Political blogger Blue Gal has a wonderful takedown of some “shocking and daring” fashion photos of a celebrity couple in a popular magazine. The photos are allegedly sexy. And real kinky-like.

...this whole bs “shocking” sexual images in advertising thing has got to stop. Because whenever sex is used to sell something, even sex, it’s not shocking, it’s boring. Terribly terribly boring. That’s why the coral suited lady newscasters on CBS Morning can cover it, do “on the street interviews,” re the “shocking” Threesome Calvin Klein ad in Soho.

It’s boring because it’s commerce rather than carnality, which means it is expressly designed for the public space and public sphere, something that is the opposite of illicit sex. If someone gets sexually excited by doing something illicit, shocking, and unacceptable to polite society, they will NOT do that thing on a five foot high billboard. That ruins the fun. We are not seeing Bruce and Emma’s private honeymoon photos in W. That’s perhaps the fantasy they were going for, but really. Who packs Fox fur? (Don’t answer that. Furries can go with God and all that, but sex with animals is not what He in His Divine Wisdom had in mind. Nevermind Nevada Senators, don’t get me started about those poor horses.)

But if Bruce and Emma are actually exhibitionists, this would still not be the result. Face it, to slake their thirst for real exhibitionism, they would have ‘leaked’ actual honeymoon sex video to some sleazy celebrity scandal website (no link but you know the one, dahlink) and the lighting would have been terrible and Alexander McQueen would have asked for his made-to-order harness back. Instead we have a “spread” designed to create [blog] buzz for a printed magazine, and look, it succeeded.

She said it here.

Of course she’s right — a photo that shows up on morning TV, even morning cable TV, pretty much by-definition isn’t shocking. Or, as she says, if it was they wouldn’t consider running it.

By and large it’s hard to sympathize with people who’s fetish really is shocking people. In the long run they’ve got to support priggishness or else risk having to do stuff they can’t stand either in order to get the “transgressive” thrill they need.

I mean, like, yeah, Bruce Willis on his back in an industrial kitchen with his partner dressed like a fur-suiter in a metal hat is just so daring and graphic I’m shocked the giant staff of professional photographers, assistants to the photographers, assistants to the models, assistants to the assistants, gophers, producers, schedulers, gaffers, makeup artists, hair artists, drapers, consultants, and stainless-steel polishers could stay awake keep their clothes on for the hours it took to setup and take those hot, hot, shocking, daring, naughty, naughty pictures!

The rest of Blue Gal’s piece, including her shorter Madonna Sex book tagline “No sex please, we’re posing,” is pretty great reading.