Kathleen Parker: Girls, going wild is not a victory for feminism

To most adults, the name Joe Francis probably doesn't mean much. But to their teen- and college-age daughters, it means fun and fame. Sorta.

Mr. Francis is the voyeur-provocateur who has turned a frat boy's fantasy into a multimillion-dollar bonanza with his Girls Gone Wild videos. He and his camera crews scour the haunts of the young and silly – from Spring Break to Mardi Gras – and cajole usually very drunk girls into baring their breasts. And other parts.

Sex sells, you may have heard. But wherever there's sex, booze and videotape, there's bound to be trouble – and Mr. Francis has plenty of it. He recently pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the sexual exploitation of minors, for which he will pay $2.1 million in fines.

Somehow, I don't think this is what our feminist foremothers had in mind when they set about to liberate women from the patriarchy. Nothing much has changed when women are reduced to sex objects in exchange for T-shirts and trinkets, while men walk away with the cash.

Boys smart, girls dumb. Way to go, gals.

Girls Gone Wild has sparked lots of debate through the years about the appropriateness of men preying on drunken "women" of barely legal age. One argument goes that the women are responsible for their decision to get drunk and strip. The other goes that their drunkenness negates their consent.

The urge to say that these people all deserve each other – and good riddance – is hard to suppress. But what really gives here? Why are these people behaving this way?

Mr. Francis was in many ways inevitable. If you stuffed a computer with data extracted from the zeitgeist – equal parts celebrity, narcissism, reality TV, porn, moral relativity – the computer would spit out "Joe Francis."

Equally predictable, perhaps, were exhibitionist young women who have been marinated in a celebrity culture and seasoned with raunch. When asked why they do Joe's bidding, many say they want to be famous. They want to be "known." But known for what?

Doesn't matter. Paris Hilton has perfected the genre of being famous for being famous.

Meanwhile, the message to girls the past 20 years or so has been that they can be and do anything they please. Being a stripper or a porn star is just another option among many. In some feminist circles, porn is seen as the ultimate feminist expression – profiting from men's desire, rather than merely being objectified by it.

Girls going wild, nevertheless, has created a feminist conundrum. If men are profiting from women demeaning themselves, are the women still in charge?

This is not the first generation to awaken with a hangover and a "Say it ain't so." But it is the first to awaken with video footage of the night before – and for all time. For this and future generations, there's no such thing as a memory hole for youthful transgression.

It is worth remembering, meantime, that no matter how sophisticated our technology, human nature remains essentially unchanged. Girls may go wild of their own accord, but boys will still think of them as fools.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.

Her e-mail address is kparker@parker.com.

My comments:

I'd estimate that close to 25 percent of people from, say, the ages of 18 to 40 or so are probably pictured on the Internet by now in a compromising position, whether they know it or not. The younger a human is (especially females), the more the exhibitionist tendencies come out, especially if alcohol is involved. In defense of Paris Hilton, she DID NOT KNOW she was being videoed, which is why I say MANY thousands of (mostly) women are unaware that they are on the web.