A recent Good Morning America segment featured an interview with Carlie Beck, a California high school cheerleading coach allegedly fired because she posed nude for an online Playboy feature, “Cyber Girls of the Week.” The segment also offered commentary on the situation by Ann Pleshette Murphy, Good Morning America’s resident parenting expert.
Parents of the cheerleaders, and the girls themselves, seem to be divided over whether Beck’s nude modeling is relevant to her coaching job. Some argue that a nude Playboy shoot is a legal, adult activity that should not disqualify her from guiding teenage girls. Beck herself believes that she is a good role model for female athletes, as her poses show the beauty of an athletic body. Other parents, and apparently the school itself, give Beck a failing grade on the role model scale.
As the resident parenting expert, Murphy’s part in the conversation ought to have shed some authoritative light on what it means to be a role model for teenage girls. Murphy, however, retreated into vague encouragement that this controversy offers a “teaching moment” for parents and schools.
But what lesson does this situation teach? From Murphy’s perspective, the lesson seems to be that girls (and cheerleading coaches) should be careful about what they post on the Internet because images remain in cyberspace forever (and certainly longer, and with pricier consequences, than eventual coaching applicants ever anticipate). In short, Beck’s problem was not her nude modeling, but her failure to anticipate and then accept the logical consequences of her choice.
What about her actions in and of themselves? Where’s the expert voice to say it’s unhealthy to teach young girls—by words or example—that the essence of their womanhood is their lust value? Why is a parenting expert confined to mild exhortations suggesting parents “talk about this” with their daughters? OK, talk about it. But say what? Teach what?
The point in this situation is not that nude pictures travel endlessly round the Internet. The point is that in our Britney Spears-If-U-Seek-Amy-hyper-sexualized world the last thing teenage girls need is a calendar babe for a coach. Earlier this year, Princeton psychology professor Susan Fiske presented scientific research confirming what most women know experientially: men perceive unknown naked women as objects to be handled, not as people to be understood and loved. Professor Fiske’s study showed that when men gazed at a bikini-clad woman—a stranger—the brain regions associated with manipulating tools and doing goal-oriented tasks were activated. There’s no doubt about it—the brain reads “object.”
But Beck’s unapologetic stance sends a superficial and degrading message to her young wannabes. (And anyone familiar with the dynamic between teens and high school coaches knows that teens easily idolize their coaches, yearning for their approval and affirmation.) Her message: being a much-drooled-over thing ain’t so bad—especially if you get paid for it.
However, most teen girls I know dream of relationships and being loved. I’ve never heard even one aspire to be an object for millions of anonymous men to mentally fondle or rape.
For Carlie Beck, the teaching moment is lost (she just signed on for a second nude photo shoot). For the cheerleaders of Casa Roble H.S. there may yet be a chance. Perhaps a worthy role model will seize the moment and teach them this lesson: They should desire to be loved and respected for who they are, rather than settle for the dubious honor of “Object of the Month” in some playboy’s erotic toolbox.
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