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# Being desirable in SM is like having a curse
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/being-desirable-in-sm-is-like-having-a-curse/
- Published: 2007-03-05T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:32:26.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

This is a city that revels in being progressive and forward thinking only as long as it's politically correct.

According to the Feb. 26, edition of show-biz trade mag Daily Variety, poster ads for the "America's Next Top Model" TV series that debuted last week on The CW network were exorcised from Santa Monica's Big Blue Buses. The artwork featured the female cast clad in bathing suits and bikinis posing by a waterfall.

It wasn't the skin that generated the complaints. The city's director of transit services (Big Blue Bus), Stephanie Negriff, told Variety that complainers thought, "The city was somehow endorsing a show that may objectify women” and were "enough of a number that it allowed me to make the decision (to remove ads)."

My calls to Negriff weren't returned. But, according to Variety and numerous postings on Internet web sites, Negriff said the city took down the ads and refunded The CW’s money because, “We wouldn't want to do anything that would disrespect women.” Negriff reported that the offending ads were pulled because the BBB is a public entity and, "It's a matter of public taste."

This has nothing to do with "taste" but has everything to do with bowing to pressure from some narrowly focused, special interest group out to promote an agenda - - whatever that agenda may be.

The Free Dictionary describes "objectify" as, "To present or regard as an object" or "to make impersonal or present as an object." Athletes, scholars, politicians, celebrities, beautiful women, handsome men -- isn't everything "objectified" at one time or another? Is it bad? The city declines advertising and its income because a few (I'll bet a very few) people have decided that a TV show cast photograph "may" transform humans into objects? Please.

These models must not have felt they were being objectified or disrespected or they wouldn't have participated in the program or its promotion. So, we're left with well meaning and possibly organized albiet misguided complainers who at best are threatening the careers of persons fortunate enough to have the right looks to succeed in a legitimate, legal profession because of their own personal hang-ups?

I wonder if complaints would've been made if these ladies were unattractive or wearing raincoats and galoshes? Or, if the models were skimpily dressed males. Nawww. I don't think so.

This all could be dismissed as nutty Santa Monica except for the loss of "at least $30,000" in revenue according to Kevin Herrera's Daily Press (”Booty-free buses,” Feb. 28) article. While the bus folks should be sensitive to truly offensive or demeaning advertising — involving mayhem or overtly explicit sexual imagery, for example -- they overreacted this time because the only thing offensive here was opposing women who model as a career. And, the loss of tens of thousands of advertising dollars that subsidize bus operations and help keep fares low makes it especially troublesome and annoying.

One of my pet peeves are the persons or organizations that judge and condemn creative works that represent a position they oppose on personal grounds. Typical of this are the right wing, religious groups who mount boycotts and campaign to remove whatever they disagree with or find offensive from public scrutiny. There are parts of the country where Playboy is sold with brown paper concealing the cover. Is this what we're coming to?

There are chronic complainers and organizations opposed to just about everything -- Italian gangsters, embryonic research, gay parenting and marriage, sex education in schools, evolution, global warming or anything that challenges established religious thinking or tradition — to name a few. These bitchers and whiners hope the media and advertisers will bow to pressure just like the BBB did. So, the narrow-minded thought police win while the rest of us lose. It's political correctness run amuck in Santa Monica.

Gosh, I'd hate to be regarded as an object of desire -- intellectually, physically or sexually. It's so demeaning.

Editor’s note: There's a benefit featuring eight (count 'em) 8 great comedians at the Laugh Factory on the Sunset Strip, tomorrow night, March 6, beginning at 6 p.m. Proceeds will help Art Nagle, Windward School principal and father of three in his fight against cancer. Go, "have a laugh" and help a good guy, too.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 5, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/030507.pdf?ref=smdp.com)