Obscene Obsession

Last week, Harvard’s Environmental Action Committee organized a convention that brought over 400 students from all over the Northeast together to discuss how to effectively combat global warming. A few months ago, two Harvard juniors launched a nonprofit organization called CollegeCorps that will enable students to volunteer for international humanitarian efforts in developing countries around the world. The annual Evening with Champions organized by Eliot House students has raised over $2.2 million for cancer research and care since its creation in 1970. This weekend, thousands of high school students are coming together to promote civic responsibility through Harvard’s student-run Model Congress convention. This list certainly goes on, but while these truly extraordinary efforts by students have gone widely unnoticed both by their peers and by the general public, it took just a couple of undergrads to suggest the idea of a campus sexuality magazine and suddenly, the whole world was watching.

A link between Harvard and sex was just too good for the media to pass up. The news of the proposed magazine “H Bomb” has set off a stream of news coverage that makes it appear as if the creation of this publication was the most important issue to ever hit the Harvard campus. The media buzz surrounding the proposed magazine has reached communities across America and beyond with articles in nearly every major U.S. newspaper, along with mentions in local papers from the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky to the Fresno Bee in California. The Boston Herald called it the “Naked Ambition of Harvard students,” and the New York Daily News declared “Harvard coeds may turn crimson with nudie mag.” CNN ran a story on the issue, as did Fox TV. Hustler magazine called The Crimson for more information. Even other countries were eager to weigh in on the matter with articles surfacing as far away as India and Australia. The Guardian, a major newspaper in London, wrote: “A pair of women students have delivered a frisson to the fusty realms of Harvard, an institution previously associated with gawky teenage genius and the American establishment.” Despite the fact that H Bomb is currently just the whimsical proposal of two college students—who happen to go to Harvard—the media seems to find these two girls’ daydream to be worthy of ample space on their news pages and time on their media shows.

Of course this is not the first time the media has wasted ink on Harvard’s sexual exploits. When a few members of the Harvard crew team decided to construct a nine-foot snow phallus last February, they triggered a school-wide controversy that soon captured national news attention. After the structure was destroyed in the name of feminism, the campus—and the nation—erupted into an impassioned debate on the merits of a snow depiction of male genitalia. The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and The Washington Times all devoted editorial space to discussing the issue. The Economist was inspired enough to write an article arguing that the destruction of the sculpture was compelling evidence of American prudishness. “What is political correctness but Victorian prudery in modern dress?” asked the article’s author. The infamous snow phallus picture on TheCrimson.com had over 100,000 hits—the most in the website’s history—and even Playboy requested the photo for its magazine.

Far too often real news is forgotten in the shadow of America’s sexual obsession. Sadly, the public only encourages this focus. And while Americans waste time and energy consumed by the intricacies of these sexual episodes, important issues are left by the wayside. With so many more noteworthy events occurring around campus all the time, it is offensive that incidents like these have made such a substantial impression on the national media over the past few years.

And the result is not just a general lack of awareness about these more significant events. All this media attention does not go unnoticed by the administration—who are notorious for allowing public pressure to influence their focus. Given the media’s ability to affect administrative priorities, it is to Harvard’s detriment that the press has chosen to be so shallow. It took years for Harvard to get its act together and form a committee to deal with the serious sexual assault problem on campus. Yet after the public pressure following the news of H Bomb, the administration promptly released a statement saying that they would begin to further investigate this issue. And the national government is just as guilty of this inconsistency. As writer Phillip Coorey from Australia’s The Sunday Mail noted, “It took the US Government 12 hours to launch a ‘full and immediate’ investigation into Janet Jackson’s exposed breast. It took 10 days to launch what it says will be an independent commission into erroneous weapons of mass destruction claims in Iraq.”

It will not take long for people to forget the production of H Bomb altogether—just as the memory of the snow phallus melted with the coming of last spring. And Janet’s bare breast will certainly be forgotten by the American consciousness soon enough. But our national obsession with these frivolous sexual encounters is doing more harm than we realize. And while we continue to focus our attention on the trivial and the meaningless, we conveniently distract ourselves from things that might really matter.

Lia C. Larson ’05 is an economics concentrator in Adams House. Her column appears on alernate Fridays.