Last summer my naked one-year-old son and his two older sisters were playing in the paddling pool in the garden when my son suddenly looked down and observed himself with surprise. Watching him, my six-year-old eldest declared, "Look! He's found it: the centre of the universe." How, I asked myself in amazement, could she know that already? At six, she knew all she needed to know about the sex war: men rule the world. Now seven, she also knows what "sexy" means, thanks to - among other things - the Spice Girls and the provocative amateur strippers of Ibiza Uncovered who appeared during the ad breaks for The Simpsons on Sky One, before Mum could switch it off. But you can't switch it all off. Some children's programmes are now unashamedly feeding into soft porn aimed at men. In Dublin's April 8th cover features Velcro Girl - the sexual fantasy figure created by Ray and Zig & Zag on Network 2's young people's programme, 2Phat. On the cover, the silver zipper on Velcro Girl's black catsuit is pulled down to reveal more cleavage than usual. The Velcro strips at her waist ensure that anyone - especially anyone hairy - who touches her will stick.
Inside, a list of Velcro Girl's "10 Sticky Moments" includes "drunk men playing with her zipper" and having to "sit on Ray's lap" all night. Velcro Girl is perfect fodder for the laddism of In Dublin, part of the trend started by Loaded and picked up on by GQ and the Irish magazine, Himself. Laddism started out harmlessly enough - or so it seemed - as a humorous backlash against political correctness, but instead of dying of embarrassment, it has intensified into a kind of sexual loutism which gets stronger by the month. The May issue of GQ features a naked blonde in diamante handcuffs; the text of one article jokes about American sportsmen with their knives and dead wives; earlier this year GQ depicted women slashed and bloody in a fashion feature on men's clothes. (We won't talk about the March issue that praised the Nazis as style-leaders of the 20th century.) Sexually exploitative images that would have been regarded as the height of ignorance 15 years ago are now acceptable. "Hips, lips and tits" - as GQ calls them - are back with a vengeance. Sexually available women have become an end in themselves, and men's magazines scarcely bother to justify their existence through good writing. At least in the 1960s-1980s Playboy had enough solid journalism to justify the claim, "I just buy it for the articles". In Dublin used to feature writers like Fintan O'Toole and Colm Toibin. But at the turn of the century, we've gone from writing to riding.
The April 8th issue of Himself includes an article on male infidelity illustrated by pornographic images of lovemaking. In Dublin, ostensibly an event guide, has restyled itself as a men's magazine and regularly features women in their underwear on the cover, which at least tallies with the back pages, which are full of colour ads for escort agencies. The fin de siecle soft porn is pervading all the media. Sometimes it's silly - think of Claudia Schiffer's unsexy Teutonic strip in a car ad. And sometimes it's not - a mini-adventure drama for vodka during a televised soccer match has images of sex and violence that clearly link alcohol with sexual excitement for the benefit of 10-year-old viewers. Adults who scoffed at the doltishness of Benny Hill are ready to laugh at the soft porn of Antoine De Caunes of Eurotrash and his new Channel 4 production, Le Show, which features his beautiful assistant Fifi, Kim Ross, who of courses poses in her underwear in May's issue of Loaded. But adults get the irony. Kids don't. Late-night viewing is one thing, but the slow bleed of soft porn is malignant in children's TV.
Velcro Girl, with her black catsuit and come-hither kiss-blowing, is an uncomfortable role model for our daughters. She never speaks, which gives little girls the message: look beautiful and keep your mouth shut, unless for the purposes of sexual functioning. Soft porn has come from under the counter to become so acceptable that overtly sexual "Teletotties" are taking over as Children's TV presenters. To be a presenter on Nickolodeon, you need a PhD in midriff baring, large breasts and anorexia. The Big Breakfast's new 19-year-old presenter, Kelly Brook (described by GQ as "central heating for men" and "better known for her aycarumba than her presenting skills") admits that she is catering to a children's audience. She also admits that she bought her boyfriend pornography - and a camera - for his birthday.
Kim Ross sprang to notice last year when she posed topless for Loaded, then in a highprofile competition defeated other sex bombs like Caprice, Liza Tarbuck and Melanie Sykes to take over from Denise Van Outen on The Big Breakfast. Even the current issue of the bland TV Times picks up the trend for judging women by their sex appeal. Kelly Brook is draped atop an erect missile three times her size with the words, "OK, so I'm no rocket scientist". No prizes for guessing where Kelly's 32E-2434 brain places the centre of the universe. Part of Brook's appeal to men and children alike is her non-threatening teenage image. "I'm 19, have no experience and I've got big boobs," she says, deliberately cultivating a teenage image which is non-threatening to the male ego and stimulating to the male id. And she is not alone.
In 1999, 25 years after the Female Eunuch, young women have rejected feminism in favour of being "baby ladies", a trend picked up by May's GQ in its feature on "teen vixens". Titled "Hips-tits-lips power"(a put-down parody of the more powerful "girl power"), the lay-out includes provocative images of a generation of young actresses, many in their 20s, who deliberately dress "teenaged". Among them are Neve Campbell ("most likely to get more and more screen time wearing less and less clothing"), Denise Richards ("speciality: pouting and giggling") Rose McGowan, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Katie Holmes and Christina Ricci. But it is GQ's centrefold which most boldly flirts with the undercurrents of illicit under-age sex that pollute the Internet with images claiming to be the rape of teenage girls. Kate Moss pouts in Lolita-mode, with her prepubescent body covered by nothing but black stockings, black panties and extremely high heels. She hugs a teddy bear to her bare chest. She is standing in a bathroom, as if suddenly disturbed. The black shoes are deliberately oversized to make her seem like a child playing dress-ups. Her eyes are made up to look bigger than they usually do. You have to wonder whether the image is deliberately trying to awaken latent paedophilia, or whether many men, in the post-feminist era, simply like to fantasise about non-threatening women.
Dressing up like 14-year-old jailbait seems as appealing to many women, strangely enough, as it does to many men. The top "baby ladies" are listed by a women's magazine, Minx, in its May issue, adorned in "cutesy clothes", "dinky shoes" and "shiny things" that aren't diamonds".
Paula Yates is "the crown princess of baby ladies" and Tamara Beckwith is "Malibu Barbie meets kinderwhore". Others on the childishly best-dressed list include pinups Kate Moss, Denise Van Outen, Courtney Love, Drew Barrymore, Baby Spice, Bjork and Katie Puckrik.
What has happened to us that the big-shouldered Wonder Woman powersuits of the 1980s have been supplanted by nursery fashion? Could it be that women have become so successful in asserting themselves in politics, business, academia and the media that the male sex drive has become utterly deflated - so much so that men need constant visual Viagra?
No, I didn't think so. The unpalatable truth is that, in 1999, the feminist movement might as well have never happened. Actresses and TV personalities who please men as a career choice and make money from it are one thing, but most girls will not grow up to be in this position. They'll have to battle their way through a male-dominated world, and in medicine, finance, politics and academia - they are not going to get anywhere by dressing like baby-dolls and flirting.
When the female body is an object for the titillation of men, the woman loses ownership of her destiny. Excuse me for being such an old fogey and bringing this up. Maybe we're just living in denial, thinking that we can have sexual exploitation and equality coexisting as cosily as two plump page-three breasts, but I don't think so.
I would like to think that we are simply confused. That men are threatened by women's new power and are fighting back. The truth, however, is probably harder to accept: that there is no longer any such thing as the gutter press. We're all in the gutter. My fear is that little girls who grow up seeing images of women whose first desire above all is to be "sexy", may always believe that the phallus is the centre of the universe.