The K Experience

Jebb	\|03-04-2008 18:27:42

You're really over-thinking this, aren't you? Maybe not; maybe there's a great
idea for a research paper here. On the other hand, females have always played
the supporting role in U.S. game shows, whether it's the card-turners on Card
Sharks or the co-hostess on $ale of the Century (which was and is the case in
Australia, as well, for $ale of the Century (1980-2001), now known as Temptation
(2005-present)).

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K	\|03-25-2008 17:16:34

Good Point. I think one of the main reasons it struck me so much is because, I'm
not used to seeing that sort of things in Game shows, they just don't do it like
that in the UK. Well, to be honest I'm probably not the best judge as I hardly
TV, so maybe I'm totally out of touch. But the differences in the other versions
I found interesting though. Would be good to get a womans opinion on
this.

Update: Just found this interesting link to an opinion page on the
topic: http://www.heynielsen.com/opinion/view/way-to-take-feminism-back-50-year

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LetsPlayToy - Further analysis

|03-11-2008 12:54:51

I agree with your statements and choose to venture further with this analysis,
as you have hit on some good points, but have missed some of the details. The
show itself is extremely successful. but why? Well looking over the structure of
the way it has been set up, we can see that this television show infact
parallels into our own lives. Let me explain...
When coming up with a show in
order for it to be successful one would look at what else works in our society.
Now you mentioned these 26 women....
Take that each of these women are being
objectified, as you have noted. They are all of the same rate of high
attractiveness, same proportional height, weight, etc,(unrealistic of most women
BTW) which rids them of any sense of self-identity, rather making them work as a
collective whole, or objects.
Also each one is seldomly referred to by name, but
rather by a number, thus continuing this objectfication. "...Number
17!"
The use of these women is seen everywhere in our world to sell products
and attach this object to a product for use of sale. They are not on the show to
simply perform the task of keeping quiet and opening the cases, but rather for
appeal to the eye of being sexualized objects, dressing pretty
provocatively.
(it is also important to note that the show is headed by a male
leader who controls these 26 women telling them when to open the case; segwaying
into the notion of male dominion and control)
.... SO now why else do people
love this show?
Well again paralleling to the structure of each and every on of
our lives is luck. Each contestant starts out picking a case, which holds the
fate unknown to everyone (relating to the fate each and every one of us
eventually will reach) and so as the game is played the viewer indulges in his
or her own fantasies through our lovely contestant. Shouting out which numbers
to pick, and when they pick ones that are of high value we scream at the TV of
how they shouldnt have picked that number,... or even when offered a deal by the banker it is so easy to sit back
and say whether or not you feel they should take it. We are actually able to
live through these people our own feelings of desire and greed- but if someone
declines a high amount of money and then choses a case that makes the amount go
down well then "Jeez they shouldnt have been so greedy" - same with the
reverse, say someone takes a deal and then would have picked one that would make
it rise, well then those dummies should've kept going!!
But in the end it really
comes down to the fact of what the contestants case holds-- which wouldnt you
say is much like the fate we are all given when brought into this world. We are
born with a social class, gender, race and ethnicity-- that we either get lucky
or unlucky to have and the way in which we can use it ultimately helps or hurts
us. Oh and as for the banker-- whom we never see his face, doesn't HE remind
you of some type of god who we know is there but never can physically see? How
about the fact that he doesn't even talk, except to our great MAN leader host of
the show? Could he emulate the invisible patriarchy that ultimately we dislike
but are trained not to see and just abide by what HE says??

.....just some
thoughts. Thanks.

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K	\|03-15-2008 21:50:56

Wow!!!

Such an in-depth analysis, and so many deep points there too.
Interesting.

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Vndor

|03-19-2008 01:24:32

There are briefcase-holding women in the german version, too.

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Nikki

|05-15-2008 12:34:11

Maybe these women feel a sense of empowerment because they can get ahead by
there looks, and possibly may be smart enough to know that if (not always, but
usually) men are stupid enough to help them then who's losing out? Not the
women, they're the ones getting ahead, in the end.
Also, I happen to know some
of the women in the show went to Uni, not all - maybe even none of them - are
dumb blondes/bimbos!!

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LetsPlayToy - Sword of Power

|06-13-2008 11:49:02

Nikki (and others that feel the same)-
I completely understand where you are
coming from, but the problem is that it's not true. I never said that the women
on the show were dumb blondes and agree that they are not, but that they are
being used as tools and exploited for their sexuality. The thing is that when
women can make money from their sexuality it is not empowering and can seem
confusing because they are being paid for it so appears to be a good deal right?
wrong. Let me explain that contorting your body and curling your hair and
becoming appealing to men as a sexual object is not empowerment its actually
degrading and sad. The thing is that that power comes from the men (who have
the real power)- who pay the money and enjoy the eye candy- and so feeling a
sense of power by the way you can entertain the truly powerful is not power at
all- but an illusion of power. Here is a better analysis that I hope can make
this more clear because its a really important concept that people get tricked
on- and its not their fault- but rather another part of the genius (and
unfortunate) structure of patriarchy-

The Sword of Power

I think many of
us have experienced That Moment. That moment we think we see the light, that
moment of Power. The first moment may have been the moment in Middle School,
maybe High School for 'late bloomers' that moment when we wore a shorter skirt
than we normally did to school and suddenly, the boys who previously ignored us,
flocked to us.

Perhaps we had The Moment when we were in our boyfriend's car
necking on a Friday night when we were supposed to be at the movies. The Moment
when he looked at you and you saw something on his face that was strange, alien.
Before The Moment girls were something to be avoided by boys, we were perhaps
picked on, teased for having 'cooties'. We spent our days at school watching
other girls being teased or getting their asses grabbed. Maybe we saw the young
boys gather around a certain girl and cry out things like, "Itty Bitty Titty
Committee!" or, maybe we saw them snapping the strap on her brand-new
training bra. Maybe we had seen the boys, standing at the bottom of the
stairwell, taking turns looking up the stairs at the girls who were wearing
skirts. Perhaps we saw that the girl was, in effect, helpless. There was no
recourse available to her. Maybe we even watched, horrified, when she went to a
teacher and we saw the teacher pat her on the head and tell her, "Boys will
be Boys. Just ignore them honey and they'll stop".

There was certainly A
Moment that came before the moment in the car. The first Moment, the moment when
we realized with shock and a little bit of horror, that boys could act in almost
any way they wanted in regard to our girlfriends and come out of it unscathed,
or with only a slight warning from a teacher. We saw the boys acting with
impunity, maybe we watched them circle around our girl-friends and take turns
touching her ass while she circled and tried to play it off like she was
laughing and joking with them rather than being the proverbial butt of the joke.
Nevertheless most girls realized, rather early on, that we were helpless in the
face of the boys.
If you were like me you may have beat the shit out of them
back in Elementary School, while you were still physically able to do so. But
all of that changed in Middle School. When we came back to school after a summer
of climbing trees and romping with our friends we saw that the boys were much
bigger than we were. They were also more aggressive than we remembered as well
as louder and more brazen. Soon, many of us knew which girls we should avoid,
which ones brought the most amount of torment onto themselves by some mechanism
which may still be elusive to us. We watched as they went to the teachers,
telling them that so and so boy snapped their bra-strap, or so and so boy
touched their butt or even dry-humped them on the playground. We watched as the
teachers wearily pulled the young offender to the side and reprimanded him
half-heartedly and we watched as the same group of boys teased the 'tattle-tail'
relentlessly on the schoolyard. We watched and we had A Moment.

We realized
that we were powerless. There was probably fear, the fear of having them zone in
on you, the fear of finding the group of boys as we rounded a corner in the
hallway. I think that, to varying degrees, women have gone through this all over
the country. Our times in school were a time when we realized that we were not,
and never could be, Just Another Person.
We probably watched the boys calling
each other 'Sissy', the very term that our Mothers and Fathers called us, but
they were using it derogatorily, they were using our pet-name as an insult. We
probably heard them laughing at one another, telling the weaker boy that he
"Threw like a girl", but?but?We were girls! What was this? We probably
heard them taunt another boy who was crying on the playground by saying
something like, "Cry little girl! Cry!!" and we looked at ourselves and
thought, "Is there something wrong with being a girl?"

But all that
changed, didn't it? During our first years in school we had The Moment when we
realized we were powerless from all but the most heinous of teasing. We learned
that having our asses grabbed and being tormented about our breast size or
having our bra-straps pulled were part and parcel of our lot as girls. It
probably happened slowly, insidiously, until we realized, maybe many years
later, that boys made us feel powerless, weak, afraid, and maybe even ashamed.
Later we found another Moment, a Moment in which we saw Power.

That Moment
may have been in the passenger side of the car, maybe it was at your parents'
house when they were out for the evening. You may have been kissing your
boyfriend and you opened your eyes and saw?.something. Something so alien that
it failed to register in your consciousness, but your lizard brain got it, your
lizard brain speaks that language and recognized what you saw. Power. For that
brief moment you looked at him and knew, somehow, that he would do whatever you
wanted if you would let him touch your breasts, or let him give you a hickey or
let him do whatever it was that he may have wanted to do.

The Boy, the
ever-powerful boy was giving you Power. The same boy who tortured you in 3rd or
4th grade. The same boy who ruthlessly pulled bra-straps and led the gang of
other boys to touch your friend's ass while she was walking down the hallway.
The same boy who grabbed your purse and rooted through it, looking for the
tampon or maxi-pad that they knew was in there. The boy who then pulled it out
and stuck it to the floor or the wall or who just played "Keep away"
with it until you were almost in tears from embarrassment but were too afraid to
cry. The girls didn't help, they just watched, terrified of bringing that wrath
down onto themselves if they said anything. The teacher only mildly scolded them
and you most likely went away feeling ashamed for being so upset. That very same
boy was now looking at you with a look of Submission. A look of Desire. Desire
so fierce that you knew that Power, the only Power you may have ever been
allowed, resided in that gaze.

This is the Second Moment in our lives. The
Moment we note that our boyfriends bulging crotch and bulging eyes gave us
Power. From there on out we tried our best to recapture that Power. We curled
our hair, we slathered our faces with makeup, we wore short skirts and shirts
that showed the beginnings of our cleavage. We jostled with the other girls,
competing for The Power. This was a new thing to us, this Power. We thought that
we finally had insight, that we finally understood. Our sex was powerful if we
flaunted it.

From there on out we turned on our girlfriends, getting angry at
the girl who wore the short skirt and who was surrounded by the troop of boys.
We saw the looks in their eyes and knew that she had The Power. We called her
whore and slut, because we thought that she had The Power. And she did, didn't
she? The boys didn't torment her in the same way. Instead, they seemed to accept
her, to want to be around her. She seemed to be safe as long as she kept them
desiring her. When she was desired they treated her well, they didn't snap her
bra, they didn't torment her ruthlessly, they seemed, for all intents and
purposes, to be treating her kindly and with respect.
"So," we thought,
"That is where Power lies". And we believed it. We jostled for position,
trying to be the one that stood out above the others. We learned that Power lay
in the hands of boys and men.

I did all of this and more. I sought that Power
for most of my life. I turned myself into the proverbial sex-kitten, evoking and
wielding That Power like a sword, brandishing my sex for all to see, watching
the men go glassy-eyed and slack-jawed as I gyrated on the dance floor in some
bar late at night. My Power, my sense of self, was utterly reliant on THEM. And
it was in this that I found the paradox of my supposed Power.

It occurred to
me at some point that the Power I wielded was only an illusion of Power. My
Power was utterly and completely dependent on men. All those years I thought I
held a large Sword of Power and suddenly, I realized that my sword was a gift,
given to me by the men who wanted me to believe I had Power. The edges were dull
and it could not cut, it could not wound in any real capacity and then it became
clear. The Power in my sword was false and I saw the sword for what it really
was, a cheap Made-in-Taiwan plastic imposter.

It slowly dawned on me that
Power given from the Powerful to the weak based upon the weak's ability to
entertain the Powerful was not Power at all. In other words, the Power I thought
I had was only there because I chose to submit to the people who held the Real
Power. The Men. Men were the keepers of 'Real Power' and I had succumbed to the
inherent bargain. That bargain was that I was allowed to feel Powerful if I
acted in the way that they wanted me to. I was allowed to feel Powerful as long
as I continued to make them feel more Powerful than me. Make no mistake about
it, all my capering and dancing and wooing served to make them feel MORE
Powerful than me. They had the Power of the King and I had the Power of the
Court Jester, Powerful only as long as I kept the King entertained.

I looked
around and realized that I had been jostling for the position of Court Jester
and you know what? I got that title, I got it and I wore it, but I thought it
was a different title.
As the years flew by and the men got older I had to do
more and more to keep my title intact. At first, way back in those early years,
I had only to wear a short skirt. Then, I had to let a boy put his hand up my
shirt, then down my pants. Finally, I had to let him inside of me and even that
wasn't enough to keep The Power. Soon, I had to writhe and contort my body in an
effort to keep The Power I had been given. I began to live and breathe for the
pleasure of men. Delighting in the scraps of Power I was allowed to have. Later,
I had to pretend that I liked anal sex, I had to pretend that the man I was with
was pleasuring me greatly. I had to scream and gyrate, I had to succumb to being
called names like 'Whore' and 'Slut' and pretend I enjoyed it. As the years
dragged on I had to work harder to keep my plastic sword, I had to scream louder
and act more sheepish, I had to dumb-myself down for I realized that few Men
liked it when I was more intelligent than they.

The day I looked down and
realized my sword was plastic I realized I had also been duped. That I had sold
myself to be the Court Jester. I had become the Porn-star, I had become 'Every
Man's Fantasy' I had managed to become the 'Object of Desire'. There was nothing
you could do to me that was too degrading, nothing that was off-limits. I craved
that look in their eyes like a Junkie jonesing for a fix. It was, after all, the
only 'real' Power I had ever known. Every man who met me lusted after me, my
boobs were presented in push-up bras like fruits to be picked. My hair was
styled in the fashion of 'Just had hot-monkey-sex' look, my eyes were suitably
sultry and my gaze was always poised to meet the gaze of a man from under my
eyebrows. I had mastered the art of appearing submissive yet sultry and Men
continued to put plastic swords in my hands. Every movement I made was for the
sake of the men around me and I was skilled at the art of presenting my body in
the best light possible. My back was arched, my shoulders were back, and my chin
was slightly down. This was the existence I carved out for myself and you know
what? It worked. It worked right up until I realized that I had been
tricked.

I made a vow that day, I vowed that I would capture THEIR POWER. The
Real Power. The Power of Independence, the Power of Intelligence, the Power of
Success. Since then I have been labeled many things. I have been called
"Frigid", my beliefs have been teased as being "Renaissance", I
have been called and labeled a "Prude", I've been accused of being a
"Man Hater" of being "Rabid" and "Extreme". Many times
it feels as though I've landed back in the days of Middle School and that I have
become the girl that seemed to bring chaos with them, the girl who was tormented
ruthlessly. I think I know now what those girls did to anger the boys so much.
They were Taking Power. They had, somehow, seen that the sword was plastic and
they refused to play the games that the boys wanted them to play for Power.
Instead, these girls had shown that they wanted the Real Power, the plastic
sword wasn't enough for them and god, how this angered the boys.

Now, when I
see young girls and women displaying themselves for that Plastic Sword of Power,
my heart goes out to them. When I see Porn stars on the screen I see in their
hands, the Plastic Sword. When I see "Girls gone Wild" I see, held in
one small hand, that almighty Plastic Sword. When young girls pass me on the
street looking like Barbie dolls I look sadly at their hands and realize that
they too are clutching that Sword. And I've found through the years, that women
hold onto that sword as tightly as possible, it saddens me but I don't get
angry, I can't get angry because they don't realize that the Sword is plastic,
they don't realize that they've actually gotten the job of the Court Jester,
they believe they're a bona-fide member of The Court.
They cloak themselves in
'Empowerment,' but Empowerment based upon how well you can contort your body is
not Empowerment. Empowerment based upon how practiced you are at screaming the
scream of the fake orgasm is not Empowerment. Empowerment based upon molding
your body and your mind to make Men Feel Power is not Empowerment. These are the
trappings of Court Jester and the Power bestowed upon you is the Power given to
you by the Truly Powerful.

I believe that we, as women, will only find the
true Sword of Power when we remove the trappings of achieving the Plastic Sword
of Power. I believe that we, as Women, will only be Powerful when boys no longer
tease in Middle School. I believe that we, as Women, will only be Powerful when
we are no longer raped for profit. I believe that we, as Women, will only be
Powerful when we refuse to allow our bodies and our sex to be bought and sold as
commodities.

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