by Greg Gutfeld
Hollywood likes to think it bears no responsibility for changes in society, yet that doesn’t explain why it feels so strongly about calling whatever it makes “art.” Their livelihoods are predicated on people believing they influence your life. Especially when the same messages are delivered over and over again for years.
Which is why whenever I want to make an important point about something, I immediately refer to the movie Grease. In the 1978 film, Olivia Newton-John plays a Goody Two-shoes Sandy Olsen, who inevitably transforms into a leather-clad sexpot. It’s understood that leather thigh-highs are cooler than saddle shoes. Leather is shorthand for sex. But it’s also a declaration. It signifies that everything that came before was stupid and that risky behavior trumps sanity and safety.
But where does this transformation from prim to precarious lead? What happens when you abandon traditionally boring goody-goody behavior for recklessness and “freedom”? In my mind, ironically, it leads to dependence. By sacrificing one kind of system of provision, you are forced to embrace another. And the new one is a lot less nurturing.
That sacrifice leads directly to single women embracing big government and voting for it more and more. Apparently, rebelling against your stern upbringing seems cool, but blindly taking from the government isn’t. At least Mom and Dad and a husband really do honestly love you.
The original purpose of government—any government—is safety. That’s why people banded together ten thousand years ago. Today, so many of us take safety for granted that the government has gone from protection provider to love provider. But it’s more than that. In changing government from Mars to Venus, we’ve undermined Mars. He’s neutered, flaccid (especially if he went to Princeton). That’s the real problem, in the most basic terms. Government is spending all its money on a plethora of programs that do not really provide love or companionship. Plus, at some point the government won’t be able to provide protection anymore either. The resources won’t be there. Government won’t be there for you when the neighbors’ meth-head son climbs in your bedroom window. Nor will it be there when the Islamist or anarchists or Putin or whoever goes medieval on America. People have grown falsely secure. Which means they slept through even more of history classes than I did.
Being a single woman, like being a single man, can be pretty awesome. The freedom to do what you want is invigorating. But for many, it’s a dead end, spiritually, morally, and financially. That’s because most single women do not have the luxury of being Olivia Newton-John, or Madonna, or Lady Gaga. Hell, they’re not even Kathy Griffin (a good thing). No, they’re just some girl who made some bad decisions, and on the precipice of forty is now staring at a cat and a worn-out woman’s magazine promising her eight steps to better self-esteem. Sure, she’s got the birth control and the abortions covered, but being childless and single isn’t as cool as promised. A desire to be cool, or accepted as cool by those who convinced you it’s superior, leaves you where we all end up: alone. You’re just there a heck of a lot sooner.
We tend to forget that one type of woman is still up for ridicule: the virgin. In the pantheon of uncool, they’re no better off than bearded ladies at the circus—and as rare. When you actually hear about a female virgin, it’s usually making headlines as a freakish anomaly. “You wouldn’t believe who’s a virgin,” the story screams, and then it treats the female like a frog being dissected in a lab by a group of gum-smacking students. A female virgin (especially if she’s attractive) is the modern woolly mammoth: usually found frozen, intact, in the Arctic. It used to be that doing something against the grain was the mark of a cool person. If the activity was something that rebelled against the rigid structure of society, it would be. And well, yeah, I guess it is. But the media refuses to see it that way. It’s no coincidence that so many men decry virgins. The shorthand for the mockery is really, “Thanks for nothing, sweetie.”
You want to see a confused magazine editor? To induce the kind of cognitive dissonance that results in a Scanners-like head explosion? Pitch him or her a story about a hot, young, successful virgin. You’ll quickly find that editor’s mental hard drive approximating a Fukushima meltdown.
In the world of sex, alternative sexual practices are championed if they involve masks, restraints, and multiple partners. But having no partners at all? That’s the butt of withering jokes. Take the last summer Olympics, where an Olympic hurdler (and a really cute one at that) named Lolo Jones became the center of attention because of her creepy, abnormal lifestyle. In an interview on an HBO program, she admitted she was a virgin. A freakish being who decided she was not having sex until she had got a husband, because of her religious faith. Wow, a media twofer: religious and a virgin. Of course HBO promoted the heck out of her anomalies. The woman was suddenly the Olympian equivalent of a live yeti who plays the ukulele.
She made a choice. But it’s a choice a feminist hates to hear, which I never understand. Feminists prefer to view virgins as people who are repressed rather than a smart person avoiding the mistakes made by her peers. Shouldn’t they be saluting this girl for not falling prey to the male pig? Shouldn’t they be shouting, “Right on, sister!” to Lolo, since she’s not giving it to the man? Shouldn’t her strength, her independence, be championed?
The same press that idolizes people with dangerous lifestyles and destructive habits views Lolo as a goofball, despite the fact that her lifestyle is infinitely healthier than all the screwups around her. Furthermore, the press elevates those who adopt healthy lifestyles in the areas of fitness and nutrition. But, if you play it totally safe—sexually, for the sake of a sound mind and body—then you’re actually unhealthy. Think about it: If an athlete says she eats nothing but organic vegetables and fresh fish, an interviewer would be like, “Yeah, me too! We’re so cool!” But say, “I’m saving myself till marriage,” and that’s oddly toxic. It’s the kind of logic that makes food products more expensive when they leave out an ingredient. It’s a scam, folks.
So where’s the danger in this? Well, any young girl watching how Lolo is portrayed might come away with the idea that having scruples is silly. If you’re having thoughts about sex when you’re in high school, and girls who abstain are viewed as freakishly uncool, then what are you going to do? Your inclination, if you don’t have a strong mom and dad, is to get the whole thing over with, with anyone, including a middle-aged talk show host who can buy you Zimas. (They still make Zima, right?) Being a virgin is a scarlet V, so you must lose it so you’re no longer freakishly uncool. I think this explains most premature loss of virginity. It’s obviously the same for guys too.
And so the concept of a great-looking woman in her late twenties saving herself for marriage seems as incongruent as a manatee in heels, and now a whole bunch of young girls might feel that way about their virginity too, especially young black women. Not that they are at risk or anything, of course.
In a book that celebrates Free Radicals, you can and should learn something by taking a deeper look into Jones’s life. Here is a woman whose incredible self-control led her on a path to ridiculous achievement. She is in the fucking Olympics (not the “fucking Olympics”). Do you know any Olympians offhand? No. They don’t socialize, they train. And they’re rare for a reason. They make choices that allow for success. They create an athletic life that requires hard work, without temptation of weaker types who might mock them for their diligence (sounds familiar, no?). The path to glorious achievement was uninterrupted by all the crap that our insidious, shallow culture deems as cool or edgy. She adopted the hardest path and pretty much blew through the first part of her life without the usual bullshit the rest of us get mired in. Do you think she could train up to her level if she spent her weekends wrestling a has-been actor from Entourage in the backseat of a leased BMW? (This is why I never medalled in curling.)
Lolo is an example of what I call a “super-fact” (i.e., a really great fact): Delayed gratification never leads to failure in life … ever. Ask yourself this: Has anything eve
r gone wrong in your life if you put something off? I’m talking about a drink, or a drug, a cheeseburger, a random sex act. Every time I’m about to order something from Taco Bell, I think to myself, “If I’m around tomorrow, I’ll do it then.” And I never do. It’s how I’ve kept my girlish figure for the last four years. I’ve also avoided a lot of explosive diarrhea.
And what happens when you resist?
Does your life collapse? Or do you actually get something done? Chances are you always do something that makes you feel better than whatever temptation you were about to succumb to. I call this the Power of Procrastination. I sense a Dr. Phil segment in my future.
The forgotten art of delayed gratification became forgotten because the culture of the 1960s and 1970s transmitted the message, through TV, movies, and music, that it was cool to satisfy your every whim whenever it struck your fancy. “If it feels good, do it” were six words that defined the downward slide of a culture. To test yourself against the rigors of discipline, to gain whatever prize might be waiting for you at the end, was a waste of your time. One would be hard-pressed to find a more nihilistic, destructive philosophy. What used to be cool (and rather smart)—working, or waiting—fell under the heading of “why bother?” Anyone who, as a kid, was walking to band or soccer practice, only to be stopped by a friend wishing to do otherwise (break into a house and steal underwear), knows what I mean. “Tune in, turn on, drop out” didn’t produce a nation of enlightened beings. It produced a nation that can barely read and write.
Feminists tricked women into thinking that wanting the same things as cool and careless men do, and throwing caution (and bras) to the wind, would put you in a better place. It might give you some better memories, at first, but the place you end up is never the place you expected. It’s never with that guy. He gets what he wants and moves on. (Yes, I’m sounding like a grandmother, but maybe I am one. I do smell an awful lot like lavender, but that’s a medical disorder.)
No one wants to hear it, but the studies find what I’m getting at: Delayed gratification works. The younger you have sex, the sooner you “peak,” in just about everything. You grow old too fast, and nothing seems that great as life goes on. Lolo shows you what you can do if you forget “just say no” and embrace “just not now.” It allows you to get more crap done, and that allows for more freedom—freedom most feminists can never dream of. Lolo’s flown all over the world because she worked hard; most feminist bloggers don’t get past Penn Station when they’re taking the train back home to their parents to do their laundry. Lolo’s resistance to what other people define as cool has allowed her options many feminists will never, ever have. No wonder they hate her.
THE CARNAL CARNIVAL
Sex isn’t supposed to be boring. But amateurs have made it so. They’ve turned Chris Isaak into Chris Hayes.
In March 2013 a Guardian article detailed a controversy that erupted at the University of Tennessee surrounding a student-led Sex Week on the campus. According to the Guardian—which has become the world’s college newspaper—the campus extravaganza is “aimed at promoting sexual health and awareness,” which, for anyone experienced in the lexicon of “awareness,” is always code for frumpy, tattooed experts brandishing edible condoms and adjustable-speed vibrating dildos. The paper notes that it “had its funding slashed after Republican lawmakers launched a campaign against the event.” Boo hoo, you evil Republicans, always out to squash a screw. You’re like, so 1950s and repressed!
And there you have the cool/uncool narrative blossoming, in the comfortable confines of a sympathetic media that instinctively follows the scent of repression by the hands of Republicans. They can’t get enough of it. To them, it’s always Footloose—the young kids rebelling against the rigid minister who hates fun, hates kids, hates everything. He’s probably closeted and sleeps with lemurs (male ones!).
The best part of this article, however, is the accompanying picture. It features two extremely solemn students (Jacob Clark and Brianna Rader) flanking a chalkboard. Both students are looking dead serious at you, as though they’re staring down the tanks of Tiananmen Square. On the chalkboard between them, the word SEX is written. The board could have been the Berlin Wall, November 1989. I look at it and I hear “Heroes” playing in my brain. They really are America’s brave warriors, withstanding the onslaught of … nothing really. What totally wasted energy. Agoraphobics take greater risks.
Yes, they were making a stand. For sex. For awareness. On … a college campus. Yep, a campus, where I guess no one has ever heard of sex. Where no one has ever seen a condom. Where no one has ever had sex on the floor of a sorority, and then lost their underwear while climbing out a window. (What can I say, it was past curfew.)
These are today’s modern revolutionaries. While students are dying all over the world fighting for freedom, these brave souls are fighting for seminars titled “Getting Laid,” “Loud and Queer,” “Bow Chicka Bow Wow,” and a treatise on oral sex called “How Many Licks Does It Take?” (Tip: Not many.)
Now, I’d get the coolness of this heroic stance, if it were, say, happening in Iran. You risk castration. Or you might lose a hand, which kills all chances of getting to second base and eliminates most men’s most amenable partner. But in the United States, taking a stand for sexual awareness is like taking a stand for more fleas at the dog pound. They’re advocating for something we’ve already got. I mean, really: You think our culture is undersexualized? Did you watch last year’s MTV Video Music Awards? This cause is about as genuine as an Obama apology.
The eighteen grand of funding for the week was supposed to come from the school but was withdrawn after an evil Republican state senator (of course) named Stacey Campfield raised a puritanical, uncool stink. I happen to think it was pretty cool that Campfield said something (for different reasons), but I’ll get to that later.
Faced with the prospect of no Sex Week, some outraged students ran to Facebook and Twitter, spreading the panic that the event was in peril. This was their Arab Spring, if by Arab you mean “hand” and by Spring, you mean “job.”
The activists got the hashtag #Iwantsexweek trending on Twitter, which led to worldwide attention, including from the Guardian, and also from my own network (the predictable evil Dean Wormer, from Animal House, in this equation). This emboldened the activists, who announced their success on their website, and also encouraged idiots, sorry—people—to continue forking out dough to fund next year’s Sex Week. I might offer, humbly, that perhaps this money could have gone to something more worthwhile (victims of Hurricane Sandy, the Salvation Army, my own private “Buy Greg a Robot Geisha” fund), but why rain on their self-congratulatory parade? Someone, somewhere might get an edible condom. I prefer pineapple.
The event didn’t get all the money it needed. Faced with a revolt, the school capitulated and allowed up to seven grand of the student fees to pay for the fun. So, in effect, in this thoughtful sex-fest, it’s the students’ parents who are getting screwed first, and before it even starts. They should at least get some pictures from it. Or why not participate? Bring a blanket, Dad! Bring the dog! Bow chicka bow wow, indeed.
In the world of cool, the antisex Republican is uncool, and the pro-sex students are renegades. But here is why this is bull. Sex, as a topic for seminars on awareness or entertainment, is welcomed on campus with open arms. Sex Week is meant to “blow your mind,” but this whole escapade is as shocking as Christmas.
Please, kids. Although I find the idea of seeing these organizers copulating nauseating (and I have a pretty high threshold). Rubbing a balloon on my head is more electrifying. And erotic. These students want to really shock America? Say something nice about America.
This brave stand for boning is really a way to make the organizers look cool. You are, in effect, creating a facade of cool rebellion where there is none available. This is college. What can you possibly rebel against, except leftist professors with halitosis? Now, that would be fighting the man. Because you’d be battlin
g a real army.
When it comes to sex—and this comes from decades of horrible experience—the people who always flaunt their sexual activities are always the worst at it. Trust me, I wish I didn’t know this, but I do. Meanwhile the silent types—the people who never ever talk about sex—those are the types who take the behavior most seriously. They are, without question, the true professionals. (I use this theory not just with sex, but with cooking, writing, stand-up comedy, guitar playing, Trivial Pursuit, singing, household repairs, murder.) The best metaphor for this is American Idol. Everyone who shows up there thinks they can sing. Almost all of them can’t. Yet you know they told everyone they could. And then it’s the quiet kid, or the homely lady, who gets onstage and knocks the song out of the park. And that song never includes “bow chicka bow wow.”
And more important, anyone who actually believes that having sex is an achievement must be easily impressed by rabbits, cats, dogs, and the squirrels rutting around campus. Which is why they’re almost—without question—lousy at it.
But I guess given the curriculum students are choosing from these days, sex education might be the least harmful. At least when you’re learning about blow jobs, you aren’t reading Karl Marx (much the same, really). The more time spent discussing anal, the less time there is for lionizing Noam Chomsky. Still, wouldn’t it be slightly better if the school sponsored seminars that focused on stuff that helped you get a job not prefaced by the word “blow”? You have to have an awfully healthy trust fund for this sort of behavior not to backfire on you later.