Mystified by Popular Culture: Dirty, Dark, and Sticky: A Representation of Women's Bodies

The FX Networks’ new show “Dirt” will premier sometime in January 2007 and is about a female editor of two tabloid magazines. The network advertises this new show with a series of flashy commercials and a catchy song. Obviously, the title of the show “Dirt” correlates to the dirt these magazines compile about the lives of celebrities. However, the advertisements lend themselves to feminist interpretation because this “dirt” occurs only in conjunction with the female body. Any feminist interpretation can easily supplant the notion that the representation of women and dirt in these commercials exist only to illustrate the connection between the female editor and the dirt she dispenses to the masses. Coincidentally the metaphor women are dirt is a very old idea and one embedded in the discourse of popular culture and evident in these commercials.

Eleven different commercials for “Dirt” currently air on the FX channel and all, except one, are available on the FX Networks website.

This clip, which is untitled by the FX Networks, does not appear on the FX website. Why they would not mind airing this clip, but seem to overlook its absence on their website is interesting. Perhaps simulating drug use on TV is better than simulating drug use on the internet. Here a woman’s manicured hands with nails painted bright red rolls up a tabloid and uses it to inhale dirt like cocaine. What is important to note, and what is a recurring theme in all of the other clips, is that women, often associated with the color red, are always associated with dirt, reinforcing the old notion that women are dirt and their bodies are something dirty.

The clip above, entitled ‘Camera’ depicts a female carrying a camera with a zoom lens dangling in front of her vagina like a penis. As she walks towards the viewer, she grabs the camera essentially erecting her pseudo-penis, and snaps a shot collecting dirt. [i] The phallus nature of the camera emphasizes the active characteristics of the penis: it becomes erect, flashes, and captures a photograph/dirt. Conversely, this phallus obscures the vagina, which is active only in its ability to recognize and select the dirt that the camera/pseudo-penis will capture. While the phallic camera only has dirt passing through it, not becoming a part of it, this commercial as well as the others in this series suggest that the female body is inherently dirty, dirt-filled.

This phallic camera also represents technology, advancement, and science. The female body can only achieve such advancements by toting this phallic camera in her groin, taking a shot with her vagina, not her head or eyes. In fact, the omission of the woman’s face contributes to female objectification because she is a torso, a body, an object; she has no head, no mind. [ii] In Gossips, Gorgons & Crones Jane Caputi writes that these images “suggest that women have no minds” (82).[iii]

For the following clip please follow this link.

In ‘Suit’ the male face and eyes appear while only the woman’s back and arm are visible. She remains faceless. The male wears an immaculately white starched shirt, which the woman’s touch stains. These commercials continue to suggest that filth is inherent in the seductively red-clad woman. Her touch and kiss stain him. Of course, this dirt is superficial for the male. He can wash his shirt, the camera/phallus can be opened and the dirt removed, but the female in these commercials seems to need this dirt, it is like a drug, it is a part of her, inherently connected to her.

The origins of the idea that women posses an inherent stain repeats throughout history in many forms. Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy identifies how monotheism endows “God’s blessing of man’s seed [....while] in the story of the Fall, women and, more specifically, female sexuality became the symbol of human weakness and the source of evil” (201). [iv] It is interesting to note that man’s seed, whitish in color, stands in metaphorically for the man’s shirt in the previous clip, while female sexuality, literally her menstruation is red like her dress. Caputi notes that “[m]any anthropologists have reported that, almost universally, menstrual blood and menstruating women are considered dangerous and/or offensive” (164).

Returning to the creation myth, women are seen as the originators of our sin. Eve ate of the apple of knowledge first (smart girl). Therefore, in their book The Great Cosmic Mother [v] Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor remind us that “the entire priesthood exists to ‘redeem’ us from the ‘sin’ of being born from the Mother” (231) and these priests in almost all patriarchal religion are men. Inherently, men believe that the Bible story justifies their moral superiority, it is their job to save everyone especially woman from wickedness. This reinforces the idea that men are more pure, closer to god than women, who are associated with the earth, and in these commercials, with dirt.

The notion of women as sinful and evil are not restricted to theological concepts, even Freud perpetuates this notion as Mary Daly notes in her book Gyn/Ecology. [vi] She observes that Freud expanded “the list of maternally caused symptoms.” For example, Freud believed that the “mothers of hair-plucking children [....] induced such disturbed behavior” (266). But Daly’s observations do not stop there as she discusses and examines the “mother-hating myths,” the fairy tales which “teach that the only good mother is a dead mother” (266).

It is interesting to examine how the idea of women as dirty originated in order to elucidate the suggestiveness of these commercials and their impact on societal thought, which works on a subliminal level to solidify these stereotypical notions of women. For example, in the fourteenth century Giovanni Boccaccio writes about women’s uncleanness saying that “[n]o other creature is less clean than woman: the pig, even when he is most wallowed in mud, is not as foul as they” (qtd. in Blamires 167).[vii] Statements like these abound and create the basis for current societal thought of women.

The implications of these advertisements are obvious. Women are still objects, associated with sex, blood, and filth. These arguments are not new. The medium through which they travel has transformed, but the metaphors are still the same.

Finally, besides the visual imagery of these commercials, the song that colors the background is charged with metaphorical references to women’s bodies. Peter Gabriel sings the song “Digging in the Dirt,” which he also wrote. The best examples from the lyrics that refer to the image of women in these commercials are the following lines: “Something in me, dark and sticky / All the time it’s getting strong / No way of dealing with this feeling / Can’t go on like this too long.” Of course, this something that is dark and sticky could only refer to a woman who is menstruating. The interesting twist of this song may be that it a man sings it, but juxtaposed with the images of fragmented female bodies, the focus of the song turn to them. When he sings that this dark and sticky substance is “getting strong,” feminists would immediately see this as a good thing, but modern day gynecology would have us believe otherwise. Anything that makes us feminine is a nuisance. If we consider these lyrics from the male perspective perhaps he is disgusted by the feminine qualities that exist in his body, they are disgusting, like the dirt the woman leaves behind on the man’s shirt. It is something that must be controlled and removed, he “[c]an’t go on like this too long.” Later in the song, he sings that this substance/essence can be felt in his “head” and “toes” as well as in his “sex, that's the place it goes.” Indeed he must be frightened like many other men throughout history who perpetuate the cultural practice of circumcision under the guise of hygienic (which is untrue, proper hygiene will avoid any complications with foreskin); in reality the foreskin is too similar to labia and therefore it is removed in order to heighten the maleness of the child. Whether this song refers to the “dark and sticky” substance within women or men, one this is certain, it is always a bad thing. Anything feminine, whether it exists in a woman or a man is dirty, dark, and sticky.

For the full lyrics to the song "Digging in the Dirt" click here.

[i] In the ‘Lightbox’ clip a camera opens and rather than film falling out, a pile of dirt falls upon the table. For this particular clip, when the female snaps a photograph we can infer that she is collecting dirt, not images.

[ii] Courteney Cox’s face does appear in some of the commercials, but the actor whose hands inhale the dirt, whose feet leave behind dirt footprints, and whose torso appears in many of the commercials, never shows her face. In fact, it is interesting to note that in the ‘Tabloid Dog’ clip Cox’s face is superimposed with what looks to be a Rottweiler with it’s teeth showing, perhaps an allusion to the vagina dentata. In another clip, ‘Shovel’ Cox’s face glistens on the surface of a shovel, the metaphorical phallus about to penetrate the earth/woman. In either case, the commercials depict woman as fragmented, in pieces, without a head and when a head appears is associated with violence, carnage, animalistic characteristics, and woman turned into weapons against women (I discuss this further in the Starship Troopers blog entry below).

Shovel Clip