Why have two shows, “The Girls Next Door” and “Big Love“, both about polyamorousness, taken off this past year? And, really, they couldn’t be more different:
Reality Show vs. Complete Fabrication
Hot Playboy Chicks vs. Stuffy (if hot) Mormon Ladies
Absence of Sexual Taboos vs. Presence of a Myriad of Taboos (all except being married to more than one woman).
Is it because they reflect a 21st century feminist attempt to suggest that, as long as a woman is an equal actor in a consentual sexual relationship, it doesn’t matter what form it takes? I’ve had many a conversation about the problematic nature of the term “exploitation”. If a woman consents to something that others would be seen as demeaning, is it still “exploitation”? What if she has a emotional or psychological history that might explain the abberation in her moral judgement? Do we than say that she lacks the presence of mind to recognize her own exploitation? Don’t we all?
Interestingly, however, in both shows, there is a clear “Wife #1″, the premise being that, all things taken into account, the man is still uncapable of (or unwilling to) provide equal emotional support to all three lady-friends. Or perhaps he is simply, despite himself, is affected by our society’s conventions of monagamous love between a man and a woman, and thus must relegate the others to a status of second-tier in order to maintain some semblance of emotional normalcy for himself.
I should also remember that “he”, in this case, is Hugh Hefner, the man who all but invented post-modern sexuality, especially with respect to the woman’s role in it. And yet, is he not a man? If you prick him does he not bleed? If he walks into a restaurant with 8 playboy centerfolds and 3 hot girlfriends, is he not the mack? (oh, rule of three; you are so cheap and yet so compelling…)
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