What the hell is up with Hollywood these days? It seems like half of the mainstream female performers dress like porn stars, another quarter of them attempt it, and a final quarter either honestly doesn’t care or are smart enough to not even try. I’m a live and let live kinda girl, myself. I don’t much care how people dress so long as they like the way they look and nothing is dangling in the spinach dip, be it flesh or fabric. My mother sent me to school wearing the adolescent and early teen equivalent of clown clothes long enough for me to have a visceral reaction to certain patterns, colors, and fabrics when in close proximity to my own skin, but if other people want to wear Holly Hobby prints and bright yellow polyester pants, then more power to them, poor style-blind saps.

I figure everyone has a personal style, which means that some of us show off more skin while others cover up more skin. Sometimes I’m not sure that the right people are tapped into the right style, but ya know – it’s not really my decision and it’s not really my business. What I do with and how much or little I cover my own body is my business – and just as I must suffer or delight in the decisions of others, they must suffer or delight in mine.

Not everyone feels that way, of course. As I’ve grown from a curvy young woman into a curvy woman, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have a lot of opinions about a lot of things that nobody has asked them to have opinions on. Fashion and body esthetics are two of the things that most everyone seems to feel compelled to opine loudly about, but none squawk more loudly or in front of more microphones and clicking cameras than those in the world of mainstream entertainment.

Given that the vast majority of them wouldn’t have a chance to share their magpie philosophies with the media if they weren’t so gosh darn cute or sexy in some way or other, when one of them decides to pitch a fit about the sex industry, some primitive part of me goes on alert. I believe it’s the Bullshit Detector part of me.

What I’ve always liked about the adult entertainment industry is that it’s fairly honest, as industrial honesty is measured. Most of the time it doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not. It may be curious or common, sweet or educational, amusing or beautiful – it can even disgusting — but on some level, it’s sexual. Sex and the power of attraction are the raw materials that we work with. From them come a wide variety of physical and emotional responses; often visceral, although sometimes intellectual. There is nothing and there is everything simple about the sex trade, be it creative or commercial.

But the mainstream world of entertainment has developed an annoying self-righteousness over the decades. Where once only whores and the lovers of whores would tread, now would-be social reformers strut and fret; sometimes doing good, sometimes looking stupid, and sometimes actually trying to convince their fans that they have their jobs because there’s something wise and insightful about them. Suddenly it’s all respectable to be an actress so long as you don’t actually fuck, suck, or finger anyone on camera. As long as it’s make-believe, though, it’s okay.

Or such would certainly appear to be the case for some performers who are perfectly willing to press their perky nipples against transparent fabric while pouting and emoting wounded youthful submission one moment – and then rant against the cult of female “objectification” the next.

Naturally, all of this ranting and raving on MY part comes from some well-intended ranting on someone else’s part. This time my inspiration is Christina Ricci, whom I used to adore as Wednesday Addams but now find myself wanting to hook up to an IV and feed a sandwich.

Ms. Ricci, a chronic smoker who once cheerfully cashed a perfectly respectable check for playing a “nymphet” in The Ice Storm and had no problem presenting the “Best Kiss” trophy during the 2001 MTV Movie Awards has issues with what Black Book Magazine calls “Stripper Culture” and which she considers to be the objectification of women.

Ricci, whose scantily clad image is surely plastered on many a horny teenager’s walls – and who certainly wasn’t wearing much in the photos accompanying her interview — is upset because she thinks teenaged girls “actually aspire to be objectified.”

Ricci must have been asleep during her high school sporting events or assemblies, cuz any girl who knew she’d never be a cheerleader or prom queen had that shit figured out in no time at all. The boys in the chess club and computer lab had a similar experience when they watched the football players, I suspect. But in Ricci’s opinion, this kind of playing to the sexual isn’t just the way a competitive society that isn’t blind tends to function; no, this is the fault of the adult entertainment industry.

Sticking in Ricci’s considerable craw isn’t cleavage revealing corsets, short skirts, transparent tops, or high heels – no, she’s posed in all of those, so they’re all right. The bug in Ricci’s 100% organic cotton granny panties is the fact that some women have the audacity to enjoy Brazilian bikini waxes, exercising with a “stripper pole,” and indulging in a fast and sexy lifestyle.

It’s not like “in the 80s,” the girl who was born the year that decade opened insists, as though she knows what she’s talking about. In what I guess we should take as a sign that “stripper culture” is becoming more acceptable to the population at large, Ricci objects to the idea that not enough people condemn actions that once were thought to be done only by those sub-humans willing to do sex work. Apparently enjoying a smooth and sensitive pubic area or spinning happily around a metal pole while sweating to your favorite song isn’t nearly as frowned upon today as it was during the golden old days of Reaganomics, greed, cocaine, and unprotected sex.

“Who gives a fuck?” she asked Black Book Magazine rhetorically. “But it’s a huge, weird thing. I mean, you see actresses and their passion project is to play a stripper. It’s just stupid.”

Indeed, Christina – who gives a fuck. You do, apparently. And since I’m responding, I guess I do, too.

What’s stupid though, isn’t that not everyone thinks the same way that Christina Ricci does. What’s stupid is that Christina Ricci, a young woman with both impressive talent and nipples, is so worked up about the fact that someone somewhere thinks pretending to be a stripper sounds like fun. What’s stupid is that someone who’s been so willing to make her living with the help of a pretty face and a petite body thinks other women willing to do the same thing are somehow selling themselves out. What’s stupid is that someone whose latest project is portraying the cartoon girlfriend of a cartoon guy who drives his cartoon car really fast thinks she’s somehow in a position to lecture other women on making empowering career decisions.

But what’s really stupid is that this is a sensitive enough subject for me that I took time out of my increasingly finite existence in order to write this rebuttal. Surely there’s something more important for me to be writing and thinking about than how much pubic hair women should have or how they should exercise.

More to the point – isn’t there something better for Ricci and all the other big and little Ricci’s out there to be giving such a fuck about?