Michael Laws: Boobs - it's all about getting a lift

Sunday Star Times

One of the great truths about Auckland is that it's more boring than Wellington.

Certainly the heady days of the 90s are over - no America's Cup regattas, no Hero Parades, no band of TVNZ executives rolling out of the Viaduct.

In fact, so wowser has Auckland become, that it dumped John Banks for a naive cereal manufacturer, and then returned to Banks, because he was actually the most exciting politician around.

The V8s were abandoned, Queen St transformed into an Asian industrial complex and slum tenements were introduced to the CBD. Suddenly the only colour on Auckland streets were young hoodies aping their Los Angeles loser role models.

Enter Steve Crow. Porn entrepreneur. An unreconstructed, recidivist retailer of the ribald. And very possibly the only interesting or engaging personality left in New Zealand's premier city.

Crow is best known as the controversialist responsible for the Boobs on Bikes parade - a celebration of the mammary but also a smart marketing of his various erotica conventions. Lovelies flash their silicone and saline implants behind gruff, bearded dudes revving Harleys.

It is sleazy, noisy and attracts every adolescent oink within 50km. But, gee, it's fun. Heterosexual men love it because it allows a man to do what a man does best - to ogle the unobtainable.

Indeed, it is the ordinary male's lot in life to never meet, associate or date the kind of woman that our mothers warned us against. We've always wanted to, because bad girls have an allure all of their own. But just as Playboy centrefolds are a fantasy, so, too, are the boobs-on-bike girls.

In the main, they're not particularly beautiful women. Not the classic beauties who grace catwalks or the front covers of Vogue. But they are dirty - and dirty trollops titillate men precisely because they are everything that our spouse, partner or girlfriend is not.

Including bloody expensive. Most are porn starlets who utilise their bonking skills to commercial effect while others, like rugby streaker Lisa Lewis, will set you back $7000 a night. Mate, for that price I'd want the house painted as well.

And that's what all this is about. A completely harmless, blokes' fantasy - no more sexually alluring than Fashion TV. A glimpse of a world that you're kind of glad is not your own.

Except to the new wowsers at the Auckland City Council - led by foaming feminist Cathy Casey. For the first time in her life, this prototypical socialist finds common cause with John Banks. Both are sickened that women are going to be "objectified and demeaned" to sell Crow's vision of sexual submission.

Which seriously underestimates the stroppiness of the average Kiwi woman. I have not been in any relationship with any woman - sexual, social or standard - that did not involve me abasing myself simply because I was male.

Indeed, it is perfectly all right for women to get trolleyed and grope every male stripper at a bawdy revue, but woe betide any bestial male who attempts the same thing. He'll get handbagged by his missus, spurned by the sensualist and arrested for indecent assault.

Which is why Boobs on Bikes is so transparently harmless. There can be only ogling - the odorous ogres that stand between the lustful and the object of their lust, resemble the Republican Guards. In themselves, they are instantly deflating.

But that has not stopped the Auckland City Council - fired by the righteous zeal of its unholy alliance - passing a bylaw specifically to stop the parade. And striking a very real blow against the Bill of Rights Act and freedom of expression.

The curious thing is that we actually have indecency laws in this country. The interpretation of which is left to the boys (and girls) in blue. When Wanganui's council tried a few years ago to ban Puppetry of the Penis, its outrage was undermined by the local police chief.

Making origami of one's flaccid member was not indecent, observed the local police superintendent. Just bloody painful. If a consenting audience wished to watch such strangeness, then where was the harm?

The same might be said of the boobs bonanza. No one is obliging Cathy Casey to be outraged nor the old biddies who make up her council. But if 100,000 Aucklanders - starved of excitement - flock to the CBD for their yearly dose of frivolity, then who is hurt?

La Casey has suggested that if Crow defies both bylaw and injunction, she will lie down before the procession in protest. If so, then she is likely to be manhandled to the footpath and trouble only confused Chinese students. The better protest would be to do a Madge or a Peta and strip herself. To shake her droopy dressage in defiance.

Then she would get our attention. And very possibly our sympathy.

So, come on Auckland. Relax a little. Let your hair down. The Caseys of this world burned their bras 40 years ago. Their daughters are simply doing the same. Only this time we males have been forewarned. And we've bought our tickets.