A woman in a bath towel asks a football star to hold off on playing the game and take care of some of her desires. He refuses, she drops the towel and jumps in to his arms; football will have to wait.
This pre-game skit during an ABC Monday Night Football intro Nov. 15 has been deemed offensive by viewers and the Federal Communications Commission, as it made the grave mistake of alluding to the fact that people sometimes have sexual relations. In accordance with rules that also limit allusions toward women who have body parts, the FCC is questioning ABC’s judgment (read: moral integrity?) in airing the incident. Many upset audience members have called the commission to complain. Rest easy America: Thousands of your citizens are spending their energy pretending that sex doesn’t exist, so now you don’t have to.
There certainly does seem to be something wrong with the acute momentum against this situation, which is quickly becoming costume malfunction number two. Instead of a nude breast, this skit showed actress Nicollette Sheridan’s bare back leaping into the embrace of football player Terrell Owens. Not that there aren’t serious problems with both of these television events: De-clothing women’s already sexually exploited bodies is no great step forward in the movement of sexual progressives. Yet no one seems upset about those issues; instead, there is an uprising of furor over the simple idea that sex occurs.
Sexuality on television is not a novel concept. According to a 1999 CNN article, 67 percent of network shows contain sexual content, and one can only assume that this count has most likely risen. Of course,
the sexuality portrayed in most
instances is ambiguous, and occurs outside the view of the camera. Still, condoning sexuality as long as
it happens away from the lens can only leave citizens with the message that sex is okay, as long as we don’t see it. Instead of real sex, and
the implications or responsibilities
of this act being shown, we promote fake sex wherein everyone is
white and heterosexual, always blond or muscular, and fears such
as pregnancy, STDs or rape do not exist. Everybody orgasms at the same time, every time, as observed in the disembodied sighs from beyond the viewpoint of the audience. This fake form of sex is readily accepted. Wait, but, I thought everyone has amazing orgasms when they wash their hair. …
Another important facet of this obscenity charge is race. With so many covert images of sex on television, it seems more than mere coincidence that this particular incident involving an interracial couple is causing conflict. Are we that backwards of a society that racial and sexual stereotypes would result in cries of obscenity? The diversity present in this scene, sadly unique to network television, should be lauded rather than regarded with disgust.
Much of the argument against the sexual innuendoes present in this sports broadcast is that it was shown during a time when families weren’t expecting a sex scene. True, which is why we should also eradicate every beer commercial ever made, as well as Herbal Essences ads, from sports broadcasts. When families don’t acknowledge, and indeed campaign against, the image of real sex, children come to believe that the act is something to be hidden and not discussed. Further down the road they are less likely to talk with their parents or other adult figure about birth control, disease prevention, or, heck, even technique. If the message is that two consenting adults having sex is bad, but oiled up women in bikinis swooning over liquor is fine, kids receive a seriously skewed version of sexuality.
It may be cliché, but when it comes to issues of sex, the European model is still the best. According to a 2001 Advocates for Youth document, France has 550,000 fewer teen pregnancies per year and 160,000 fewer abortions. The average age of first sexual intercourse is 18. Yet, commercials and television in this and other European countries commonly feature explicit references to sex, as well as bare body parts. Interesting that the opposite of U.S. indecency guidelines garners the societal results that we are still searching for with our hopelessly puritan ideals.
So, what does this say about our nation’s policy? If the definition of insanity is repeating an action over and over and expecting different results, then U.S. policies of obscenity on television as related to healthy sexuality and family morality are clearly insane.

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