...Flash forward a couple weeks to when I am sitting in a class where, for what must have been the tenth time this year, the discussion turns to a recent YouTube video cult phenomenon, “Two Girls, One Cup.” “Two Girls, One Cup” or 2G1C, is a one-minute pornographic fetishist film created by Brazilian director Marco Fiorito. It was released for free over the Internet in October 2007. It involves an unidentifiable cup in a similar size and shape to a Starbucks Grande. In the film, two women sexually arouse each other in an unconventional manner. Put delicately: they put things into the cup, and then take the things out of the cup. I can’t help but think of my Starbucks cup, the quote and the logo. There is something about the cups and the women and the consuming that just won’t leave my mind alone.
The positioning of Starbucks brand is obvious: coffee facilitates chatting and thinking and productivity. This formula is so simple it’s barely worth thinking about. And yet. What if there is more to it than we think? If only we could ask the mermaid how she feels about being noticeably topless on what is one of the most commonly used coffee carrying cartons in the world. The same goes for the women featured in the 2G1C video. I wonder if they know the extent to which their work has been viewed, and how they feel about it. I know my questions will not be answered by either of these dead-end sources, so I decided to do my own investigating. I am so intrigued by the symbolism of the cup (dare I mention the biblical chalice) and the roles they play in these two cases of marketing, I cannot help but to investigate further.
My search for meaning begins at PornoTube.com. After a bit of clicking around and some light reading I find a few key pieces of information about 2G1C. The US Government has since seized the rights for the mainstream video streaming websites to show it (meaning it no longer plays on YouTube.) The government found it necessary to intervene after the video’s popularity reached a level of being nearly unavoidable to millions of regular free-streaming-video watchers. Within a few weeks of its release, the video was being shared at record rates among the young adult community. It has since been linked by countless blogs, news articles and websites. It was a number one video on VH1’s Best Week Ever series, and even popular musician and comedian, John Mayer jumped on the bandwagon, making his own parody. Perhaps the only thing that has outdone the popularity of the original 2G1C video, are some of the reaction videos. That’s right, videos made of people reacting to 2G1C, such as those which featured George Clooney and Kermit the Frog.
In doing more research, I find that the 2G1C video is a teaser to purchase a full-length movie made by Mr. Fiorito. The company name flashes before and after the girls commit the acts featured in the teaser. After seeing the teaser, if you should feel inclined to hop over to Fiorito’s company website to check out the merchandise in their Extreme Fetish DVD Shop (which I did, for investigatory purposes), you would find a very wide selection of pornographic material to chose from. There are nineteen major categories, each with a number of different video products in them, ranging from 7 to more than 280. Like lesbians? Chose from 20 different videos. Like Domination? Chose from 12. Like “Extreme Sex”? Know what “Extreme Sex” actually is? You can chose from 26 different options to find out. There’s something for every fetishist here, at this easy to use, fast and reliable website. You can custom-order your porn like a Toyota Scion, a Dell PC, or a Starbucks Latte.
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As the Biblical story goes, sometime after Eve materialized from Adam’s rib, she was tempted by the evil Serpent to eat a piece of fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve defied God’s word and ate the fruit. She convinced Adam to eat the fruit too. All Adam needed was the presence of Eve to convince him to purchase—I mean eat—that fruit. Its as if the Serpent knew that by slithering up into the tree and bringing a piece down for Adam and having Eve lung it in his face, it would have been impossible for him to ignore.
Women today play a role in the marketing world that is not unlike Eve’s role in Genesis. Women are needed to sell products. After about two thousand years since it was first recorded in the bible, you’d think the scenario would play out a bit differently. Sure there are new players in the game of the market, new stakes, new products and new prices, but the propelling force behind most advertising campaigns is the same: sex, as in the female sex, sells.
In doing my research of 2G1C, I noticed that in a very short amount of time in business-years, Mr. Fiorito carved himself a good-sized piece of the porn market pie. This is no small task as the porn industry is one of, if not the biggest and most successful industries to exist in the age of the Internet. One of the most interesting facts I uncovered about the video is the identity of Mr. Fiorito’s business partner. It is his wife, Joelma Fiorito. It is impossible to say exactly how big a role Joelma played behind the scenes, but as the number-two person in charge of this masterfully executed marketing scheme, I think it’s safe to assume she is a valuable asset to the company...
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Former US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, is hailed by feminists around the globe for her provocative decree now featured on Starbucks cups everywhere. “There is a special place in Hell for women who do not help other women.” In saying this, Madeline is banking on the fact that we women believe that there are two ultimate destinations in the first place: Heaven, or Hell. And that each of our actions can be judged to be worthy of going to one of these two places. If this were true, or at least widely believed, these words might be more applicable. However, the reality is that women of today are more complicated than this simple statement allows. We modern women do many things. We do many things with our bodies. We have many motivations, and face many judgments. Some of us help each other. Some do not. Some think that a woman should not be expected to be helpful, just because she is a woman.
And just what are we to make of the case of Joelma Fiorito? If we take Madeline’s words to mean that to help another woman is to support her mentally and emotionally, and to promote her overall wellbeing, it would appear that Joelma’s work does not fit into this rosy picture. Joelma makes a lot of money off of the degradation of bodies just like hers. Even though other women are shown in the videos, she must not think for one second that she is not demeaning herself in the process. No, I think she is quite aware of the demeaning-factor. I just think that this is not one of her major concerns. Joelma dominates a highly competitive business with a fierce dedication to victory. And by her own standards, and the standards of the industry, she is winning so far. Her bank account is full, and business is booming. In the porn industry, this is no small task. It is widely known that 80% of the content on the Internet is porn. In other words, her competition is 80% of the Internet? How big is the Internet exactly? How much is 80%? These are not odds that I would take on myself. Morals aside, Joelma is defying these statistics and is highly successful in her own twisted little niche.
Jolted on coffee, in my state of hyper awareness to all things women, consumption and media, I find it impossible to avoid another story of a successful female in the sex marketing business (‘successful’, again, is a relative term). It is the case of Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Like Joelma Fiorito, Ashley is in a business, prostitution, which does not fall into the category of being “helpful to other women.” Before her identity as New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer’s (A.K.A. Client Number 9’s) most frequent prostitute was leaked to the public and repeated religiously for a few weeks straight by major news stations, Ashley Alexandra was an aspiring hip-hop singer in New York. She was waiting for her big break into the mainstream music world. As of now, just a few months after her identity was leaked, the number of profile views on her Myspace Music account is 10,235,491. She has been named Maxim’s Woman of the Year. Penthouse and Hustler are starting a bidding competition for her in to be in their next issues at $1 million. $1 million is also the starting offer from Kick Ass Pictures, an adult film company who wants her as the lead in their next work. $1 million is the offer for a book deal. Georgi Vodka can’t come up with $1 million, but they’d like to call their next product “Vodka No. 9.” There is also a perfume deal afloat, with the slightly less clever name of “Client No. 9.”
Like Joelma, Ashley is now the epitome of success in the sex-media industry.
On the surface of these “success stories,” we see swift, bold women who are champions of a male dominated business. We see women who refuse to let men make the only claims to the success that comes from making a sale out of the female body, be it on film or in person. We see women who are claiming the rights to control the power of their womanliness.
If I were to continue to examine the actions of these women under a microscope stripped of a moral filter, I would think that to be in a position of control over the money making power of the female body would be satisfying enough. I might even consider this as possible aspect of being an ideal woman. If I continued to allow my perception of these women to be based on nothing more than the narrow way they are portrayed in the media, I might think that their shit was worth buying. However, my microscope is not stripped of a moral filter. In fact, the microscope does me little good at all. I prefer to see these public matters of womanliness that bombard me via mainstream media in the broadest possible view. I prefer to discuss them over coffee. When I am with my girlfriend and we are trying to figure out how we too can claim control over the power of our womanliness, we brainstorm many possible ways in which this can happen for us. We can control of our bodies, we can control the kinds of sex we have, we can control the kinds of food we eat; we can control what we wear, watch, read, listen to, say, think, and do. We can control the way we walk down the street. We rarely agree on how we’d each like to personally go about controlling these aspects of our womanliness, but there is one thing we definitely agree on: we both want to support, not judge each other in the process.
