Kim Kardashian, Reality TV, and Playboy. . .

Ok, this has been bugging me the last couple of days. . . Is Playboy magazine just considered mainstream and socially acceptable? Is it not considered porn anymore? Or is it still considered porn and perfectly acceptable, anyway? So here's where this all is coming from, and I am prefacing this rant with the admission, a somewhat sheepish one, that I watch all that really bad E! and Bravo reality programming, including Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Real Housewives of Orange County, and yes, even The Girls Next Door. And just for the record, I have real objections to The Girls Next Door; I find it offensive on so many levels, and yet I watch it anyway. And I fully realize that by watching what I call "trashy TV" in the form of these offensive and even exploitive reality programs, I am contributing to the problem by simply being a consumer of this kind of thing. So here's the thing. . .

In the last two weeks or so, I've noticed that E! News and other entertainment news programs have been talking up Kim Kardashian's pictorial in Playboy, which is apparently available on newsstands now, or so says Ryan Seacrest. But here's the thing: is Playboy so mainstream, so socially acceptable that Ryan Seacrest sends us all out to buy it? The answer, it seems, is yes. This is so troubling for so many reasons. I am, partly for personal reasons, particularly opposed to pornography and tend to be overly sensitive to it. But it seems to me that, say, even 10 years ago, if people bought Playboy, they kept it on the DL. There was some sense of shame, a sense that there's some sort of social impropriety, or something, about it.

Anyway, I just watched the most recent episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the one in which Kris Jenner, AKA Mamma K, encourages her daughter Kim to pose for Playboy. Here's what really bugged me about it. (And I realize that so-called reality TV is often edited in such a way that the reality of the situation may be obscured and misrepresented, but still. . .) Initially, Kim has hesitations about posing for Playboy; Mamma K encourages her to do it. Kim agrees to pose, but makes it very clear that she'll do lingerie shots but is uncomfortable with nudity. At the photo shoot, the photographers want her to take her top off. Kim won't do it. Mamma K encourages her to at least consider it. Hef phones for a second shoot. Mamma K and Kim meet with Hef. Hef says he wants a spread of Kim totally naked. Kim says she doesn't know if she wants to. Mamma K encourages it. So who does this to their daughter? What kind of mother encourages her daughter to get naked for Playboy? Seriously, Mamma K is pimping out her daughter, much to this dismay of Bruce Jenner, Mamma K's husband. Does anyone else have a problem with this? By the way, mom if you are reading this, thanks for not pimping me out like that, not that I have the body for it, but that's not the issue. Oh, and I just don't buy the argument that Playboy is tasteful and therefore somehow more acceptable than, say, Hustler. I should add, in the interest of fairness, that by the end of the episode Kim is on board with the whole project. I have to say that, generally, Kim seems likable enough; Mamma K makes me ill, especially in the way that she treats her husband.

And here's the other thing that gets me: apparently, all these celebrities and some of the Housewives of Orange County, people that present themselves as respectable, people that many in our society look up to, attend, apparently, all these crazy, racy, half-naked parties at the Playboy Mansion. I remember Lauri from the Housewives getting all dressed up for a Playboy party and being all proud about being able to get in. She's a mother. Don't her children deserve a better role model than that? And Lauri acting like this is all totally normal.

Don't even get me started on Holly, Bridgette, and Kendra, Hef's three live-in girlfriends featured on The Girls Next Door. A couple of days ago, they were guests on the network program Phonomenon, hosted by Criss Angel. This program isn't especially racy, isn't on cable; it's pretty mainstream. And there we have Hef's girls as the guests. Oh, last week's guest was Raven Simone. So we have the Disney tween star Raven and the Girls Next Door presented as equivalent. This is troubling.

I know that some will just think I'm a prude, that I'm overreacting. Some will say that if I don't like it, I don't have to watch it. And that all may be true. But the bottom line is that and Playboy and Maxim and Victoria's Secret ads and all the rest of the advertising that uses women's bodies to sell a product--all of it, it's objectifying women. It's contributing to a culture in which women are objectified, devalued, and eventually raped.

On an unrelated note: Has Heather Mills totally lost her mind?