If I was a child or an alien...

...watching the kind of guff that passes for a music video these days, I wonder what I would think the purpose of the female species was? To writhe around in as few clothes and as much make up as possible in the background, while a fully clothed male takes the stage? It seems increasingly likely. The video for the laughably bad, irony-devoid 'Rockstar' by Nickelback alternates between shots of 'normal folk', celebrities, and those merry gender-traitors the residents of the Playboy mansion (less of a harem and more of a cult I always think) lip-syncing the song. This is enough to get any right-thinking lady's back up, but what gets my goat the most is not just that the music channels are happy to peddle what is effectively soft porn at any hour of the day, but that they PRETEND to be concerned about effects on The Youth by bleeping out the line 'the drugs come cheap'. But wait! What is the line before that? 'The girls come easy'. Right....much as I'd love to think that this line is testament to the fact that women in the music industry reach orgasm effortlessly, I think we all know what it's about. The commodification of women into mere trinkets, objects to be passed around, shown off, and ultimately used up and replaced. And do the music channels bleep that line out? Of course they don't. Becuase it's clearly vital we bring it home to the kids: drugs are bad, but treating women like dirt - hey, that's just fashion these days.

As I've been typing this a scantily clad woman has writhed all over Usher as he speaks of his desire to 'make love in this club' and Rhianna has writhed all over Maroon 5 in little more than a bathing suit in a song they're supposed to be 'duetting on', but the fact the male band is fully clothed whilst she comes on like the token stripper invited to a stag party pretty much decimates that idea. One saving grace was the fully clothed Sharleen Spiteri of Texas breaking up the parade of sleaze. But unless more women like her grasp some control and dictate their own terms to misogynist directors and stylists, the reduction of the female form to plasticised, over-sexualised window dressing for Important Men is what our children will be watching of a Saturday morning. Think on.