As if you needed any reasons, but nevertheless here they are:
10. They are ridiculously low-class – it seems ironic that a bunch of girls that look like spoiled brats are sold by mail through late-night infomercials. You spent enough money on Gucci sunglasses and Prada shoes, so don’t you think you deserve an audience of a higher pedigree, ladies? Girls say it’s their “15 minutes of fame,” so I’d think they’d make it worth it.
*By the way, it’s not 15 minutes honey. This is your fame forever. Relish in it, along with all the men (your ex-boyfriend, or your boss, maybe your father) who may be as well. And can anyone give me the name of a successful showbiz woman who got her start in the soft-core porn bar videos? Ashley DuPre does not count as successful.
9. Serious lack of individual style – the fact that they are all clones of each other simply increases my distaste for them. If I was going to get drunk and strip, I would at least do it in style.
8. They disappoint even the lowest of men - the corporation’s mogul (and the face of arrogance), Mr. Joe Francis himself wants innocent girls next door, but instead gets slutty tramps looking for a moment in front of a camera. And sadly, I have to agree with him. As one girl puts it, “I’m ready and willing, and I’m a dirty slut.” As if we needed any confirmation.
7. They failed American History - supposedly the whole franchise is just some passionate movement to embrace the freedom of First Amendment. Way to go ladies, you really embody the spirit of America.
*And remember, judges will just shut down your lawsuits against Girls Gone Wild for capturing what you do in public – that’s part of the same First Amendment that allows your flashes of nudity.
6. They are not even getting paid - I have a lot more respect for strippers and prostitutes who are at least making a buck instead of gratuitously showing their naughty bits the world over, and on tape nonetheless. If you think about the money that the corporation is making, these girls could at least salvage some dignity by demanding compensation.
*NOTE: T-shirts, booty shorts, trucker hats, Mardi Gras beads, or even panties do NOT count as compensation.
5. They are giving a bad name to drunks everywhere – instead of taking their clothes off when they get plastered, they should be belligerently yelling at people, like any self-respecting binge drinker.
4. They idolize a criminal industry - and we aren’t just talking public indecency. Joe Francis and co. have been accused of money laundering, tax evasion, racketeering, not to mention sexual assault, child pornography, and you guessed it, rape. If I saw Mr. Girls Gone Wild, I would throw him my haymaker and stab him with my stiletto, not fawn over him like a smitten schoolgirl gone wrong.
3. They completely embarrass the feminist cause – not to mention any self-respecting woman. I totally encourage women owning their sexuality and all, but taking your clothes off and rubbing your best friend’s twat in front of Joe’s crews is most definitely not what Gloria Steinem (a respectable babe herself) had in mind for the sexual revolution.
2. They are just plain dumb - as one girl explains her motives for baring her breasts to appease the chants of young men, “Everybody wants to be famous in some way. Getting famous will get me anything I want. If I walk into somebody’s house and said, ‘Give me this,’ I could have it.” Just goes to show that almost anyone can get into college.
*To any future GGW – this is just not how it works.
1. They are the backbone of Joe Francis’ success – both financial and sexual.
Ew.
Enough said.
Who wouldn't want this?
Anyone have any additions?
Read the horrifying article I found while researching this post. I plan to write more on it later, but I have to wait until my stomach settles from the nausea it just produced.
Disclaimer: I honestly hate to throw the word “slut” around, and I fully believe that men (most especially Joe Francis) who endorse this sort of behavior are despicable. The girls are taken advantage of while intoxicated, but that can only be taken so far before they have to be held accountable for their actions. A woman can have sex with thousands of men and not be a slut in my opinion, but once she has rubbed her clit for the world of Girls Gone Wild, then she has embraced my definition of the word.
That last picture of Joe Francis with that huge cheesy smile? Ugh, it just makes me cringe! I don’t have any additions to your fantabulous list, except for maybe perpetuating negative stereotypes about beauty and youth. All I know, is I’m sick of seeing them everytime I want to watch TV and it’s commercial time after midnight.
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for posting this!
PS found you via a feminism tag. You guys have a terrific blog! :)
The point about perpetuating negative stereotypes is a good one – that definitely should have been in there! And I know what you mean about the commercials – anytime after 11 PM on Comedy Central it runs about 5 times every hour. It makes me stomach turn with disgust…
Thank you so much for your comment! We are so happy to have readers like you!
-Harlequin
Obviously we don’t hate to throw the word slut around, but we also think it’s all about context.
Another GGW crew member was arrested for sexual assault this past week in New York. Charming bunch, really.
I suppose I feel guilty for using the word slut because I have been termed with it myself. Maybe I have had more dick in me than a urinal at a bar, but at least I sport my promiscuity with some level of dignity…
and the crew of Girls Gone Wild is absolutely disgusting, it seems like a running pattern for them to have weekly arrests…
-Harlequin
Those GGW do not deserve to be called sluts. They are not of course respectable and beautiful young ladies that our society wants so much to see. Somehow they deserve my sympathy because I think they are just Girls Gone Wrong. Why don’t we just put them on the right way???
Regarding the “compensations”, I think almost the girls get paid to take their clothes off or rub their friends in front of the cameras. So they are not really different from porn actresses. The point is how much are they paid?
@sonny –
They may be Girls Gone Wrong, but in a society where a woman who sleeps with several guys is called a slut, where do we draw the line? It gets confusing. If a woman chooses to sleep with say, 20 guys, during her college years, many people would say she’s slutty. However, girls who take their clothes off for 15 minutes of “fame” and a free trucker hat are NOT sluts?
Either we abolish the word “slut” completely, or we use it in a meaningful way. I just think society fucks girls over either way.
Well yes, sonny are right on many points. thank you for bringing them up…i was waiting for someone to defend these girls actually! because they should be defended….sort of.
i stated that intoxication can only take a person so far. however, i do agree with you about sympathy. i do feel bad for this girls; i think it is despicable that they are targeted and sexualized in the way that they are. GGW is notorious for going after drunk girls, in addition to supplying girls with drugs and alcohol – there is a lot of shady business going on.
i have been planning to write an article on joe francis and the society that actually does so much want to see them. because society does want to see them and their endorsement of this is part of the problem. but you know what? a lot of guys want to see me naked, and i’m not going to strip off my panties for a 25 cent necklace (maybe if you buy me dinner…hah).
you are right – some girls do get paid. but the majority do not, and they do not get paid well. maybe a couple hundred bucks for a night. if this was an escort call, i could understand this. but what about the concept of running in syndicate? porn stars have legal rights as well – the girls of GGW do not. i guess my point is that i personally do not respect them, whereas i can respect women who are “sex workers.” the point with these girls is that they admire and endorse GGW freely, when i think they should be fighting against it. so in the end showing their bodies isn’t the worst part….it’s how they show their minds.
thanks for your comments, i am glad you had more to add to the discussion!
-Harlequin
haha sorry for my long comments everyone, but i just have one more thing to add. check out “SLUT: growing up female with a bad reputation” by leora tanenbaum. it’s a great book about the term and its use in society – definitely worth reading!
-Harlequin
You can also check out our blog entries on why we call ourselves evil sluts…
SLUT and Introducing the Evil Slut Clique
[...] One of our readers saw our “Girls Gone Wild” post, and after reading the disturbing article we linked to, was inspired to write this really great, [...]
Great post. Damn…what a disgusting empire that man has created. Isn’t it sad to think that we as women hold ourselves back just as much (if not more so) than men? Sometimes I feel like we, as a whole, will never rise above being more than a hole.
@ Kelly — Thanks for your comment. I hope we rise above being just a hole, but I agree with you. Though patriarchy is the root of the problem, we buy into the way women are “supposed” to act/feel.
[...] my name is Dolly. I blog at Dolly Speaks. I started visiting Rotten Little Girls after I read their top 10 reasons for disliking Girls Gone Wild. Consistently high-quality, feminist blogging following that led me to becoming a regular visitor [...]
Isn’t the same kind of drunken, shouty, boorish, impersonal, posed-for-show, unsexy sex endemic throughout the culture?
Sometimes I feel a bit conflicted when confronted with such things. Every day I struggle with what it means to be a woman in American society, and it’s a painful exercise to say the least (for reference, I’m transgendered, and lived the first 23 years of my life as a boy).
It’s hard enough to see women around me that I will never be able to match as far as physical attractiveness goes (perhaps with a LOT of surgery, and even still, it’s not bloody likely) on top of my own diametrically opposed viewpoints on gender roles. Then I see things like this, and all I can feel is more self-loathing. Gods know that I’ve made some ridiculous decisions as far as expressing my sexuality is concerned (and there are a few I do regret…) but I can at least admit I made those decisions on my own.
But, in the end, what empathy I might feel for these girls tends to go by the wayside when I see how much they jeopardise their own safety and reputation. If that’s their choice, fine, and I stand by a person’s right to make a total ass of themselves if they choose. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it in the slightest. To make it particularly aggravating is the ‘gay for pay’ scenes they love to feature in this movie. All this reinforces is the stereotype that the word lesbian can apparently mean ‘I’m just waiting for someone with a big dick to come along’, and any gay girl out there that’s been hit on by a not-so-classy man will be able to back that up. It’s happened to me far more times than I’d like to admit. Of course, I have the added advantage of being able to say I have a cock of my own…they tend to roll out after that!
@ Paige — Thank you for your thoughtful comment. You make a good point about the ‘gay for pay’ scenes, which do perpetrate the male fantasy of straight women hooking up for men’s pleasure, not their own.
It’s really sad that women are judged on their attractiveness, which is one of the topics I write about fairly often. I hope you don’t feel too much self-loathing, although I’m just as guilty of looking at myself with disgust rather than acceptance. It’s a pretty pervasive problem and I hope that we can all begin to treat our bodies with more respect. Unfortunately, Girls Gone Wild is just a microcosm of a society that values women merely as sexual objects.
[...] it’s because Joe Francis himself should be in jail for rape, among many other crimes (check out this article Harlequin wrote a few months ago, and this expose on Francis in the Los Angeles Times for more [...]