Racy ‘Glee’ photos are sexism as usual

October 23, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Mary McNamara

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

Et tu, “Glee”?

A mildly pornographic slideshow of photos accompanying “GQ’s” November cover story about “Glee” recently went up on the magazine’s website, and the obligatory onslaught from parents groups has begun, with terms such as “pedophilia” being thrown around along with renewed complaints that the show is too sexually explicit for the young teen and tween end of the audience it courts. In light of the show’s rather self-congratulatory “some people want to do good” Team Project ads, the term “role model” — so bizarre when it is connected to celebrities of any sort — makes a bit more sense than usual.

But the problem isn’t so much the sex as the sexism. And the disappointing banality of it all.

The photos feature Dianna Agron (Quinn), Lea Michele (Rachel) and Cory Monteith (Finn), kicking off with Monteith smiling his All-American smile while grabbing the scantily clad derrieres of two young women. So fresh. So daring.

Monteith is, of course, fully clothed and fresh-faced rather than come-hither. Not so his female co-stars, who bare their midriffs and decolletage, bras and panties, in thighs-spread, derriere-hoisted do-me poses made more than slightly unsettling by their school-girl ensembles. Michele, in particular, seems to be auditioning for a live-action version of Japanese anime porn.

Of course, Agron and Michele are grown women who only play high school students, and there is some version of satire at work here — the story “gleefully” references all the complaints from those same uptight parental groups. But it’s of the smug have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too variety. The result is not so much saucy and in-your-face as it is predictable and depressing — oh look, more young women being asked to assume the position, this time complete with pom poms and lollipop. No doubt Agron and Michele did it to be sexy and playful, and were not at all manipulated by forces that have put generations of young women in precisely the same poses for precisely the same reasons — to feed the fantasy, promote the show and sell magazines.

And that just makes it worse, doesn’t it?

Agron has issued an apology of sorts on her blog, though she also deflects the blame onto parents, writing “if your 8-year-old has a copy of our GQ cover in hand, again I am sorry. But I would have to ask, how on Earth did it get there?” — as if GQ were indeed pornography from which parents would protect their children as a matter of course and not a mainstream magazine available on newsstands everywhere.

Michele, whose poses are much more aggressively suggestive than Agron’s, has said the poses were unlike any she had ever done. Presumably, she wanted a payoff for the hours she has clearly spent in the gym since the show premiered, or at least a bigger payoff than her recent Britney Spears number. And no one can blame a young actress for wanting to make it very clear that, the Broadway cred notwithstanding, she isn’t a theater geek but a sexually attractive young woman who shouldn’t be shoe-boxed into Rachel roles.

But honestly, does a woman still have to strip down to panties and thigh-highs and straddle a bench to accomplish this? That’s not titillating or provocative or even retro.

That’s just sad.