Fist V. Face (A Landmark Decision on Gender Equality)

Posted by matt on Dec 12, 2009 in Web Videos |

My Reaction

So apparently MTV has decided not to air the already heavily promoted clip of Snooki from their new hit series Jersey Shore being hit in the face by some gym teacher from Queens.

According to network execs, this decision was made after a video clip of the incident went viral online. Here is their written statement:

“What happened to Snooki was a crime and obviously extremely disturbing. After hearing from our viewers, further consulting with experts on the issue of violence, and seeing how the video footage has been taken out of context not to show the severity of this act or resulting consequences, MTV has decided not to air Snooki being physically punched in the face.”

All I can say is, THANK YOU MTV! It’s nice to know that you’re still concerned about video footage being taken out of context. How dare the internets try to distribute this piece of Viacom licensed property disturbing footage with no thought to the severity of the act or the resulting consequences. It’s almost like they’re only using these violent, sensationalist clips to increase their ratings site traffic. Thank god for these network execs, these voices of reason. Because if I have to see poor, innocent Snooki being physically punched in the face one more time–outside of promotional clips, trailers, teasers, This-Season-On’s, and anywhere but MTV’s own website–I’m going to hit someone in the face. And probably someone with a female’s face.

I think there’s a bigger underlying issue that needs to be addressed here. It’s common knowledge that MTV has absolutely no problem showing men getting hit in the face. In fact, the statistics show–and the scientific community agrees–that on any given MTV program, a man gets hit in the face every 3.249 minutes. Care to guess how often a woman gets hit in the face? Every 15.397 minutes. A woman is almost 5 times less likely to get hit in the face than a man for doing the exact same amount of work (at being horrible human beings). ***AND, if you take out female-on-female violence that number plummets to an astoundingly low ratio of one male-on-female punch in every .000029 minutes of network programming. This is a travesty. And these network execs (read: men) are trying to tell us that Snooki can’t have her god-given equal right to see herself being physically hit in the face the same way MTV DJ Pauly D, or The Situation are able to enjoy? — Just because they feel it’s “disturbing” and “a crime”? I’ll tell you a real crime. The real crime is knowing that somewhere there’s little girl sitting at home watching MTV and thinking to herself, “Someday, I could be that girl on TV getting hit in the face.” Do we really want say to that little girl “No you can’t. Because you don’t understand the resulting consequences.”?

Understand this: women will never truly be equal to men as long as we allow this blatant discrimination to continue unchallenged. This is one glass ceiling that needs to be shattered.

Preferably with a fist.