Owning our bodies’ representation

June 13, 2008

Owning our bodies’ representation

This post from Ms. Naughty (blog NSFW) got me thinking. She wrote a post about the Topfree Equal Rights Association, and their argument that it should be legal for women to bare their breasts in public since men can: that not being able to amounts to discrimination since it’s the “same” body part. Ms. Naughty quotes this bit from Topfree’s website, which struck me:

“This is a rebellion against a woman’s body being considered everywhere and always a sex object. As women we want the right for ourselves to decide when our breasts are sexual. That isn’t going to be in a swimming facility, and therefore they must not have to be covered. We want permission to bathe topfree, as men do.”

I’m really seduced by the idea of women being able to assert when our bodies are and are not sexual. This is something that has bothered me for some time, and was a large part of what I have written previously: that representations of women’s bodies are usurped and posited as sexual/sex objects despite what the woman herself desires. Women’s bodies seem to be by default sexual. They are subject to sexualization and sexual (or “beauty”) evaluation simply by existing. So I really like the theoretical argument presented here about women being able to own the sexualization of their body.

But while the argument is seductive, I’m not sure that it’s practical. Because the cultural reality is that women don’t own our sexualization. We are constantly evaluated and sexualized. We are catcalled; we are told to put clothes on. Celebrity women are subject to Hot Lists and 25 Unsexiest Women Lists. We do not exist publicly as people, but rather as women. And I don’t think that women baring their breasts publicly will radically change the way that our culture perceives women and their bodies.

I’m actually afraid it might do the opposite. For one thing, considering our culture of street harassment and implicit entitlement of men to sexualize women based on what they are wearing, women going topfree is likely to instigate such behavior. With masculine right to comment women’s bodies and their irritating egotist habits of vocalizing their approval of women’s bodies, it is likely that the women who will have the privilege of being able to go topfree are women whose bodies conform to heteronormative standards and those who don’t will be publicly shamed. Thus, those whose breasts are likely to be visible are those who already conform to heteronormative and patriarchal expectations of which women are appropriately sexual. Further, since breasts are especially hypersexualized and fetishized, and seen to be duly “owed” to men’s gaze and approval (a la “show me ur titz”), I can easily see public topfree-ness quickly turning in public sexual display: how can you move your body or behave and still be considered to be not sexual(ized)? Women going topless in a non-sexual manner surely requires limiting their behavior. And what will keep dance clubs from turning into strip clubs?

Even more insidiously, how will going topless be interpreted in a culture that (WRONGLY!) uses women’s attire or behavior as an “excuse” for rape and sexual assault?

It sounds like I’m being critical but this is actually a lament of sorts. I think the sexualization of women’s bodies should be in appropriate contexts and not merely assumed by their public presence. I think women should be able to determine when and where their bodies are sexual. And I am deeply disturbed that we can’t. Women’s sexual agency is highly constricted in public spaces and it inhibits gender and sexual equality. And I don’t know what to do about it. But I don’t think that going topfree will change societal attitudes; they will likely reinforce them and shame and make invisible women who are not ideally sexy.

This post from Renegade Evolution (blog NSFW) s also excellent, and also related well to my earlier post. She says:

So anyway, I am running along, and I see another runner out and about. I see him pretty often. Like me, I figure he probably works at night (due to the times I see him), and like me, he is insane enough to run at high noonish in this kind of heat, because he and I are the only two out and about. Now, let me stress this: This man is hot. Or so I think anyway […] And while I am sure he gets the gaze from passing hetero female motorists…he’s not the one who gets honked at. And at that moment I am both enraged and jealous that this sweaty, gleaming, sexy, stunning man can be outside running around practically naked, and while yes, carnal thoughts undoubtedly occur in minds other than my own upon seeing him, he is not the one getting honked at. It’s my more heavily clothed and less attractive self who is. Why? Well, ‘cause I’m a chick.

…

I generally slow down to a brisk walk about two blocks from home, the whole cool down thing, and as I go into my subdivision, a guy in a red truck who was behind me slows down to a crawling pace, and turns in front of me. He’s doing the whole checking me out thing, and nodding, as if to say “wow, I approve”, he literally almost stops, making sure that I notice him, his barely rolling vehicle, his expression and approving nod, and I look at this guy, the single family home neighborhood he’s turning into, where he probably lives with a wife and kids, and here he is leering at me like some drunken frat boy and doing everything in his power to make sure I notice him doing it…and I wanted to throw something at his truck, or follow him home and tell his wife, or drag him out of that Ford and get a good look at him, to see if he would pass my muster and be worthy of my leer, if I would even give him a second fucking glace if he wasn’t blocking the damn road and making an ass of himself. And I’m not the type that always sees sexism in everything: I mean, if I’m at the gym and some guy also working out complements me on my abs, or forearms, or body in general, I don’t take it as sexist. At work, sure, it’s sexist, but it’s expected. The body is what pays the bills. But when I am a damn mess after a run in 100 weather and just trying to get back to my house and some asshat makes such a display of his obvious noticing of me, hell, you’d have to be a corpse not to notice it. […] I betcha half naked red running shorts man doesn’t have to put up with that shit.

I quoted a lot, but I took a few things away from it: the more skimpily clothed (man) is not subject to the same objectification/harassment that she is; there is a context for complimenting appearance that is expected (being at the gym, or being a sex worker, for example).

But her story shows that there is an entitlement to women’s bodies regadless of the context, simply by existing in public. Men have the privilege of being public persons without being subject to unwanted objectification. And this is what needs to change.

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