What Camille Paglia Thought of Calvin Klein's Ad Campaigns (and Seeing Kate Moss's Bare Posterior).

Excerpts from a discussion on "Freedom Speaks" in 1995 about censorship, particularly as it related to Calvin Klein's controversial ad campaign that year.
Featuring Camille Paglia, Arianna Huffington, John Seigenthaler, and host Kerry Brock (Mr. Seigenthaler's daughter-in-law.)
Produced by The First Amendment Center, "Freedom Speaks" was a half-hour program that addressed topics like freedom of information, political correctness and flag-burning.

[@jhs2175]

Keep these classic Camille videos coming!

[@tallquaker]

Yes!! Please do!!

[@nmg2670]

Obsessed with all this vintage Camille

[@FrontRowVideo]

Glad you like it!

[@bresophil]

She's iconic. Wish she was still in the media, running her mouth

[@jzz6342]

I love the fact that a lot of Camille's ideas really feel authentic, and also substantiated

[@mauricesavard2149]

This is great, and I wish we had this kind of subtlety of thought in our political discourses today. Camille is on point as always, and this is back in the day when Arianna Huffington was a moderate conservative thinker. And I had never heard of or seen those Calvin Klein ads, but they certainly were creepy and clearly designed to evoke the atmosphere of gay amateur pornography. Very provocative!

[@Ailsworth]

If on the side of the bus is "in public," then so is in a classroom

[@rasheedlewis1]

Those Calvin Klein ads were literally straight up porn. Not tacky; seedy.

[@elizabethstuart8401]

Well, Paglia has a point about these ads being tacky and cringe worthy to watch. But, one also needs to ask why, why are they so cringy? Is it because young men are being sexualized? Women have been unnecessarily sexualized since forever. Yet, no one seemed bothered by it. But as soon as men were put in similar situations, the cringyness of the ads became apparent. Yes, Camilla such ads are cringy. Had you just woken up?

[@michaelsnook1684]

And you must still be asleep. No, they are not cringey because “women have been unnecessarily sexualized forever” and now it’s only seen as reprehensible because men are in “similar situations”, whatever that even means. How weak of an argument is that? That both young men and women (and unfortunately even boys and girls) find themselves in these situations (forced into sex work as a means of survival, as the ad suggests) is grotesque on its own, and nobody would deny this. Paglia argues that these ads are in particularly poor taste because at this point in time, with the AIDS crisis still in the rear-view, homosexuals continued to be unfairly lambasted as pederasts. What does this have to do with women being “unnecessarily sexualized”?

[@michaelsnook1684]

You really should read her work before attempting to level a critique against her ideas. I can’t stand this insipid, moralizing tone people take on when they think they’re so cleverly bringing down someone who so clearly sprints circles around them intellectually.

[@elizabethstuart8401]

@michaelsnook1684 Shut up! I have read her work. A few of her books, actually. She is cringy.