Girls Go Wild - so do profits - Empire of 'ordinary' girls flashing anatomy becomes part of culture

PalmBeachPost.com ^ | 16 Mar 03 | Paul Lomartire

[FenianOfEire]

MIAMI BEACH -- Luis Diaz wants breasts, and he's not talking dinner at KFC.

Diaz is waiting for a Girls Gone Wild party Wednesday night at the Chesterfield Hotel on South Beach. He's waiting for women to get drunk and start stripping off their bikini tops -- just like in the Girls Gone Wild videos.

Just like they did Tuesday night.

"Oh, it was wild," says Diaz, 28. "You wouldn't believe it."

On a humid, neon-soaked South Beach, a four-man GGW video crew is working out of a bus plastered with "GIRLS GONE WILD SPRING BREAK" along the side.

Plastered is the operative verb tonight.

The sign at the hotel entrance proclaims "Ladies Drink Free." The lobby and porch are packed with twentysomethings as Nelly's bass-vibrating Hot in Herre pounds from the stereo system.

During spring break, The Chesterfield is usually filled with college kids as guests, four to a room.

But this year, there's a new twist, a new titillation for testosterone-soaked voyeurs.

This year, girls are taking their tops off in front of video cameras.

And that's not all they're doing, Diaz says.

"When the girls see the camera guys in those Girls Gone Wild T-shirts, they just take it off. These are just regular girls.... they get nasty in front of the camera."

Hoping to make the cut

Diaz, a trash hauler who spends his days working these South Beach streets, is monitoring the party from across the street. He has watched the GGW video crew work the topless beach, scoping out girls and potential video stars.

But the crew doesn't have to work too hard.

"The guys don't have to tell them what to do," Diaz says. "They just do it."

Girls at South Beach and other spring-break hot spots are going wild in the hope of making the final cut of the Girls Gone Wild Spring Break video/DVD that'll be out in September.

For tonight's party, the GGW crew spent the day trolling the beach, offering invitations to women including Julie Martin, 22, and her seven girlfriends from Nova Southeastern University in Davie.

"We're just here for a day at the beach," she says, "and they asked us if we wanted to go to a party with free drinks."

Martin, who's working on a master's in biology, knows all about GGW and says with a smile, "you may get in the video, but not with your morals. Maybe we were brought here to be the good girls in the video."

Craig Braelow is the Chesterfield Hotel bar manager supplying the free drinks. He says the four guys in dark blue GIRLS GONE WILD T-shirts aren't making good girls go bad. They're just tapping into what already exists.

"Every day is spring break here," he says. "It's the ambience of South Beach. The girls come down from the Midwest and it's all new to them. They see the native girls, how they walk around and how they get noticed.

"By the time they go home, they've got tattoos, they're pierced and they've gone wild. They've gotten attention from guys who wouldn't notice them back home. I see it all the time."

The Chesterfield's hottest college drink is called Sex on the Beach, a sweet, lethal mix of vodka, peach schnapps, and cranberry and orange juice.

The GGW crew schmoozes selected women, including Martin from Nova, who continually rolls her eyes at the attention. She gets a look inside the bus where the GGW crew takes prospective talent to verify their ages and get releases signed.

Normally, after enough signed releases and after enough free drinks, the bass-heavy hip-hop is turned up and the cameras turned on.

"It depends on how many drinks you have," says Amber Arpaio, 21, "because that changes everything."

At the GGW party the night before, Amber was noticed by just about everyone.

"It got crazy," she says, "it was everything you thought it would be."

She says she's a waitress from North Carolina. Then she tells four guys she's a student from New Jersey.

"It's not stupid to do it," she says of stripping for a GGW camera and a crowd of guys. "It's all fun and games. You might as well show off what you have before you don't have it any more."

Fouzia Clarks worked the Chesterfield bar for Tuesday's party. She grew up in Marseilles, France.

Even though the French are famous for amour, Clarks said: "You'd have trouble finding girls in France to do what they did last night for a video."

When the cameras were turned off, she said, the half-dozen performing women really got raunchy.

"I was surprised," she says. "They're educated, university students, showing their breasts. I don't know. I'm 29 and I don't understand it."

Empire built on flashing

Girls Gone Wild is the known-on-every-campus video brand created by Joe Francis, 29, who graduated from the University of Southern California and is now CEO of the production company he started called Mantra Entertainment.

He's built an empire on flashing females.

The GGW core audience is heterosexual men 18 to 25, who have bought 4.5 million tapes/DVDs worth $90 million-plus. The tapes/DVDs are sold on the GGW Web site and through TV informercials and late-night cable ads. There's a staff of 90 employees at the GGW headquarters in Santa Monica.

The 83 GGW releases -- $9.99 to $19.99 -- are more-of-the-same: Topless, almost always white women, at frat parties, street parties, beaches and bar "talent shows." You can hear a cameraman urging a drunk, topless woman to kiss other women or pull her bikini bottom down.

With names such as Dormroom Fantasies and Wet T-Shirt Strip Off, many of the releases are made up of recycled clips.

Last year, Francis signed a deal with "celebrity host" Snoop Dogg and has since added rapper Eminem. A GGW crew followed Eminem on his recent Anger Management Tour to tape girls going wild at his shows and in his hotel rooms for a future video/DVD.

A member of a GGW video crew can make $300 to $1,000 a day crisscrossing the country from campus to campus capturing female flashers who are paid nothing beyond free drinks and a GGW tank top.

This R-rated, softcore sell is going way past direct-sale videos. A first-ever live spring break pay-per-view special aired Thursday from South Padre Island, Texas, and a GGW feature film is in the works.

"Their secret to success is keeping it R-rated because you can sell it on TV," says Jeffrey Cartwright, CEO of hardcore Adult Stars Magazine. "They're selling the same thing you can see tonight in a movie on Showtime."

"It hit at the right time, and it's a stroke of genius," says Cartwright, "because it's not sex, it's girls taking their tops off."

In a December Los Angeles Magazine profile, multimillionaire GGW creator Francis bragged that "feminists love us, because girls are doing what they want to do. It's like girls burning their bras in the '70s, you know?"

The fact that his fame and fortune is built on getting college girls drunk is a non-factor, he says.

"Look, if you're drunk, you still know what you're doing. I've tried to take many girls home on many different occasions, and they were really drunk, and it still doesn't work out," Francis told the magazine. "I think every guy has experienced the same thing. I don't care how drunk they are. They're still going to say no."

Francis, who turns 30 on April Fool's Day, was working on the TV show Real TV in 1997 and noticed that gruesome video was routinely cut. He spliced those edits -- including a shotgun suicide and a woman being hit by a train -- into a video called Banned From Television that took in $10 million in a year.

That was one Ferrari, a Mercedes, two planes, a helicopter and four homes ago for Francis.

GGW owns a Panama City beach house where this South Beach crew soon will rendezvous with other crews to tape a party featuring Snoop Dogg.

And because Mr. Dogg may be coming to South Beach in the next few days, the GGW crew is on hold. No taping Wednesday night. No coaxing girls to go wild. Just free drinks and loud music.

Luis Diaz, sitting on a planter across Collins Avenue, is disappointed, but not distraught.

He'll always have Tuesday night at the Chesterfield, where he saw girls gone wild.

"There was this big blond girl and this Asian girl, you wouldn't believe it.... "

[B-Chan]

On the other hand you can ask yourself "would I want some man to do to my daughter what I did to my wife to make the daughter in the first place?" Of course the answer is no.

How's that? If my daughter is married, I most certainly do want "some man" (her husband) to do to my daughter what I did to my wife to make the daughter in the first place. Sexual intercourse between man and wife isn't just a moral act -- it's holy, a sacrament, a way of worshipping God. Any parent who doesn't want his married children to have sex with their spouses has a problem.

Nobody wants to think about their parents or their kids having sex. The punchline of life is that we're all the result of somebody's good time.

Not at all. Sex isn't about having a good time. Sex is an act of love, an act of worship. The "good time" is just the frosting on the cake.

The idea that sex is just somebody's "good time" is the root of the problem our society has with sex today. Saying that sex is just another way to experience pleasure is like saying that eating is just a way to experience delicious flavors. Just as the primary purposes of eating are health and nutrition, the primary purposes of sex are love and reproduction. Separating the sexual act from its natural context of love and reproduction makes as much sense as separating the act of eating from its natural context of health and nutrition -- both represent a perversion of the natural order of things.

Modern attitudes toward sexual behavior can be compared to the vomitoria of ancient Rome, where the jaded wealthy of the city gorged themselves on delicacies for the sheer sensual pleasure of eating, then forced themselves to vomit it all up so they could keep on gorging. This is obviously not a healthy way to engage in eating -- or in sexual intercourse.

[iranger]

"would I want some man to do to my daughter what I did to my wife to make the daughter in the first place? Of course the answer is no."

I'm not sure what you did to your wife and I'm pretty sure I really don't want to know, but I am sure I would love nothing better than for my daughters to one day find a "nice" young man, to fall in love, wed, and eventually bless me with many grandchildren.

[RobRoy]

>>...you can ask yourself "would I want some man to do to my daughter what I did to my wife to make the daughter in the first place?" Of course the answer is no.<<

Actually, my answer is "yes" if he's her husband. It is a Biblical "love" thing. It is something I would WANT my daughter to participate in and enjoy.

Sex within marriage is a gift of God and to be enjoyed as such!

[steve-b]

I never for an instant thought I "invented" sex.
Of course you didn't! I did.

Al Gore? Is that you?

[RobRoy]

>>Its not about offensiveness and obligation, its about respecting the value of a human being. <<

Maybe you need to read Physicists posts on the various evolution threads. It may at least explain why your comments may fall on deaf ears.

[discostu]

I have tons of respect for my wife, if nothing else I respect the fact that she's a better shot than I am. Doesn't change the fact that gettin' biddy has all kinds of sweatin and gruntin and squirmin and not the kind of image ANY father wants of his daughter. Done with respect or not sex is still sex and involves things best left out of a father's mind.

[steve-b]

The sin of gluttony comes from the alienation of the sensual pleasure of tasting and consuming food from the nutritive and social aspects of eating

First, let's strip the "social aspects" right out of the question, unless you're going to argue with a straight face that it's somehow sinful to dine alone.

As for the nutritive aspects, it is an objective fact that if you eat too much, you will get fat and suffer various unfortunate health consequences (or purge yourself and suffer various other unfortunate health consequences). The negative health consequences of viewing nekkid people, or of being viewed nekkid (if it's warm enough to disrobe in reasonable comfort) have yet to be demonstrated.

[Billthedrill]

I think I just figured out why I ain't rich. At some point this guy said to himself "I got me a videocamera, now I'm going to ask ladies to get nekkid and make a million bucks." I'da figured I'd get slapped, laughed at, or jailed. That's why I ain't rich.

[steve-b]

I rented one of these videos with my friends a few years back (for scientific reasons, of course), and I've got to say that about 20 minutes into the video, you're tired of it.

"After watching one of those movies for five minutes, I wanted to go right home and f--k. After watching for ten minutes, I never wanted to f--k again as long as I live."
  --Erica Jong

[Southack]

"Every generation thinks its invented sex, and every previous generation shakes its head in righteous indignation. The more things change, the more they stay the same."

No, the current generation doesn't think that it invented sex, and even this article isn't about sex so much as it is about visualizing the images that are out of your own grasp (read: fantasy).

The last study that I saw even stated that people in America are having substantially *less* sex today than they did in 1950 (citing divorce, both partners working, fear of STD's, later marriages, fewer courtships, etc.).

So with our society having *less* sex than it did half a century ago, and having *better* access to various distribution mediums (easier to make your own CD-ROM, DVD, VHS Video, Internet video streaming, cable TV, etc.), it shouldn't really surprise anyone to see that the demand for such visions has increased (especially since the taboo of *appearing* in such productions has been drasticly reduced).

Girls simply have an easier avenue to both make money as well as demonstrate their personal sexuality, all without having to bother with messy sex and all of its pregnancy/disease/social implications (same goes for gay men too, of course).

The irony for men, however, is that all of this great porn actually makes it a little more difficult to have the very sex that we crave, as monetary and social pressures on women to have sex have been reduced.

Or perhaps I should say that the pressures on young, beautiful women to have sex outside of marriage have been reduced on them, as this rule seems to be reversed dramatically as "single" women age (the trap here being that the most in demand girls find that their position becomes less and less secure as they age and are forced to compete with the younger, more in demand girls).

[steve-b]

People are not consumer products to be used and thrown aside.

One usually sees this statement in various DUfus attacks on capitalism. It's a bit of a jolt to encounter it in a discussion of sexuality.

[discostu]

I'm pretty sure all you guys sayin' your perfectly comfortable with the image of your daughter naked and spread under some guy leaving marks in his back and ruining the sheets haven't really toyed with the image. With good reason, it's really disturbing.

All this fluff about love and holy sacrement and stuff is just trying to put lacey frills on something that, in the end, is an exchange of bodily fluids. And note B-Chan I didn't say "just a good time" I said "a good time", no matter how you slice it how much miracle of procreation you add, sex is fun, and if it's not you're doing it wrong. Certainly within the bounds of a proper relationship it has a deeper meaning, much as how a Christmas ham shared with family and friends to celebrate the birth of Christ has a deeper meaning than a sandwich picked up from the corner deli; but in the end it's still a chunk of dead pig and eventually lands in a toilet as human waste.

[slimer]

That's udderly ridiculous

[VadeRetro]

That link recalls one of the best exchanges in the movie Witness:

"What's the matter, boy? Never handled a teat before?"

"Not this big!"

[RobRoy]

I don't understand what your post had to do with mine. I will say this: I agree with your line "sex is fun, and if it's not you're doing it wrong."

[RobRoy]

>>With good reason, it's really disturbing.<<

No it's not. Not if it's her husband.

That said, I certainly don't DWELL on the sight, any more than I dwell on her sitting on a toilet. It's personal.

[discostu]

It has to do with your post in that I really don't think ANY father wants to really think about the nitty gritty of his daughter having sex. I notice everybody that's said yes has mentioned all of the trappings of proper sex (love, husband, procrecreation). But everybody has also skipped over the core of the subject here, the sacrifice of the hotel matress springs on the wedding night. While most don't have a problem thinking of their daughter within that emotional context, everybody is avoiding the thought of her screaming "don't stop" while naked. Which is exactly my point, nobody wants to think that way about their kid (or their parents for that matter, but that's a different discussion for another day). Which makes the whole "would you want somebody doing this with your daughter" reason to avoid porn kind of weak.

[discostu]

You wouldn't want to dwell on it, but it's not disturbing... I'll let you sort that one out Roy. I don't even have kids so the daughter in my mind is 100% hypothetical and the thought makes me feel all dirty and icky, and I want to hit this hypothetical husband with a Louisville Slugger and put his hairy ass in a hole in the desert for befouling my little girl.