Overview Of Spike TV

2 Pages 396 Words

The success of male driven magazines like Maxim, FHM, and Stuff ultimately led to the creation of Spike TV. Like these publications, Spike has programming devoted to gadgets, movies, cars, and video games. However, these things alone do not attract men to buy magazines or watch TV shows. On the cover of every issue of Maxim, FHM, or Stuff is a scantily clad, large breasted woman. Spike TV uses the same “eye candy” strategy by using busty models in their commercials, promotions, and programming. The women they portray are flawless and perfect, and by doing this, Spike TV creates an image of the “ideal” woman. As Jean Kilbourne said in the video Killing Us Softly, these women are shown to be merely sex objects and to be used solely as pleasure for men.
When Spike TV first came on the air, one of its flagship shows was a cartoon called Stripperella, which starred Pamela Anderson. The show is based on a Marvel comic created by Stan Lee, and it tells the story of a woman named Erotica Jones. By day, Erotica is a stripper at a local club, but by night she dons the guise of Stripperella, a superhero who fights crime. This character looks exactly like Pamela Anderson: blonde hair, skinny waist, and huge breasts. She uses her sex appeal to take down bad guys and criminals, but at the end of the day, the superhero persona is not much different from the stripper. Pamela Anderson is the atypical “perfect” woman, and it is fitting that her show was one of the ones that Spike TV chose to start their original programming with.
Other shows on Spike TV that portray these false images of perfect women include Blind Date, Shipmates, and another telling example, the WWE. Every female shown on the WWE has huge breasts and is willing to use their sex appeal to get what they want. The problem with Spike TV showing women in this light is that most women in the world do not look like this. These shows place images of women in men�...