/ 13 August 2003

A guide to ‘sexing-up’ our sex coverage

Hands up if you regularly read Body Language, the sexual column in the print M&G.

Would it be right to say you’ve no qualms being caught reading it? And, in contrast, that you’d feel a fool if you wuz found fixated on the Back Page of the Sunday Times (or is it, increasingly, also the Front Page)?

The difference is between an intelligent peek at sex in the M&G, and an embarrassing tut-tut for the tinpot titillation of the Sunday Times.

But there is more to moan about than the morals of the Times‘ treatment of sex. The paper’s Back Page is not just offensive, it’s boring. Just like its other coverage of sex.

Take the edition of the past week, a period commemorating Women’s Day.

Surprise, surprise, we find the Sunday Times trundling out the usual tired suspects. Like: woman’s sex claims, nude male, J-Lo sex romp, smutty e-mail, secret lesbian fling, Angelina Jolie (allegedly) saying she hasn’t ”bonked for a year”.

The same edition quotes President Thabo Mbeki attacking abuse of women, and tells of a trio of women making Cradock’s criminal justice system work. Columnist Gwen Gill writes about the country’s ”wonderwomen”.

Schizophrenic. And equally so is the Sunday Sun (Sunday Sin?). There’s the usual Page 3 ”Sunbabe” with nipple on show. Headlines like ”Weeping gran faces sex rap” and ”Expose sexual monsters”. Elsewhere in the paper are reports on Mbeki’s Women’s Day remarks. Plus a study by Genderlinks and the Media Institute of Southern Africa that black women make up five percent of news-sources in South Africa.

In short, the Sunday press has a simple contradictory format: exploit women … and champion them. This approach is especially evident in the trashy way that they and their peers sell sexuality. Trashy, because what they hash up for us is based on the detritus of an imported definition of desire.

The tabloid discourse is stamped with an acquisitive ”male gaze” and compounded by stupidity and superficial mimicry. It reduces sexuality to heterosexuality, and a particularly prudish one at that. It comes direct, bottled at source in the finest Fleet Street springs of British hypocrisy (appropriately owned by Rupert Murdoch).

However, we aren’t solely copycats. Because, nowadays, we South Africans pay lip service to gender equality, we also celebrate women even while constricting their (and everyone’s) sexuality. So we run the sexist crud and we complement it with complimentary coverage. We respond to critiques of the ”Sun Babes” by proffering ”Sun Hunks”. We take the classic British formula and we extend it to men. How uncreative and unsexy can you get?

Evidently we’re too repressed to shed the straitjacket of how ”no sex” is supposed to please/sleaze in England. No wonder there’s no talent to be found in South Africa tabloid journalism.

The story of sexuality is not about inanities, nor celebrities and even less – in Africa – about set-dimensional human figures. It is not about a faked body-mind combo as an always available, fast-food, come-on commodity. It is neither about women as sex-objects nor even as active agents pretending to enjoy a sterile script.

Instead, it is the real South African story about life and libido in mega-exciting times.

First, there’s the seriously sordid side – the commerce, the violence, the HIV-infections. And the issues of education, advice and support. Don’t diss that kind of coverage in a society like ours.

Second, besides the problems, there is – of course – the pleasure principle. Covering sex does not mean refusing readers an entrée into escapism and fantasy.

Media is a business and sexuality is a very viable commodity. My pitch therefore is not to stop covering the topic, but to start. To start doing a decent journalistic job about it. To seek out, and serve up, the stories of the unruly rollercoasters of our sexual lives. Coverage that is excruciating, exhilarating or a mix of the two.

Let’s take this last week’s Sun Babe/Hunk. How sexy is s/he when truth be told? What really makes her/him randy? For me, it’s a turn-off if the pictured person is a racist or pays peanuts to a domestic worker. Conversely, when journalism gives a glimpse of a heart, a head, some wit, a sense of texture and touch… sex appeal spirals upwards.

When a writer portrays people in their delightful/dangerous complexity, with all the issues and dramas of our desires, I’m interested. Let our journalism speak about sex in regard to power, lust, love, passion, emotional extremes – as sex is and can be, and we’ll read it.

So, before Back Page boredom sends me to sleep, let’s get beyond the bullshit that is increasingly spreading through the newspaper entire product.

After all, as South Africans we’ve co-opted many communication formats and made them more powerful. We took the toyi-toyi from Zimbabwe and turfed out apartheid (cf. the recent movie, Amandla). We’ve successfully subverted soap operas (cf. Isidingo and Soul City). Our culture is full of innovation and invention.

So why can’t we do the same when it comes to journalism about sex?

Or does transformation stop at what the Sunday papers sell in the name of sizzle? Let’s get real; let’s have richer reporting on sex.

Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University and deputy chair of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef). He was recently nominated for the World Technology Awards.