GMA: Is Victoria's Secret Too Sexy?
Before 7:21 this morning viewers of Good Morning America were treated to almost two minutes of naked and nearly naked women, included five seconds of Paris Hilton writhing around in a low-cut bathing suit and washing herself with a giant sponge.
All of this was done under the guise of asking whether
The question is actually being asked by
Underwear-clad models were shown 29 times in the story. The word “sexy” or “sexiest” appeared 12 times. Paris Hilton's soft-porn Carl's Jr. hamburger ad (in which the heiress is shown “washing” a Bentley while eating a juicy hamburger) was shown for five full seconds, following a print ad for Abercrombie and Fitch showing naked models sitting in a car.
The point of this montage, presumably, was to emphasize that “sex sells” for many companies but
Canning: When it comes to
Canning went on to report that Turney had to explain a “dramatic drop” in sales to shareholders. The footage she used to cover that part of the story was a close-up of a
In the end however, GMA thoroughly exploited the very problem it was reporting on – sex in advertising – to make its point. And it chose to do so in the first half hour of the program when many families are gathered at the breakfast table before heading off to work and school. It was a tasteless way to start the day.
Kristen Fyfe is senior writer at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the
