18 June, 2009

Horny Hernu vs. The Front Page Campaign

What is it with the name “Piers”? The first that springs to mind is of course Mr. Morgan, but lately it’s been his equally slimy, paunched namesake getting (he wishes) on my tits; Piers Hernu, sometime Daily Mail contributor and, as I have had to hear twice on the radio this week, former editor of Front magazine and contributor to FHM. Journalism is of course the world’s second oldest profession – but no more so than in Mr. Hernu’s case does one suspect it was only an excuse to sidle a little closer to the oldest.

The reason for the BBC’s infliction of his dulcet tones is the Front Page Campaign, which, having recently won lottery funding, is now also receiving some media attention, leading to on-air debate between its founder (Amy King) and Piers Hernu. The campaign’s stated aim is “to protect children from offensive media and restore choice for adults”, particularly regarding “sexually explicit photographs and language”. In practical terms, this is a demand that such material be age-restricted and placed on the top shelf, out of sight and reach of children, but still perfectly accessible to adults. So what’s all the fuss about? Horny Hernu’s ego, apparently.

The first broadcast took place on 5live on Monday. I wondered at first if he's got real live friends to go out with at the weekends, because Hernu still sounded drunk; judging from his second performance on Radio Ulster on Wednesday, he’s either an inept alcoholic or has mugged one for their baseless bravado. When he wasn’t busy sniggering or talking over Ms. King (a tactic most of us leave behind with ill-judged haircuts and notes home from the teacher) Hernu repeated a couple of MENSAesque points over both interviews.

Firstly, lads’ mags are “clearly not sexually explicit” because “um, you know, I think that there’s a, a big, ermmm” – *wheezy silence* – “problem here with, with, with mistaking, erm, toplessness with pornography”. Well, quite. After all, the term definitely wasn’t “sexually explicit” rather than “pornography”, and anyway tits and ass have absolutely nothing to do with male heterosexual arousal – it’s really all just an NHS-sponsored biology campaign. Everybody else can tell that lads' mags are sexually explicit why doesn't one of their own contributors have the Nuts to admit it?

Then, on Wednesday, he squawked that “if you were to suggest this to any other country in the whole of Europe, they would laugh you out, you know, th- they would just laugh at you, because the rest of Europe has a much more enlightened attitude towards nudity and sexuality”.

Question: has Hernu ever been to the rest of Europe? I know it’s a funny foreign place all the way across the channel, but had he ever lumbered aboard a Eurostar, he might conceivably be aware that, actually, the rest of Europe wouldn’t need to “laugh… out, you know, laugh at” anyone for starting a Front Page Campaign, because they simply don’t have a comparable lads’ mag “culture” to protest in the first place. Their “enlightened attitude towards nudity and sexuality” would balk as much at Zoo as it does every summer at its escapees’ yearly migration to Eye-beef-fah. (And if we really had a problem with “sexually repressed morality”, we might have less of a problem with teenage pregnancy which – oh look! – is the highest in Europe).

So far, so dense. But he wouldn’t be a proper little sexist without a good bit of cliché thrown in, would he? Never fear, he’s on the case; “it’s usually some embittered old harridan who’s got- who gets on her high horse about this, and, and, you know, nobody actually listens, ’cause this has come up time and time again, you know, various women have fronted these kind of campaigns and, as usual, it, er, it turns out that there aren’t lots of people up in arms about this, there aren’t lots of children traumatised by this, it’s just, it’s just not the case that people are bothered about it”. Well yes, of course; “women” – the word spat out like curdled milk – taking issue with it is entirely different from proper “people” doing so, isn’t it?

Ms. King’s citation of surveys indicating that 98% of the general public agree with the campaign was met with further bluster, and burblings about young men being “slowly broken in, as it were, to the harsh realities” – *snort*– “of the sexual world”. But whose sexual world? Lads’ mags have nothing to do with the delicate flowering of male sexuality and everything to do with the entrenchment of male sexism. An airbrushed, submissive, surgically-enhanced, Aryan model flaunting her knickers and knockers isn’t sex; it’s wank-fodder. Wank-fodder, no less, for the spotty teenager who can’t get a real girl because he doesn’t know how to - and Nuts and Zoo sure as hell aren’t going to teach him.

Well, maybe if he's really lucky he'll grow up to be as “embittered” about “various women” as poor old Piers Hernu himself. Sexual enlightenment, my arse.

6 comments:

  1. I wonder how tall Mr Hernu is (absolutely hypocritical to say that considering my height, but in my defence, I don't buy lads mags). Maybe the reason he objects to the movement of his favourite magazines to the top shelf will be because he needs some aid to help him reach it.
    I really don't see what his problem is. The only thing that'll happen is that FHM et al will get moved to the top shelf. That's all.

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  2. What an absolute, total twazzock. FHM, Maxim- all of those men's mags are nothing but glorified porn. I used to read FHM when I lived with a few blokes (I liked the confessions. Sorry) but was continually horrified by the women on the cover saying things like "oooh I'd love some girl on girl" and dissing feminism and of course, getting their bodies out, when in the majority of cases they were famous for their job, be it singing, acting, whatever. It just makes me sad that women value themselves that way. My greatest compliment was recently, when I was given a job moderating a work forum because I was "eloquent in type" and "knowledgable about social forums".
    Ironically as a spotty bespectacled school girl I longed for attractiveness, but when I got it (supposedly) I actually realised how important being appreciated for YOU, not your looks is, for BOTH sexes.

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  3. sayem -

    the exception makes the rule! i have yet to investigate piers' height, but whatever the source of his inadequacy, he remains a pillock.


    jenny -

    yes, and the rest (as featured on the object website). it's not sexual content that's a problem, but the way it's depicted.

    women's magazines, dull dross as they are, do feature sexually explicit material (as piers impotently shrieked in one of the interviews) but it's all about how to make it best for both parties, rather than "me tarzan, you fuckbucket" which is all the men's - sorry, lads' - mags have.

    i do support most of the front page campaign anyway, but i wouldn't have thought to blog about it without hearing that excuse for a man on the radio. he makes truly hilarious listening, until you remember he's actually being put forward as an equal and worthy adversary in a constructive debate with (superhumanly calm, i thought, given what she had to speak to) amy king.

    and i agree about the looks thing - when so overvalued, they're as much trouble as help. it's so arbitrary too, as most people are "hot" within some particular niche/scene or another.

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  4. I've just been reading some photographer's assessment of mens magazines. Apparently neither Playboy nor Penthouse are porn. Why not bring them down from the top shelves too? I'd like to see how well that went down.

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  5. victoria - this makes interesting reading: http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=1724

    to be honest, i almost PREFER penthouse and playboy, because at least they admit what they are - it's just terminally pathetic the way the lads' mags snivel on about not being sexually explicit. for a sector so based on loutish bravado, they're laughably cowardly about admitting a few little words.

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  6. What angers me about lad's mags is the constant reinforcing of the myth that, not only do women want sex all the time, with you, but they want it exactly the way YOU want it.

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