Girls Gone Wild... justice is served!

As I've prolly made clear in at least a dozen posts, I'm not a fan of the whole Girls Gone Wild-/Get in touch with your inner stipper defition of pop feminism today. I've got NOTHING against sexiness, fun etc, but I absolutely DO NOT feel that these images/trends, which are increasingly prevalent in pop culture are true incarnations of female liberation.  Rather, I believe that they just perpetuate the same old crap and don't help women break any new ground.

So imagine my personal glee when my colleague Elaine (Hey there!) forwarded me an AP news report about the founder of Girls Gone Wild, Mr. Joe Francis, being sentenced to community service for failing to monitor the ages of the women in its videos. 

He's also agreed to pay one-point-six million dollars in fines for using drunken 17-year-olds in videos it filmed on Panama City Beach during spring break.

But here's the part I like best:  The company must also issue a news release about its federal
offenses and publish it in five newspapers, including The News Herald of Panama City . The judge says he added the community service because it did not appear a fine would be a meaningful punishment.

THAT is cool.  That the judge realizes that asking Joe Francis to throw some money around in more fines isn't going to create cultural change.  The fact that he has to admit that what he did was "wrong" (depending on your point of view, of course)... well... that's pretty interesting. 

If ANYONE comes across one of these ads that he has to take out... PLEASE PLEASE let me know about it, or let me get you my mailing address or something.  I'm DYING to see how he frames everything!

Comments

something that was kind of surprising to me is that joe francis is actually friends with a lot of A-listers in hollywood. I would have thought that his business would be more repulsive to ppl, but apparently not. sadly, this penalty is just a tiny drop in the bucket for him (i think he should have gone to jail personally) and as he is still being filmed going out everynight to Hyde and other LA hotspots it doesn't really seem to have affected his lifestyle very much...