X-Factor producers forcing girls into sexualised dress?

[Eurostar]

I haven't watched X-factor for a few years but thought I'd youtube Gamu today as I was wondering who this person is who is all over the news.

I saw her first audition - looking like a teen, quite modestly dressed, you could concentrate on her voice and her presentation

Saw her boot camp audition (later in the process I presume) - horrible short, tight skirt, patterned tights, heels you could break your ankle on, tiny very low cut top. Hair hardened into a style that looked old for her age.

Would this change happen without pressure from the producers to dress in a sexualised way? I'd be interested to know from TV people posting here, I believe there are some on the site?

Riven, just watch some of Serge Gainsbourg's stuff on youtube and you can't fail to see what epater le bourgeois means.

Look at wikipedia for the Dadaist movement and they spell out what it is about

"According to its proponents, Dada was not art, it was "anti-art". Everything for which art stood, Dada represented the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics, the Dadaists hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics."

and

"Years later, Dada artists described the movement as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path. [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."

Even the avant-garde artist, Sebastian Horsley, whom we have discussed before on here, was a proponent of epater le bourgeois in the manner of Dada

I am the Mama of Dada

epater le bourgeois is about destroying bourgeois culture, about outraging and demoralizing hewingandhacking and the rest of the public.

'but why claig?'

It's like most things. It's about politics, control and power. It's about a revolution and a destruction of the existing, civilised bourgeois order in order to bring to power the revolutionaries.

It's about destroying the hated enemy, the bourgeois.

As Lenin said
"let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois - more blood, as much as possible"

bourgeois is middle class, the law abiding average citizens. The Marxists despise teh bourgeois, they are their main enemy, not the aristocracy. That's why they hate teh Daily Mail so much. They don't give a stuff about the FT, it's the Mail they hate.

Erm, have you SEEN Brian Friedman? This is mad. Yes, groping inappropriate for family show (choreography is based on that by Bob Fosse for Sweet Charity), but really, a conspiracy theory? ANOTHER conspiracy theory actually, isn't it, Claig? Is Simon Cowell responsible for 9/11 too?

Simon Cowell is a good egg, it's nothing to do with him. I don't think it's Brian Friedman either. It has permeated the culture and is all over MTV. It's not isolated.

The groping was awful!

The producers must've known about it, however much Brian Friedman or whatever his name is, protests as it on shown post watershed.

Can you imagine if it was the other way around and the women were groping the male dancers crotches?

Peoeple love to push the bounderies...and live breast groping on a 'family' prime-time televison show is pushing it...

claig,
I agree with many of your points, however the problem I have, as a leftie, is that you do not address the rampant inequalities in our society which leads to people wanting a strong state in the first place.
Many feminists gravitate towards marxism because they abhor paternal conservatism which is the only other alternative.
I am not a liberal leftie, more of a communist leftie, by the sound of it!! And I agree with all you say about shock tactics and how wrong it is. But you don't have an alternative. There is a lot of discontent among the proletariat. THe anarchist movement is gaining strength, indeed many feminists align themselves with the anarchist movement.

So while the lowering of morales and morals is atrocious, and particularly bad for women, the bourgeoise, or the upper elite, at least,is going to have to structure a fairer society than the one we already have. If the right wants women, feminist women, on side, they are going to have to support mothers and as we have seen from the conservative cuts, they do not!!

This is getting silly. Simon Cowell OWNS the X-Factor. He is the X-Factor king. THe late Serge Gainsbourg is not running an international Marxist conspiracy from beyond the grave with Brian Friedman as his evil sidekick and Simon Cowell as his helpless pawn. It's camp, retro-sexist choreography to a Tom Jones tune sung by a raving lunatic in a ponytail.

They want to piss of the middle classes to destabilize them, probably, demoralize them too, as Claig says. Then the revolution of the underclasses can take place and there are a LOT of disenfranchised, discontented men around now. Skilled labour has been outsourced to CHina. There are no jobs in the mines or in factories, there are no skill requirements such as carpentry, and in a classist, elitist society, that is not good.

A fairer distribution of wealth is the ideological goal of the left. That is why it gets a lot of support by women such as myself. The problem the left has is that it's highly misogynistic. FOr them, liberalism equals women for sale, as a sex underclass. The conservative right is not like that but it is paternalistic. It supports marriage, not single mothers, for example

X posted with CCF, who is always the voice of reason

NO it's not a conspiracy, but it's a trend that women are powerless to stop

Sakura, I agree with you, there is no easy answer. But, I think the conservatives are the best of a bad bunch. The Daily Mail is the best of a bad bunch. The anarchists are a disaster, they are Dadaists, par excellence. They want what the Dadaists want
"the Dadaists hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics."
and
"[It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization... In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege."

The communists are the same. We saw what the Khmer Rouge did to the bourgeoisie. There weren't many women on the Politburo. They are liars and deceivers, they are siren voices, that lead the people to doom. It's not the average bourgeois Daily Mail reader that is the enemy of society, it is people who control the anarchists and communists, but don't believe a word that these groups say.

We have to fight for a better society and for equality and fairness, but not by following the pied pipers of communism and anarchism. These tricksters work for the very people that hold us back and remove our civil liberties. We have to do the best that we possibly can in a bad world, and we have to realise who the real baddies are, in case we make the mistake of following them.

I wish you luck in your wait for the revolution - though obviously I am delighted that we won't see anyone swinging from the lamp-posts in England any time soon. I remember all this guff from hanging around with Socialist Workers at university - poor souls, 25 years on and still waiting! (some of them are prob still waiting to lose their virginity too, I would guess)

Yes, claig likes the Daily Mail because she's a conservative right-winger

Leftist feminism and conservative right-wingers overlap on the sexualisation of mainstream culture. We are on the same side on this point only.

Liberal Left-wingers (which is the media in general, according to claig, and I believe it) ridicule both feminists and conservatives.

Is the UK now full of secret Dadaists, with their secret Dadaist meetups and handshakes? Do they hang out with the Surrealists and the Futurists, or has there been a Schism? is there a Dadaist Popular Front, and the Popular Dadaist Front, and the Real Dadaists and the Dadaist Army?

CCF, I've discovered all this recently! Never heard of the socialist workers when I was at uni.

Yup, that's right Riven. ANd marriage, order, tradition. That's the right