And even if this theory doesn't hold, that's going to be the name of my next band.) This is a show in which men wear tuxedoes and women wear gowns. Granted, these gowns have slits up to the uterus and the tuxedo shirts sometimes come with rip-off sleeves. An interesting phenomenon in this year's competition — and one that would seem to argue against my thesis — was that the female dancers were picked off first, and fast. They were beauties, too, including supermodel Paulina Porizkova and former Miss USA Shandi Finnessey. But there are good reasons for this. First of all, these women didn't have any broad fan base. Second of all, they lacked the risque va-va-voom of leggy Stacy Keibler or that plastic fembot sometimes referred to as Lisa Rinna. Most important, they didn't appeal to women. And women are the ones voting. (That's a total guess, by the way. But don't you believe me? Don't you feel, deep in your gut, that there couldn't possibly be a majority of grown men texting their votes for Apolo Ohno? Surely we must agree on this.) Besides, there was already enough female eye candy — Cheryl and Deborah and Diane, or whatever the hell their names are — for everyone's husbands and boyfriends to be content. There's a reason men have consistently won this competition: John Hurley, Drew Lachey, Emmitt Smith, and now, that "hot little number" Apolo. Because female viewers love to see hot men dance. Male viewers, on the other hand, are happy merely seeing hot women, period. As one of the biggest ratings successes on ABC, however, the show must continue to wave the flag of "family entertainment." In the semifinals, a judge chided the seemingly unstoppable Apolo for being "too raunchy." This raunchiness included a lot of thrusting groin movement and pelvis grinding. That's fine; he was docked a point for the benefit of someone's grandparents. But lest you think ABC doesn't know the real appeal of its show, check out this billboard: the headless torso of a woman, shot from behind, with a beautiful bare back and the graceful legs of a gazelle. Tasteful? Perhaps. But it also looks, for all the world, like she could be topless. n°
©2007 Sarah Hepola and hooksexup.com. |
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