Glee. The word is instantly recognizable, and not just because it’s part of the English language. The ubiquitous television show has become an unstoppable machine since its inception, and its popularity has reached staggering heights in recent months. Now in its second season, the show delivers a weekly dose of heartfelt emotion, theatrics, and biting sarcasm with pomp and circumstance. Celebrities are chomping at the bit to appear in cameos and fans are lining up for anything with the Glee name stamped on it. But, as the saying goes, everything that goes up must come down.
It would seem that Glee has had its biggest hiccup yet with the recent appearance in GQ magazine of three main actors. If you haven’t yet heard (or rather, seen), the controvery stems fom actors Lea Michele, Diana Agron, and Cory Monteith appearring in the men’s magazine in various states of undress. More specifically, Michele and Agron are provocatively dressed and posed as naughty schoolgirls. This is not a big surprise. Rarely does a celebrity or a pop culture sensastion burst onto the scene without doing some sort of rabble-rousing photo shoot (see the Miley Cyrus Vogue debacle). And we all know GQ doesn’t exactly shy away from racy photo shoots. Still, the most recent issue has parents all over America up in arms. The reason? It would seem that parents are upset with actors who portray high-school kids on television appearing in sex-charged pictures.
The whole debacle is preposterous. Glee deals with, shall we say, inappropriate subject matter in almost every episode. One teenage character got pregnant. Another lost his virginity to impress a girl. The entire cast performed a rendition of “Push It.” This isn’t a show that shies away from sexuality, so why should it do so on the cover of a popular magazine? Glee may have been promoted as the ultimate kid-friendly family show, but that doesn’t preclude its cast from appearing in “scandalous” photo shoots. It would seem parents are conveniently forgetting that the cast and the show are two separate entities, neither of which ever promised to promote morals of any kind save for the importance of friendship, diversity, and acceptance.
The most ridiculous allegation and empty argument is that the shoot is “pedophiliac.” Objectifying women in schoolgirl costumes is pretty much a time-honoured tradition. Not to mention, playing a schoolgirl on TV does not a naughty schoolgirl make. The Parent Television Council needs to save its outrageous and loaded accusations for the real deal and move on to a cause actually worth fighting for. For example, has anyone seen the acting in “Secret Life of the American Teenager”? Somebody get the FCC on the line.
Was it absolutely necessary to depict these actors in seductive poses? Probably not, but is it really any different than any other celebrity appearing half-naked on the cover of a national magazine? Countless celebrities before these three have done similar photo shoots, some even more provocative, and not been attacked in the media. These actors are way past high school age, so who’s to stop them from posing on the cover of GQ in barely-there outfits? Just because the Glee cast is, well, the Glee cast, doesn’t mean that all of their future endeavours have to be in the vein of high school innocence (and we all know high school isn’t that innocent). Miley Cyrus’s shoot was definitely offensive, as she wasn’t even close to legal age. But let’s get real, people—the Glee kids aren’t really kids, and they won’t be portraying kids for much longer, either.
