Actual Headline

Exclusive: Kate Hudson and Alex Rodriguez "Love Sex," Says Pal.

Now, just on its own, that's a completely absurd "news" headline, even for entertainment news. (And calling it an exclusive is positively hilarious.) I could write an entire post on how a headline breathlessly announcing a famous couple "love sex" is emblematic of a celebrity culture in which every mundane detail of the personal lives of public figures are commoditized and packaged for public consumption in a way unhealthy for both consumed and consumer.

But today I'm more interested in the fact that this "news story"—including "exclusive" details like "Apparently, New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez is a homerun in the bedroom. That's what girlfriend Kate Hudson has been telling close pals" and "Hudson, 30, is aware of Rodriguez's playboy rep: During his five-year marriage to wife Cynthia, he stepped out with stripper Joslyn Noel Morse; another fling recalls portraits of the slugger as a centaur hanging over his bed" and "Rodriguez, 34, has confided that Hudson means more to him than Madonna, whom he dated after his 2008 split with wife Cynthia" (did you get all that? because if not, let me reiterate it for you: ALEX RODRIGUEZ LOVES SEX WITH LOTS OF WOMEN!)—comes just a week after a photo of A-Rod squeezing Derek Jeter's ass flew 'round the internetz.

Anytime a male public figure is plagued by rumors of Teh Dreaded Gay Ohnoes! there are stories about how hot the sex he's having with his partner are. Following a new round of rumors about Tom Cruise and Will Smith this summer, Cruise's wife Katie Holmes put him on a sex diet, and Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith spent her interviews promoting her new series talking about the couple's hot sex life.

This sort of spin dates back to Liberace (who totes loved the ladies for realz!), but in recent years it's becoming increasingly explicit, which ultimately serves to turn the female partners as sex props. Women who are famous in their own right, who had their own successful careers, are now so thoroughly objectified as Trophies of Heterosexuality in the couple's PR, that even a legit relationship looks like a staged partnership between a Very Important Man and the human evidence of his straightness.

Another hideous intersection between the misogyny that defines women as the sex class and the homophobia that makes "gay" the worst thing any famous man could be.

[Commenting Note: Please consider as you comment that observations like "Duh, of course they love sex! Who doesn't?!" will be alienating to asexual Shakers. "Loving sex" is not axiomatic; there is no assertion in the post that it is, and comments to that effect are not on-topic.]