Well, this has been the flavor of the last month so I wanted to ask in a poll if the following is sexual harassment. How far are we going to take this?
OK. Let's first talk about the casting couch. It is fairly easy to argue that if you visit the casting couch and you are asked to do certain things in exchange for being casted in a movie, that that could possibly catapult your career into stardom, fame and money. And, of course, the more slimy people could say that if you became a star as a result then, maybe, it was worth the price you paid. On the other hand, maybe you paid the price but didn't get casted in the movie at all and basically, um, um, got screwed. Or, maybe you did get the part but the movie was a bomb and then I guess you could say that your "investment" did not pay off. Let's say that a slimy person could argue that this was sort of like prostitution, you sell yourself and get something in return for your "time" and that this is not really sexual harassment at all but a "professional business arrangement, agreed to by both parties". OK, I don't want to really start a debate on this so I'll concede that this was sexual harassment.
Now that I've laid out my foundation, so to speak, I'm getting into the crux of my poll question. Let's say that there actually was not a casting couch at all in my poll question example but you (let's say you are a female for the sake of argument) read for a part in a movie that involved nudity. Maybe we can even say that you are Sharon Stone reading for the lead in the movie "Basic Instinct". If I remember correctly, Sharon Stone was not really much of a household name before the movie but catapulted to stardom, fame, and money afterwards. Is it sexual harassment if a movie calls for nudity (or a quick flash) and the reason you did it was because you felt pressured with the need to work and wanted to "become a star"? Can it be argued that just the fact that a movie calls for nudity and sex scenes, that this is actually a form of sexual harassment because you feel you have to do this in order to take a chance at being a star (or even just to pay your bills)? If you were to turn down the movie with nudity, flashes, or sex scenes you may wind up falling into the trash heap of aspiring actresses that were sucked into the black hole of nothingness, never to be seen or heard from again (kind of like what might happen if you didn't pay the casting couch price to get ahead). Of course we are going to assume that a majority of male movie goers want to see some skin and sex scenes and, to some extent, women do too.
So, is it sexual harassment just for women to be subjected to reading for a movie that involved, nudity, sex scenes, flashes, and the like? After all, they could make movies with no skin, no sex, no flashes, etc. and women could just be casted as women instead of sex objects.
