Gender…Gone Wild


 

  

Gender…Gone Wild: 

The Sexual Economy of Reality Exploitation 

 
Andrew J. Owens 
English 
 

As an idiom popularized through the fervent feminism and sexual revolution 

of the 1960s, ―male chauvinist pig‖ was used predominantly in describing men 

holding positions of authorial power who abused their gendered privilege, in both 

public and private spheres, to the detriment of American women.  If second-wave 

feminism was defined by pointing the accusatory finger of blame at these ―male 

chauvinist pigs,‖ New York magazine editor Ariel Levy traces the escalation of an 

entirely different cultural phenomenon in the late-1990s and the early years of the 

twenty-first century.  Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch 

Culture explores how and presumably why the behavior of young American 

women has changed in the past three decades: ―Only thirty years (my lifetime) ago, 

our mothers were ‗burning their bras‘ and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we 

were getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as supposed symbols of our 

liberation.  How had the culture shifted so drastically in such a short period of 

time?‖
1
  Among those institutions Levy considers in the rise of a distinctly 

feminized raunch culture, one cited consistently in her argument is the media 

channel known as Girls Gone Wild.  This franchise and its critics, who claim that 

the outlet operates primarily through a matrix of exploitation at the expense of 

young college-aged women, have existed contemporaneously ever since the first 

Girls Gone Wild production was released in 1999.  While Levy‘s critique of 

twenty-first century feminism, or lack there of, is persuasively supported, further 

evidence for her reflections have risen out of American visual culture since the 

publication of Female Chauvinist Pigs in 2005.  By examining a supposedly 

reciprocal cultural phenomenon, first appearing on the softcore market in 2004 

while Levy was concluding research for her text, this paper will argue that Guys 

Gone Wild has since given the exploitative culture of Girls Gone Wild a new and 

revealing referent.  In its highlighting of male exhibitionism, the rise of Guys Gone 

Wild has complicated the ways in which collective identities of gender, both male 

and female, are currently represented through American mass media.  Ultimately, 

                                                 
1
 Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free 

Press, 2005) 3. 



 

  

even though an ostensibly comparative male equivalent now exists on the market, 

softcore reality exploitation remains lacking in any substantial notions of equitable 

gender representation and has, perhaps, become even more destructive to the 

public image of young American women. 

Any useful deconstruction of the representational spectrum between Girls 

Gone Wild and Guys Gone Wild should consider the principal comparison between 

what, in terms of physical specificity, is actually being represented.  In a visual 

genre whose modus operandi is informed almost exclusively by the presence of a 

male gaze, questions and degrees of visibility, both for the subject and the 

spectator, reign supreme.  In his text Male Myths and Icons: Masculinity in 

Popular Culture, Roger Horrocks notes the long-standing tradition of 

representative discrepancies between men and women in pornography.  Citing the 

work of feminist critic Linda Williams, Horrocks writes, ―The open vagina shot 

might be interpreted as an invitation to the penis – penetrate me.  But there is 

something else here…That is, the mystery of female sexuality is exposed to the 

camera and the viewer‖.
2
  If critics of pornography have implicated its corporeal 

displays as another manifestation of institutionalized male authority, this assertion 

is similarly sustained as the definitional term within pornographic hierarchies, 

meaning that the presence of the penis has proven dominant as principal 

determinant: ―One of the crucial distinctions between soft and hard core porn is the 

presence of the (hard) penis.  This can be seen as a kind of Lacanian ‗lack‘: soft 

porn lacks the penis, which in hard core is one of the key images‖.
3
   Indeed, 

Lacan‘s theory of manqué, translated from the French as ―lack,‖ posits that the 

condition of lacking is always related to manifestations of desire.  This desire, 

within Lacan‘s structuralist rubric, is generated by men as they constantly 

endeavor to obtain the phallus and its indication of definitive masculinity.  

Although compellingly argued, Horrocks‘ Lacanian examination of soft and 

hardcore pornography lacks certain essential caveats.  Although the penis is 

physically present in both genres, distinctions arise around the male member‘s 

utility and efficacy.  Indeed, a Lacanian reading of the softcore Guys Gone Wild 

franchise holds true only insofar as the penis rarely enacts its function in the 

capacity of either erection or ejaculation.  Its ontology in physical space 

nevertheless remains.  As comparisons and discrepancies between the visual 

politics of Girls and Guys Gone Wild will reveal, the definitional terms of softcore 

pornography still remain heavily reliant on greater female exposure than male.  

                                                 
2
 Roger Horrocks, Male Myths and Icons: Masculinity in Popular Culture (New York: St. 

Martin‘s Press, 1995) 115. 
3
 Ibid, 121. 



 

  

This inconsistency consequently impacts the collective gender identities both of 

these softcore franchises promote. 

In her seminal text Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of 

Identity, cultural theorist Judith Butler famously undermines the patriarchal, 

masculinist discourses that have historically assumed authority over the 

construction of heteronormative gender binaries.  As one of the most influential 

contributors to poststructuralist gender theory, Butler strikingly notes that gender, 

investigated at its lowest common denominator, can always be reduced to socially 

constructed signs of performative action:  ―words, acts, gestures, and desire 

produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface 

of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, 

the organizing principle of identity as a cause‖.
4
  Butler‘s emphasis on surfaces and 

exteriority, working to discredit gender as somehow biologically inherent, provides 

the foundation for how she conceives of socially constructed articulations of 

gender as consistently performative: 

 

Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the 

sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are 

fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other 

discursive means.  That the gendered body is performative suggests that it 

has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its 

reality.  This also suggests that if that reality is fabricated as an interior 

essence, that very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public 

and social discourse.
5
 

 

The genre of softcore reality exploitation provides both challenging and 

stimulating complications to Butler‘s claims for gender understood as constantly 

performative.  Undoubtedly, the culturally specific artifacts that have influenced 

the genesis of Guys and Girls Gone Wild were not generated within the confines of 

a social vacuum.  Girls Gone Wild and its male equivalent are, of course, the 

products of previously established public discourses pivoting on public sexual 

performance and heteronormative gender expectations.  However, Butler‘s 

assertion of cultural causality may become complicated in the twenty-first century 

when an institution such as Girls Gone Wild becomes, as Ariel Levy suggests, a 

gendered lexicon for societal and public discourse in and of itself.
6
   

                                                 
4
 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: 

Routledge, 1990) 136. 
5
 Ibid. 

6
 Levy, 17. 



 

  

Engineered by media mogul Joseph R. Francis for his production company 

Mantra Entertainment, advertisements for Girls Gone Wild first appeared on late-

night television in 1999.  Originally showcasing female college co-eds with a 

penchant for drunken breast exposure, the cultural proliferation of Girls Gone Wild 

has continued to grow exponentially.  Girls Gone Wild currently offers paid 

subscriptions to a members-only website as well as its trademark videos, currently 

numbering a catalog of over two-hundred and fifty volumes on DVD with many 

additional entries offered in the high-definition Blu-Ray format.
7
  According to 

Variety magazine reporter Terence Keegan, ―such fringe programming—which 

often enjoys a lucrative audience niche but also has baggage of one form or 

another—is now so accessible that it‘s constituting an ever-larger slice of an 

overall homevid pie that generated about $24 billion in consumer spending‖ in 

2006.
8
  Indeed, Girls Gone Wild ―is so popular they are expanding from soft-core 

videos to launch an apparel line, a compilation CD with Jive Records (of GGW-

approved club hits), and a Hooters-like restaurant chain‖.
9
  According to Levy, the 

gendered, exhibitionistic performances representative of a distinctive youth culture 

in the late-1990s were a niche market simply waiting to be exploited: 

 

It sounds like a fantasy world dreamed up by teenage boys.  A world of sun 

and sand where frozen daiquiris flow from faucets and any hot girl you see 

will peel off her bikini top, lift up her skirt…all you have to do is ask.  It‘s 

no surprise that there‘s a male audience for this, but what‘s strange is that 

the women who populate this alternate reality are not strippers or paid 

performers, they are middle-class college kids on vacation—they are 

mainstream…The heat is turned up a little in Miami, but a baseline 

expectation that women will be constantly exploding in little blasts of 

exhibitionism runs throughout our culture.  Girls Gone Wild is not 

extraordinary, it‘s emblematic.
10

 

 

As both Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Confessions and Girls Gone Wild: Hottest 

Moments Ever reveal, the deck of softcore media exploitation is intentionally 

stacked against positive representations of young American women. 

Kate, an 18 year-old college freshman, is the first woman interviewed within 

the traveling confessional of the Girls Gone Wild tour bus in Dormroom 

Confessions.  Kate has always wanted to show off her wild side and takes the 

                                                 
7
 Joseph R. Francis, ―Girls Gone Wild.‖  27 April 2009.  <http://www.girlsgonewild.com>. 

8
 Terence Keegan, ―Raunch Goes From Trickle to Mainstream Gusher.‖  24 April 2007.  27 

April 2009.  <http://www.variety.com/homeentertainment>. 
9
 Levy, 8. 

10
 Ibid, 17. 



 

  

opportunity before her to confess her proclivity for ―rough sex‖ in which she is 

constantly ―on top.‖
11

  Encouraged by the cameraman‘s appraisals that she is ―so 

cute‖ and ―adorable,‖ Kate is eventually convinced to remove the entirety of her 

wardrobe.
12

  As a common trend within the exploitative rubric of Girls Gone Wild, 

women are persuaded to continuously interact with their own bodies through the 

senses of taste, smell, and touch.  When asked what her favorite feature of her 

body is, Kate responds, ―I love my nipples…like honestly.‖
13

  Concluding in 

traditional Girls Gone Wild fashion, Kate is shown masturbating on camera for a 

period of over ten minutes until her eventual climax.  In its habitual insistence on 

manual female stimulation, Girls Gone Wild reverses Freudian anxieties 

surrounding manifestations of female sexuality.  In tracing the maturation of 

female sexual practices, Freud theorized that women, in order to avoid homosexual 

tendencies or other sexual aberrations, must undergo a turn ―away from the active, 

masculine, and aggressive clitoral stimulation toward the passive, subordinate, 

masochistic---toward receiving vaginal stimulation‖.
14

  According to psychologists 

Claire and Frank Wesley, Freudian notions of female sexuality consistently 

denigrate the practice of auto-stimulation: ―Freud considered the clitoral-vaginal 

shift a necessary condition for normal, female sexuality.  He states that a girl, 

unlike a boy, should not manually stimulate her genitals too often during her 

phallic period (4-7 years) because she should not accustom herself to receiving 

pleasure from her ‗stunted‘ penis, her clitoris‖.
15

  Not surprisingly, the era of Girls 

Gone Wild has turned Freudian notions of female sexuality on their heads.  

However, instead of working to approximate some manifestation of equilibrium 

between modesty and healthy sexual expression, Girls Gone Wild has polarized its 

own version of female sexuality in the opposite direction of Freud, honoring those 

young women whose hyperactive libidos have taken sexual exhibitionism to new 

heights. Indeed, Kate exhibits little fear or apprehension while masturbating and 

gladly does so in front of the Girls Gone Wild camera. 

In her 2006 article ―The Staging of Agency in Girls Gone Wild,‖ Karen 

Pitcher submits that exploitative media outlets such Girls Gone Wild can be 

understood as a twenty-first century manifestation of Mikhail Bakhtin‘s notion of 

the ―carnivalesque‖.  Originally cited in his text Rabelais and his World, a study of 

the French Renaissance theorist François Rabelais, Bakhtin‘s theory of the 

carnivalesque indicated ―a temporary liberation from the established order, a 

                                                 
11

 Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Confessions.  Mantra Entertainment, 2008.  DVD. 
12

 Ibid. 
13

 Ibid. 
14

 Claire and Frank Wesley, Sex-Role Psychology (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1977), 

135. 
15

 Ibid. 



 

  

suspension of (bourgeois) cultural norms and prohibitions.  While carnivalesque 

practices retain the critical and cultural tools of the dominant classes, these very 

tools are utilized to degrade and mock forms of high culture; they revel in this 

contradiction‖.
16

  This dichotomous contradiction between bourgeois cultural 

norms and carnivalesque transgression is largely played out in Girls Gone Wild 

through the experience of the collective collegiate vacation, known popularly as 

Spring Break.  In a 1998 study entitled ―Casual Sex on Spring Break,‖ three 

cultural anthropologists became enmeshed within ―an atmosphere in which the 

usual rules and moral codes did not apply.  Students provided detailed descriptions 

of how some had behaved ‗totally out of character‘ or in ways that ‗they never 

would at home‘‖.
17

  Significantly, Pitcher notes that discrete expressions of 

carnivalesque behavior on the part of these individuals are almost always endorsed 

by a collective group consciousness:  

 

This type of behavior is often encouraged by a peer group, whether 

informally or more overtly in the form of a group pact.  Therefore, with a 

heightened level of peer pressure, coupled with an atmosphere of perpetual 

bawdy activity situated outside everyday norms, Spring Break becomes an 

opportunity for college students to temporarily step outside typical middle-

class boundaries with few social repercussions.
18

 

 

While manifestations of a collective consciousness are essential to deconstructing 

the motives for women simultaneously hiking their tops in Girls Gone Wild or a 

group of men ―mooning‖ the camera in Guys Gone Wild, Pitcher‘s analysis fails to 

recognize a further consequence of their exploitative dialectic.  Not only are the 

carnivalesque performances in Guys and Girls Gone Wild endorsed by the larger 

peer group of the participants, but that approval generates the compounding effect 

of constructing a gendered group identity defined in terms of these visual 

carnivalesque practices.  Consequently, if there is an existent lack of equity in the 

representative visual economies between Guys and Girls Gone Wild, the collective 

gender identities they construct are correspondingly disparate. 

Perhaps the most explicit scene in Dormroom Confessions is provided 

through an interview with Brynn, a sophomore at the University of Georgia 

majoring in psychology.  As Brynn is enjoying a festive evening out at a jam-

packed dance club, she is gradually approached by the Girls Gone Wild camera 

                                                 
16

 Karen C. Pitcher, ―The Staging of Agency in Girls Gone Wild,‖ Critical Studies in Media 

Communication 23.3 (August 2006): 203. 
17

 Cited in Pitcher, 204. 
18

 Ibid. 



 

  

crew and encouraged by her friends to give them a show.  Within the confines of 

Brynn‘s modestly sized apartment, her bed becomes the primary attraction of the 

camera‘s focus.  Asked to simply stand still for a moment, the representational 

politics of Girls Gone Wild becomes obvious by means of extreme close-ups of 

Brynn‘s rear-end and cleavage.  According to pioneering film theorist Béla Balázs, 

the use of the close-up ―can show us the very instance in which the general is 

transformed into the particular…it not only revealed new things, but showed us the 

meaning of the old‖.
19

  If this sliding scale between generality and precision can be 

visually codified by the use of camera zoom, Girls Gone Wild stakes a far greater 

claim in scrupulous meditations on specific elements of female anatomy through 

the use of tight camera angles than does its male counterpart in privileging certain 

aspects of the masculine body. 

Bribed with promises of official Girls Gone Wild apparels including a tank-

top and ―booty shorts,‖ Brynn fully exposes herself for the camera and confesses 

her especial fondness for her ―real boobs‖.
20

  Indeed, within its sexualized matrix, 

Girls Gone Wild claims particular access to realms of realism not available through 

traditional outlets of narrative cinema.  In her essay ―Soft-Core in TV Time: The 

Political Economy of a ‗Cultural Trend‘,‖ Vicky Mayer notes that the collective 

gender identities generated by a media conduit such as Girls Gone Wild are 

facilitated largely through its claim to a particular articulation of visual realism: 

 

The videos were produced with the highest-grade amateur (‗prosumer‘) 

video cameras available; therefore, they index the ‗real‘ with a seemingly 

transparent presentation of a grainy and often-shaky representation of real 

life…The lack of professional lighting, editing, or scripting also enhances 

the sense of realism in the frame.  The mise en scènes are real tourist 

locations and events that target college students.  The women who display 

themselves in these settings and activities frequently receive t-shirts or hats 

on-camera in exchange for their performances, furthering their 

representation as unpaid amateurs.
21

 

 

Indeed, the amateurish qualities surrounding Brynn‘s fifteen minutes of fame in 

Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Confessions are promoted not only through the 

representational politics of the camera, but also by the collective feminine identity 

Brynn invokes to contextualize her performance.  Giving the camera a coy smile as 

                                                 
19

 Béla Balázs, ―The Close-Up‖.  Rpt. in Film Theory & Criticism: 6
th

 Edition.  Ed. Leo Braudy 

and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 314. 
20

 Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Confessions.   
21

 Vicki Mayer, ―Soft-Core in TV Time: The Political Economy of a ‗Cultural Trend‘,‖ Critical 

Studies in Media Communication 22.4 (October 2005): 304. 



 

  

she removes her last item of clothing, the cameraman expresses his own delight at 

the exhibitionism displayed before him: ―Man, I love Southern girls‖.
22

  To this 

encouragement, Brynn immediately adds her own affirmation: ―I know…we‘re 

pretty great‖.
23

  Brynn‘s use of the communal pronoun in this moment should not 

be underestimated and is, I would argue, especially revealing.  By aligning herself 

with a particular gendered and geographic demography, femininity as it becomes 

manifest in the American South, Brynn concurrently manipulates the ways in 

which that population‘s own visibility vis-à-vis collective notions of gender are 

represented within a broader public discourse.  Consequently, the scopophilic 

fantasy of male heteronormative sexuality endorsed by Brynn‘s performance 

informs a visual reading in which any young woman aligning herself within the 

shared disposition of the ―Southern girl‖ can be convinced to enact similar Girls 

Gone Wild-esque performances. 

Indeed, these articulations of gender performance are taken to new 

exploitative heights in the 2008 release Girls Gone Wild: Hottest Moments Ever.  

Stacey, a young woman vacationing on Spring Break, is celebrating her eighteenth 

birthday with many of her closest girlfriends.  Couching this occasion in terms of a 

celebratory event worthy of particularly wild behavior, the Girls Gone Wild 

production staff provides Stacey with her first eighteenth birthday present: a 

fluorescent pink, battery-operated vibrator with multi-speed capabilities.
24

  

Executing a gradual striptease with emphatic encouragement from the cameraman 

that the time has come for Stacey to display ―the kitty,‖ the young woman removes 

the remainder of her clothing and engages in an uninhibited masturbatory session 

lasting nearly twenty minutes.
25

  Just in case her whimpers of ecstasy failed in 

revealing the cause of their inspiration, Stacey proudly boasts at the interview‘s 

conclusion that the performance she has just put on has showcased her multiple 

orgasmic capacity.
26

  This particularly feminine aptitude is not a pioneering cause 

for fascination within outlets of popular culture.  However, according to Wesley 

and Wesley, there does exist between men and women, 

 

innate physiological sex differences with respect to orgasm capacity.  

Females can have multiple orgasm, one right after another, something males 

in general cannot do.  After orgasm most males find further stimulation of 

their penis unpleasant and need a rest period before they can have a second 

or third ejaculation.  Those men who can have sequential orgasm report that 

                                                 
22

 Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Confessions. 
23

 Ibid. 
24

 Girls Gone Wild: Hottest Moments Ever.  Mantra Entertainment, 2008.  DVD. 
25

 Ibid. 
26

 Ibid.  



 

  

the first one is the most satisfying, while women who experience multiple 

orgasm report that the second or third is most satisfying.
27

 

 

If one way in which women may be defined physiologically is through their 

capability to experience multiple orgasms, Girls Gone Wild transforms that 

capacity into another collective gender trait fit for objectification, exploitation, and 

commodification.   

Of particular note in the case of Stacey is the way in which her overtly 

sexualized performance is consistently equated with a coming-of-age narrative à la 

her eighteenth birthday.  Although she confesses to having already lost her 

virginity, Stacey‘s actions are filtered through a verbal and visual rhetoric of 

newness and excitement.  According to Pitcher, Stacey‘s interview is emblematic 

of a particular Girls Gone Wild sensibility: ―the impression presented both within 

the videos and in journalistic accounts of GGW is that such sexual display is an 

innocent rite of passage for white, middle-class youth; swept away in the 

atmosphere of partying and revelry in a place where normal social consequences 

and perceptions are ignored‖.
28

  In turning to a consideration of Guys Gone Wild, 

notable differences will become apparent almost immediately in the ways its 

subjects are represented and what notions of a collective masculine identity their 

performances create. 

In their superficial attempt to level the gendered playing field of softcore 

reality exploitation, Joe Francis and Mantra Entertainment first began running 

advertisements for Guys Gone Wild exclusively on late-night television on July 13, 

2004.  Retailing for the same price as equivalent Girls Gone Wild merchandise, 

Guys Gone Wild productions feature college-aged men in various states of undress, 

more often than not in their underwear, participating in both ―group‖ and ―solo‖ 

activities: skinny-dipping, nude football, showers, etc.  Currently offering more 

than twenty releases in its online and mail-order catalog, Guys Gone Wild has 

found success with such subtitled releases as Hunk Hotel, Pool Party, and All-

American Jock.
29

  The Guys Gone Wild franchise has even capitalized on satiric 

homage to mainstream American cinema, transforming the 2000 teen comedy 

Dude, Where’s My Car? into its 2005 release Guys Gone Wild: Dude, Where’s My 

Pants?
30

  Although Guys Gone Wild does feature lengthy displays of full-frontal 

male nudity, the series gradually alleviates its exploitative potential in two 

significant ways: first, by encouraging its male subjects to constantly perform 

                                                 
27

 Wesley, 147. 
28

 Pitcher, 204-5. 
29

 Joseph R. Francis,  ―Guys Gone Wild‖.  27 April 2009. <http://www.guysgonewild.com>. 
30

 Ibid. 



 

  

infantilized sexual behaviors, and second, by refusing to dwell upon any of the 

explicit masturbatory fantasies that have had such a direct influence on the 

maturation of Girls Gone Wild.  If, according to Ariel Levy, the rise of a feminized 

raunch culture has appreciably contributed to the removal of the physical act from 

notions of ―sexy,‖ Guys Gone Wild offers little in the way of rebuttal.  Nor does it 

prove an exception to Karen Pitcher‘s claim that outlets of softcore reality 

exploitation have transposed Bakhtin‘s notion of the carnivalesque onto 

contemporary events such as Spring Break, or even more simply, the collegiate 

party.  However, in exploring the gendered phenomenology of the twenty-first 

century collegiate party, critical readings of visual texts such as Guys Gone Wild: 

Beach Bums and Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break provide significant indications 

that the sexual politics of softcore reality exploitation do not operate equally along 

the axes of gender. 

Filmed during the Spring Break season of 2008 in Cancun, Mexico, Guys 

Gone Wild: Beach Bums devotes the majority of its camera time, with few 

exceptions, to the confessional space of the traveling tour bus first popularized by 

its female predecessor.  With the exclusion of Ryan, a 19 year-old college student 

who is told by his camera-laden female companion on the beach, ―Baby, I will 

follow you wherever you go,‖ the interviews and exhibitionism of Beach Bums 

take place primarily behind closed doors.
31

  The fact that the Guys Gone Wild 

production staff is comprised singularly of women is one of the most important and 

revealing disparities from its female counterpart.  Firmly aligning itself with 

heteronormative expectations of masculinity, I would argue that the very existence 

of Guys Gone Wild is predicated upon the presence of an exclusively female staff 

for which young heterosexual men are comfortable displaying themselves sexually.   

The first lengthy episode in Beach Bums concentrates on a group of three 

fraternity brothers from Purdue University.  Initially attracting the attention of the 

Guys Gone Wild production crew by their frontal and rear flashing from the 

balcony of their hotel room, two camerawomen venture upstairs in hopes of 

capturing additional and more personalized footage.
32

  The three men are told that 

Cancun‘s Spring Break 2008 will be one characterized by a battle of the sexes with 

the victor claiming exhibitionistic superiority.
33

  In this way, the female production 

staff of Guys Gone Wild enacts direct influence over the gendering of its 

exploitative practices by employing the stereotypically confrontational dichotomy 

of men versus women.  Although the young men are not convinced into exhibiting 

any further full-frontal nudity, the scene ends with the addition of three more 

                                                 
31

 Guys Gone Wild: Beach Bums.  Mantra Entertainment, 2008.  DVD. 
32

 Ibid. 
33

 Ibid. 



 

  

fraternity brothers as all six flash the camera from the rear with the emphatic 

trademark call of ―Guys Gone Wild!‖
34

 

The longest confessional interview in Beach Bums is from Alan, a 19 year-

old architectural design student from Houston, Texas.  When asked how ―wild‖ he 

is willing to get for the staff camerawoman, Alan‘s reply is clearly coded in 

heteronormative expectations of the performance of masculinity in front of a 

woman: ―as wild as you need me to get‖.
35

  As the flirtatious proceedings gain 

intimate traction, Alan confesses his preference for blonde-haired, green-eyed 

women who ideally share his passion for intercourse in the missionary position.
36

  

When Alan is convinced to remove the remainder of his clothing, the work of the 

camerawoman reveals the broader politics of visual representation in Guys Gone 

Wild as the camera never zooms closer than a shot in three-quarter profile.  In 

contrast to its female counterpart in which this tool is used habitually, the close-up 

is a visual device Guys Gone Wild is disinclined to endorse.   

The second in its franchised series, Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break was shot 

and released during the Spring Break season of 2004.  In this entry‘s first scene, a 

college-aged male from New York is approached by two Guys Gone Wild 

camerawomen in his hotel and is convinced into being filmed.  As the camera 

begins rolling inside a hotel room, one of the camerawomen makes a coy, yet 

explicit confession: ―I‘ve heard you have a very…big…cock‖.
37

  Although this 

immediate genital insistence might seem contradictory to Horrocks‘ Lacanian 

reading of softcore pornography, erection or ejaculation for the New York youth is 

never achieved.  The visual boundary of the three-quarter profile shot is also 

maintained.  As the flirtatious events between the camerawomen and the young 

man continue, the subject in question provides positive proof concerning his ample 

endowment and the astonishment of size continues to define the remainder of the 

encounter.  Vacillating between exhibitionistic thrill and coyness, the young man is 

constantly told to ―turn around baby…the girls can‘t see you‖.
38

  Indeed, the 

obsessive fascination with size is not a groundbreaking cultural phenomenon 

initially generated either by Guys or Girls Gone Wild.  However, according to 

feminist critic Susan Bordo, these absorptions do not function equally between the 

sexes: 

 

The humongous penis…is a cultural fantasy…And even if he knows, on 

some level (from his experience in locker rooms and the like) that the Harry 

                                                 
34

 Ibid. 
35

 Ibid. 
36

 Ibid. 
37

 Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break.  Mantra Entertainment, 2004.  DVD. 
38

 Ibid.   



 

  

Reemses and Jeff Strykers of the world are not the norm, that knowledge 

may pale beside the power of the iconography: the meanings attached to 

having an impressively large member.
39

 

 

Bordo‘s article is provoking largely because she argues that those larger-than-

average penises that do exist in reality are culturally celebrated in terms of 

achievement that does not find any anatomical correlative on the female body: 

―We wouldn‘t usually describe large breasts as ‗impressive,‘ would we?...In 

contrast, the penis so large as to take a lover‘s breath away is a majestic penis, a 

commanding penis‖.
40

  As Spring Break‘s opening encounter with the well-

endowed man from New York reaches its conclusion, the two camerawomen ask 

him if he is capable of performing any ―tricks,‖ such as the ability to ―swing it 

around like a helicopter‖.
41

  If the sexual exhibitionism of Guys Gone Wild relies 

upon a vocabulary of infantile and child-like behaviors, this incitement toward 

penis puppetry proves no exception.  Even still, I would argue that the 

encouragement given by these camerawomen is so effective in this instance 

because it unambiguously alludes to a male-centric referent in popular culture.  

Released in 2001, Diary of a Sinner: 1
st
 Entry is the first studio album produced by 

North Carolina-born rapper Petey Pablo and contains the hit single ―Raise Up‖.  In 

this song, young men at parties or dance clubs are encouraged to ―take your shirt 

off / twist it 'round yo head / spin it like a helicopter‖.
42

  To this day, the song 

remains a dance-floor anthem for college-aged men and would almost certainly 

have been familiar to the young man from New York persuaded to imitate its same 

behaviors, especially within the context of the innumerable parties that dominate 

Spring Break culture.     

Concluding ―The Staging of Agency in Girls Gone Wild‖ with a brief 

comparative discussion of that phenomenon juxtaposed with its male counterpart, 

Pitcher notes that the Guys Gone Wild emphasis is indeed ―on silliness and bodily 

humor, rather than sexuality…men run down hotel hallways, attempt cartwheels 

and somersaults, march in a conga line, and jump on motel beds‖.
43

  Indeed, 

notions of the infantile and the childish are consistently reified throughout Spring 

Break, in which the lengthiest interview is from an eighteen year-old freshman at 

Oklahoma State University.  The lowered inhibitions of this young man, likely 

aided by the most popular Spring Break past time of alcohol consumption, become 

                                                 
39

 Susan Bordo, ―Does Size Matter?‖  Revealing Male Bodies.  Ed. Cowling, Johnson, et. al.  

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) 21. 
40

 Ibid. 
41

 Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break. 
42

 Petey Pablo, ―Raise Up‖.  Diary of a Sinner: 1
st
 Entry.  Jive Records, 2001. 

43
 Pitcher, 214. 



 

  

apparent as he strips to full-nudity almost immediately.  Performing ―the 

helicopter‖ with equal zeal as his New York counterpart, this young man confesses 

to the possession of a trick of his own: ―the Gonzo‖.
44

  Personifying the friendly 

blue creature of The Muppet Show fame beloved by children worldwide, his 

pronounced eyes and protruding nose are reimagined in this scene by the inversion 

of testicles above the penis, still no visually tighter than three-quarter profile.  

When later asked if he has ever given a name to his genitalia, the young man 

forcefully answers: ―‗The Captain‘…because ‗The Captain‘ makes it happen‖.
45

  In 

considering historical metaphors for male genital labeling, Peter F. Murphy notes 

that ―metaphors of manhood‖ are useful in exposing ―the assumptions about 

masculinity that American men take to be normal‖.
46

  Indeed, the young man from 

Oklahoma reacts to this inquiry of penile taxonomy with a tone of decidedly casual 

nonchalance.  However, Murphy also notes that latent anxieties of gender 

performance and sexuality almost always exist beneath these breezy male 

bravados: ―Ironically, this discourse reflects an objectification of self and 

sexuality, a phallocentric sexuality, a disembodied sexuality, and a great deal of 

ambivalence about sexuality‖.
47

  Indeed, as visual analysis reveals, the entire genre 

of softcore reality exploitation revolves around the objectification of the self and 

its sexuality.  However, since the advent of Guys Gone Wild in 2004, the question 

of audience has become increasingly significant to deconstructing the masculinist 

discourse that continues to dominate the softcore industry. 

Bill Horn, a spokesman for Mantra Entertainment, initially anticipated the 

release of Guys Gone Wild as one of the great media yarns of the early twenty-first 

century: ―‗I think it's going to be a big gag gift, bachelorette kind of gift‘‖.
48

  While 

editions of Guys Gone Wild may be present at female pre-marital celebrations, this 

audience actually constitutes a significantly small minority of Guys Gone Wild 

viewers.  As an anonymous columnist for the Taipei Times reports, the indulgent 

fantasies of Girls Gone Wild do not find an equivalent in its male counterpart: 

 

The big difference between the male and female versions, though, is the 

absence of kissing.  Much of the allure of the Girls Gone Wild series, with 

titles such as Girls Who Like Girls and Mardi Gras Co-eds, is the fantasy it 

                                                 
44

 Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break. 
45

 Ibid. 
46

 Peter F. Murphy, Stud Tools & The Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By (Madison: The 

University of Wisconsin Press, 2001) 4. 
47

 Ibid. 
48

 ―The World's Gone Mad for Wild Guys and Girls‖.  The Taipei Times.  3 July 2004.  27 April 

2009.   

< http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/07/03/2003177572>. 



 

  

dangles before its viewers -- the possibility that the wholesome girl next 

door could, on a drunken spring break whim, tear off her T-shirt and make 

out with one of her sorority sisters.
49

 

 

According to Horn, the Girls Gone Wild franchise gladly endorses homosexual 

fantasies if, and only if, they involve two women performing for the pleasure of a 

straight male viewing audience: ―Let's face it -- there's a double standard when it 

comes to guy-on-guy as opposed to girl-on-girl…It's sexy to see two girls making 

out.  It's not considered sexy to see two guys making out.  That's just the reality 

and we were there to capture the reality‖.
50

  Indeed, the collective gender identities 

promoted by Guys and Girls Gone Wild heavily implicate women as more easily 

swayed into same-sex sexual practices than men.  Although guy-on-guy kissing 

may not be sexy to Horn, it may prove a profitable maneuver in whatever future 

the franchise envisions, as young to middle-aged gay men continue to constitute 

Guys Gone Wild‘s largest viewing audience.  While noting that female-centric 

pornography has been on the rise since the 1990s, Horrocks importantly asserts 

that male-targeted porn remains ―commoner because it reflects the dominant 

position of men and their ‗consumption‘ of women as sex objects.  Another point is 

that men are perhaps more ‗perverse‘ than women, because they are more 

traumatized by sexual difference‖.
51

  Regardless of motive, the fantasies of a 

straight male audience still continue their dominant pervasion of pornography. 

In succinctly defining the experience of exploitation, psychotherapist Alan 

Wertheimer notes that ―a transaction between A and B is exploitative only when 

(1) A expects to gain something of value from a transaction or interaction with B, 

and (2) B is harmed by the transaction (harmful exploitation) or gains less than he 

or she should (mutually advantageous exploitation)‖.
52

  Some audiences have 

reductively noted that the question of exploitation when turned to Guys and Girls 

Gone Wild needs to be considered in terms of moral relativism: if these amateur 

performers don‘t feel harmed or manipulated, are they truly being exploited?  

Whatever thrill may be gained from bearing it all in front of a camera, the reward 

of a t-shirt pales in comparison to the multi-million dollar profits Mantra 

Entertainment currently enjoys each year and, if money continues to talk, its 

disparate exploitative formulas will continue their reign over the softcore reality 

industry.  For as long as outlets of American mass media ascribe to the sexual 

                                                 
49

 Ibid. 
50

 Ibid. 
51

 Horrocks, 117. 
52

 Alan Wertheimer, Exploitation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 167. 



 

  

double standard cited by Horn as a cultural truism, the genre of softcore reality 

exploitation will remain unequal in its gender and representational politics. 
 

 

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Balász, Béla.  ―The Close-Up‖.  Reprinted in Film Theory & Criticism: 6
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Bordo, Susan.  ―Does Size Matter?‖  Revealing Male Bodies.  Ed. Cowling, Johnson, et. al.  

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. 

 

Butler, Judith.  Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 

1990. 

 

Francis, Joseph R.  ―Girls Gone Wild.‖  27 April 2009. <http://www.girlsgonewild.com>. 

 

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Girls Gone Wild: Hottest Moments Ever.  Mantra Entertainment, 2008.  DVD. 

 

Guys Gone Wild: Beach Bums.  Mantra Entertainment, 2008.  DVD. 

 

Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break.  Mantra Entertainment, 2004.  DVD. 

 

Horrocks, Roger.  Male Myths and Icons: Masculinity in Popular Culture.  New York: St. 

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Keegan, Terence.  ―Raunch Goes From Trickle to Mainstream Gusher.‖  Variety.  

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Mayer, Vicki.  ―Soft-Core in TV Time: The Political Economy of a ‗Cultural Trend‘.‖ 

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Murphy, Peter F.  Stud Tools & The Family Jewels: Metaphors Men Live By.  Madison: The 

University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. 

 

Pablo, Petey.  ―Raise Up.‖  Diary of a Sinner: 1
st
 Entry.  Jive Records, 2001. 

 



 

  

Pitcher, Karen C.  ―The Staging of Agency in Girls Gone Wild‖.  Critical Studies in Media 

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―The World's Gone Mad for Wild Guys and Girls.‖  The Taipei Times. 3 July 2004.  27 April 

2009.   

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http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/07/03/2003177572