Bernadette Barton - The Pornification of America

Welcome to Raunch Culture, USA

In December 2016 president-elect Donald Trump named Andrew Puzder, CEO of the fast food restaurants Carls Jr. and Hardees, as his nominee for labor secretary. Puzder is the mastermind responsible for branding the burger chains with advertisements of sexy women essentially making out with food. You may have seen the Carls Jr. commercial of Kim Kardashian eating a salad with her fingers on a bed, letting creamy dressing drip into her cleavage. In a voiceover she says, While the best things in life are messy, its fun to get clean, and then sinks naked into a bubble bath. As she casts a seductive look over her bare shoulder in the tub, a male voiceover growls, Who said salads cant be hot? Or youve seen the Super Bowl ad of Kate Upton in a car at a drive-in movie eating a burger that makes her so hot she begins crawling over the seats, stripping off her clothing, practically masturbating in a frenzy of sweaty, sexual excitement presumably induced by the pleasure of eating the sandwich. The male voiceover comments, Introducing the classic patty melt with a spicy twist.

Perhaps youve watched the Carls Jr. 3-Way Burger advertisement where blonde women strut around a kitchen in white bikinis (reminiscent of their underwear) while wielding sharp knives. The name 3-Way Burger is, of course, a play on a mnage trois. In the advertisement, three thin white women with long blonde hair and big breasts cook bacon and feed it to one another provocatively. shows an image from the opening of the commercial.

Puzder defended his pornified

FIGURE I.1. Advertisement for the 3-Way Burger, 2016. Source: Carls Jr.

Welcome to raunch culture in the 2020swhen the United States has devolved into a Hustler fantasy. Naked and half-naked pictures of girls and women litter every screen, billboard, and bus. Pole dancing studios keep women fit while men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on buses, planes, and trains. Christian pastors compliment their hot wives from the pulpit, and we have whole television programs devoted to the girlfriend experiencea specialized form of prostitution. People are having sex before they date, and women make their own personal porn to share on social media. Rape and pedophile jokes are commonplace, and those who dont like them are considered prudish. Instagram users measure their self-worth by chili pepper emojis that indicate they are hot and sexy. There are so many topless actresses on the cable series Game of Thrones, viewers talk about how empowering it is to see small breasts for a change. Hordes of young women prefer the quasi-sex work of being a sugar baby to dating. College parties have costume themes like CEOs and Office Hos. Internet porn drives trends in programming, advertising, and social media, not to mention the technological development of the web. The first lady modeled nude and the leader of the free world bragged about grabbing women by the pussy.

FIGURE I.2. Advertisement still of model in American flag bikini, 2015. Source: Carls Jr.

How did we end up living in a cultural scene that might have featured in a pulp story from the 1950s written by a horny science fiction geek, I wonder, and how come so few people even notice? Its on our phones, in the mall, in magazines, movies, and television, in music lyrics and videos, in comedy material, on billboards, bus advertisements, and bumper stickers, on T-shirts, in video games and comic books, in hookup culture, at parties and nightclubs, and in conversations.

Valerie is 21 and biracial (Latinx and white), and it takes her less than one minute to scroll through her Twitter feed before she encounters a picture of a womans breasts advertising Celebs who got breast implants on socialshark.com. We are sitting at my dining room table with her close friend Elizabeth, who is white and 20, as I interview both young women about their thoughts on raunch culture. Elizabeth explained, In the middle of everyone talking, there will be an advertisement for something sexual like, Look at this nip slip, or Check out this teenager in her prom picture.

Like Valerie and Elizabeth, perhaps you have also noticed a creeping bombardment of provocative, half-naked women in advertisements, social media feeds, and television programming, and wondered What is going on? Have you fended off any porn bots? What do you think about the new college craze of Yeti butting in which young women model in thongs on Yeti coolers as you can see in ?

If you shop for girls or womens clothing, tops are tighter, and skirts are shorter in comparison to clothing norms of the 1970s and 1980s. Try entering a Halloween Express store and finding a costume for a girl or woman that isnt sexy nurse, sexy cat, or sexy anything. Perhaps youve seen kindergarteners twerking, or puzzled over the sexual violence portrayed in shows like American Horror Story. This is the pornographication Porn nation tells citizens: a sexy girl has the body of a porn star, and knows how to do an epic lap dance for her guy, while offering her a range of products and services to alter her physical self.