I started getting emails about it last week. Current and former students wanted to let me know that the latest episode of America's Next Top Model had the contestants pose as corpses. As I sit here grieving the real death of a beautiful friend, I also try to comprehend the state of a society that would actually make women look like they'd been slaughtered and then put it on television for our "entertainment."

You'd think by now I'd be inured to this, given that I have been studying representations of dead women for nearly twenty years. But I have to admit, one more time, this kind of intentional necrophiliac fantasy takes my breath away and bewilders even me, though I understand all too well what it means.

Such naked misogyny should put to rest for once and for all any contention that women are held equally in the United States. But it won't. Hidden in plain sight, this proof that our collective imagination continues to insist upon females primarily as meat, won't convince most of its audience that they should demand better treatment for women. After all, many of the girls and women who watch this show do so in order to solidify their allegiance to a sexist dynamic that urges us to dedicate our lives to pleasing men.

In this case, the pleasure comes from imagining us murdered.

My head is hanging in despair.

But the good news? I have gotten many messages from young women who actually SAW what they were watching the other night. Because they've studied feminist theory, because my courses have exposed them to the reality of how women are represented and what that truly means, they are able to think for themselves. And they know that there's somebody who cares about them, who thinks that they deserve better, who won't say "it's just a tv show," and "you look fat in those pants."

Sometimes when the full weight of our culture begins to crush me I imagine moving to a fictional "village in France." But it's just a fantasy. I belong here, and I will stay here, to try and bring some peace and sanity in my own small way to my own small place. It can only be a small contribution, so great are the violations of humanity and common sense. As the Times reports this week, Bush has turned the White House into his own O.K. Corral, gunning down attorneys who aren't "Bushies," Harriet Myers' term for the faithful, those who get to keep their jobs in what should be an arena free from politics. We continue to murder those in Iraq who do not want an occupying army. T. Boone Pickens insures his own life and that of his cronies so the Oklahoma State Football team can get $250 million dollars after these old men die. Meanwhile the people who pick our broccoli live in freezing trailers, their children rinsing themselves in cold water and going to bed hungry.

Yes, the news gets depressing. But have no fear. You can always turn the channel to watch something pleasant.

Like America's Next Top Model.