There are a number of mobile ads for strip clubs that circulate throughout Philadelphia. Some are for the Penthouse Club, some are for Delilah\u2019s Strip Club, some are on the sides of buses, some are actually vehicles with a designated billboard devoted to advertising the venue, but no matter how many times I see them, I am shocked.<\/p>\n
It was one thing to see magazines on newsstands when I was an adolescent growing up in NYC. I might spy a woman, breasts on display, demanding I peek to see what else might be available. The fact that \u201cwoman as sexual object\u201d was largely confined to the newsstand gave me some kind of comfort. Nowadays I am invaded by images of these women in their fantastically clad but still pornographic poses. There I am driving, thinking about some truly important problem, and along comes (no pun intended) the Penthouse truck, and I swear it hijacks my attention. It actually stops traffic, it causes children to point and ask premature questions, and most importantly as a woman artist it makes me lose my train of thought. I even start devoting a blog post to the Penthouse truck! I start to wonder, \u201cIs that young woman in the picture getting paid well for having her image\/ass paraded throughout Philly?\u201d \u201cOr is she paid a flat rate?\u201d \u201cDoes her mother know she\u2019s on the truck?\u201d \u201cDid she have to beat out a lot of other \u2018girls\u2019 for this job?\u201d \u201cIs she an actual stripper or just a model?\u201d<\/p>\n
And of course I think of my own child, and the fact that these women on the truck are gorgeous, and that my daughter, also gorgeous, loves fashion, seeing attractive women in pretty outfits, and has not yet asked what these images are all about. We sometimes pass the window display for a clothing store, and the grand gowns beckon her. \u201cI love that Mommy,\u201d she says \u201ccan\u2019t you just see me in that?\u201d I don\u2019t want her to make the same leap when she sees the strip club ads, and gets the notion that that is what it\u2019s like to be a beautiful woman. I know it\u2019s just a matter of time before she brings up the Penthouse truck.<\/p>\n
Apart from the fact that it feels like a gross invasion of public space, what really upsets me about the Penthouse truck? I wish there were images of women like Sonia Sotomayor, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the side of the truck. I wish we walked down the street and could learn about Elizabeth Caddy Stanton by reading the side of a bus. I wish we would hear the stories of what it took for these women to really achieve …… in the world, and could learn about the myriad paths women take to make a difference in the world. I want to hear and see the stories about women that are so beautiful in what they are DOING that I can\u2019t stop staring at them and how beautiful they are. And so I guess I have to admit, that when it comes to these ads, I\u2019m not really bothered by the nudity, it\u2019s the narrowness of how it teaches us to look at women\u2019s beauty, when the reality is we could never exhaust its true depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are a number of mobile ads for strip clubs that circulate throughout Philadelphia. Some are for the Penthouse Club, some are for Delilah\u2019s Strip Club, some are on the sides of buses, some are actually vehicles with a designated billboard devoted to advertising the venue, but no matter how many times I see them, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}