August 21, 2008
Olympic bodies
As I’ve been watching the Olympics, I have had two feelings about bodies:
- How irritating it is that regardless of basically everything, women are perpetually sexualized, and often sexualized first and foremost.
- How unused to seeing exposed young, fit, male bodies (particularly in snug attire) on a regular and public basis I am. This is something hetero men are exposed to multiple times every day, and hetero women are only every four years!
I have also made these observations:
- I regularly overhear female Olympic athletes sex appeal at least in equal proportion (if not more) to their athletic skill (though it’s usually in spite of their athletic skill). Hetero men seem to be unable to comment on female athletes skill without also commenting on their physical appearance, both body and beauty. Women do comment on the attractiveness of the female athletes sometimes as well (like women are more open to doing about other women anyway, whether peers or celebrities, and regardless of sexual attraction).
- I hear much fewer comments about the appearance of the male athletes, and never from hetero men (cuz that would be gay, ya know).
August 20, 2008
Theorizing privacy and copyright: addressing “fair use”
For those of you who have missed it, I blog fast and furiously on women’s privacy in public places and online, and am very concerned with the lack of control women have over the use of their images. Of course, women don’t have any less control than men do, but in my previous posting, I have stated why I think this is more of a problem for women–including that in a culture that has historically deemed women’s bodies as for public consumption, there is much less respect for a woman’s privacy period, much less if she dresses/acts in a “certain way” or appears in a “certain place”.
The crux of my concern is: How can we really experience sexual liberation (that I maintain has not been accomplished yet) if we, as women, cannot control the terms by which we are turned into public sexual objects?
The most recent example of this is, of course, is with Olympic gymnast Alicia Sacramone. Several others have posted very nicely on this, and I was a bit bust this weekend, so please read their excellent posts. Let’s hope there’s no repeating last summer’s experience of a track athlete.
One issue I have had is, aside from changing cultural attitudes–the ultimate problem-solver–how do we go about making any practical change? Until I started reading online more this past fall, I honestly had no clue that guys would peruse Myspace and Flickr pages, looking for women to ogle, objectify, call names, produce fantasies of, etc. on their own sites, denying these women the right to just live their life. As a reasonable human being, it never dawned on me that someone would feel so entitled to photographs of a birthday night-out with friends that I needed to protect myself. And it’s not like I exactly live under a rock–I have done Myspace and Facebook, use Youtube sometimes (usually to find something specific, not to check out the most recent and ridiculous videos). But I haven’t altered my life all that much around the internet, so it is more of a resource for me, and not where I live my life. And since I don’t do Google searches for “sexist asshats displaying male entitlement to women’s sexuality,” I hadn’t stumbled on this phenomenon until I began reading more and more online in the past 9 months or so. And now that I see this happen regularly, each time breaking my heart, this is something I can’t not comment on, and something I’m determined to work on in activism.
So getting to the point of this post: I was on the Creative Commons website, and I noticed that you can copyright your images and prevent downloads on a site like Flickr, a perhaps little-know fact which is blog-worthy all in itself. So I did a little more digging.
From The Creative Commons website:
Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work. They do not give you the ability to restrict anything that is otherwise permitted by exceptions or limitations to copyright—including, importantly, fair use or fair dealing—nor do they give you the ability to control anything that is not protected by copyright law, such as facts and ideas.
Creative Commons licenses attach to the work and authorize everyone who comes in contact with the work to use it consistent with the license.
If such photos were subject to “fair use” by these asshats, their being under copyright makes me think their source would need to be cited. Would it really be so hard to have web software require to link to a source in order to upload photos? (which would only mean your own photos would have to be hosted on a photo sharing site first). I use WordPress for my blog, and whenever someone links to me, it shows up in part of the admin functions. Would it really be that hard to require photo-sharing services such as Flikr, Picasa, etc. to offer that feature as well? With requiring links and providing notification of linking back (“trackbacks”), this would at least give people the power to know where their images are showing up and help stop their unauthorized usage, even if it can’t be prevented.
But what is “fair use” even? From the U.S. Copyright Office: Read the rest of this entry »
July 31, 2008
Review of a Mama Mia! review: In which being sexual and sexy are conflated
GRRRRRR
This is a pet peeve of mine: where a woman’s sexuality and her sex appeal are conflated. Sure, sex appeal or a woman performing what we think of as “sexy” could be part of a woman’s sexuality or her being a sexual person, but all too often they are horribly conflated, hence misrepresenting women-as-sexual-beings. In the end, my ire is with the idea that sexual display, performance, or one’s being sexually pleasing to another is what defines or indicates that a woman is being a sexual agent. It’s the classic “women are defined as sexually liberated in that they can prance around naked.”
So this is what make my stomach turn. Jessica at Jezebel reviews Mama Mia! and says the following:
Well, I saw Mamma Mia! on Friday night, and though it’s admirable that the trio of 50 to 60-something women (Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) are shown as sexual, something irked me about the portrayal of their sexuality — the movie made them into caricatures […] it bugged me that Streep, Baranski and Walters were all given choreography that involved grabbing their breasts and crotches repeatedly. It seemed to be mocking their lustiness rather than celebrating it.
Did you catch that sleight of hand? The women are shown as sexual (they has sex and experienced pleasure and from it), but the “problematic” portrayal of their sexuality is in the caricatured performance of it. Why is mocking the male-centric manner of “performing” sexiness a refusal of their sexuality? In order for that to be true, being “sexual” would have to be necessarily equivalent to representing one’s sexuality in a way that identifies with hetero male pleasure.
Isn’t this was feminism criticizes-that being validated by that male-centric sex culture does not define a woman’s sexual agency and is not what give a woman license to be sexual
(disclaimer: I didn’t see the movie, so my critique is on their commentary, not on the film)
July 21, 2008
Quick hit: recommended article on sport, sexuality and gender
Gender and sport is one of my recent key interests lately (I think this happened after the realization that sport is really about the body, and as you know, I’m all about theorizing male and female bodies!)…so check out “Patricia Nell Warren: LGBT Sports Movement Part One of Two,” and article from the Women’s Sport Foundation, via a pretty cool blog I recently found, Rethinking Basketball, providing interesting commentary on the WNBA. Some excerpts:
A lot of the homophobia directed at lesbians comes from an entrenched belief that strenuous sport will “masculinize” women. I will never forget running in the 1969 Boston Marathon, while I was still in the closet, and seeing that some of the spectators were screaming at me, “Dyke! Dyke!” I wondered why those idiots would assume I was a lesbian when they knew nothing about me — after all, I had kept my sexual orientation a deep dark secret. Then I realized that my mere presence out there on the road, in a sport reserved for men, meant that these people saw me as “masculinized”…and “masculine” is a code word for lesbian.
[…] For gay and bi men, homophobia comes from the opposite direction: the illogical and irrational belief that being gay “feminizes” you and makes you unfit for sports, especially for rough physical sports like football and ice hockey. The rhetoric of ridicule that many male coaches and athletes use — for instance, “you throw a ball like a girl” — is aimed at pushing a man to establish his heterosexuality by extreme efforts not to look “feminine.” So, for many men, the sudden discovery that a rugged, masculine teammate of theirs is gay is a horrible shock.
[…] The more I think about sports and study their history, the more I realize that homophobia is as much about gender as it is about sexual orientation. A given sport or sports body can make an attempt to codify a cultural definition of “gender,” all the way from which events are permitted to women to stipulations on what styles of clothing men and women must wear during competition, as they do in figure skating and rodeo.
Read the whole thing here.
July 14, 2008
MTV takes a “shot” at bisexuality
Wow. So the other night I was just mindlessly watching “The Soup” on E! as I got ready to go out, and let me tell you, I needed a drink after that. Can I just say that I saw this coming long ago when my women’s studies students informed me there’d be a new romance reality show featuring a bisexual woman, and thus, both male and female contestants. (First aside, this show could have never happened with a male bisexual, which is so unacceptable in our culture.) Yes, I’m talking about Tila Tequila’s “A Shot at Love.”
And yes, I realize I’m actually spending time discussing the Myspace queen who stupidly takes credit for making gay marriage acceptable.
Now I didn’t see the whole show in question but I looked it up later to watch the relevant snippets. “The Soup” reported that the final episode of “A Shot at Love” had Tequila choosing between a woman and a man, and during the episode the woman has some sort of breakdown. Apparently, being chosen by Tequila must be a huge commitment because she is SOO torn over…wait for it…if she “wants a man or a woman.” (follow this link for the clip of the actual episode-the scene in question is at 1:05 remaining on the clip). As the host Joel McHale rightly comments, “I thought that was sort of implied when you said you were a bisexual.” Of course, Tequila chooses the woman, and, on cue, the woman declines.
“The Soup” posits that this was done to have a 3rd season of the show, which is very likely, but it also conveniently qualms our fears about the threat of lesbian sexuality and reiterates stereotypes about bisexuality to make it less threatening, more hetero-affirmative, and indeed co-opts it for male heterosexual desire. Tequila just couldn’t choose a woman and live happily ever after. The show being comprised of both guy-girl and girl-girl action was likely primarily intended to titilate the hetero male mind, not to actually show a loving caring relationship between two women external to any male pleasure. I mean, everyone knows that lesbians can only be seen if they’re heterosexually-validated as “hot”…and if we can watch. And bisexuality? That’s really just for bar games and threesomes. So of course, any serious attempt at an intimate relationship between two women must be thwarted.
(I do realize that I’m trying to ascribe a serious relationship to reality show couples, and how much that just seems goofy. But if they’re trying to make us think this is serious love, I’m going to treat it as such.) Read the rest of this entry »
June 28, 2008
Entertainment and ‘choice’
A recent thought I had on entertainment and choosing:
We all like (need?) to be entertained: all genders, sexualities, races, etc.
The sad truth is, we have to choose from what is out there. Sometimes people of progressive sensibilities have to “overlook” things in entertainment that are problematic in order to be able to relax and, well, be entertained.
This is why I am really sick of the following defense/excuse for systematic problematic representations and constructions of “otherness” (non-white/male/middle-class/heterosexual) in entertainment or simply of certain titles in entertainment:
“[insert marginalized group here] watch it/play it/buy it/read it therefore:
- there’s no problem with the ideology perpetuated
- it accurately represents what said people want
- said people enjoy it every aspect of the entertainment”
The bottom line is that we can only be entertained from what’s out there, and what we like and want is heavily informed by what already exists. If every movie I saw was problem-free, I would rarely go to the movies. Just because people consume entertainment doesn’t absolve their -Isms.** I often decline from supporting and entertainment that is even a bit sexist/heterosexist/racist, etc., and I am fine with giving it up but many other people don’t make that sacrifice and that is 100% their prerogative. But that cannot be interpreted to mean that all entertainment consumed by marginalized individuals is not in any way offensive or problematic. Not to mention that oftentimes the problematic nature of some entertainment isn’t known until after spending the $$; thus, when commercial success=implied condoning, the damage is often already done, which makes public critique our primary way of making our disgust known.
Example: this, for me, especially applies to hetero women and porn, of women having resources for sexualized men. women want erotic imagery but the vast majority of images and films are targeted for heterosexual men, and often involve ideologies that progressive women find objectionable. More and more there are non-sexist, non-racist material available, but they are often hard-to-find and are almost never “free” (whereas men wanting “traditional” material have very easy and free access to material that is quite suitable for them). Therefore, many women (or prog-men), who want to satisfy their desire for erotic material, “settle” for traditional material and try to “look over” the deficiencies. Or many cope by occupying the male observer’s standpoint, and sexualize the female involved, thus they may be consuming and enjoying mainstream erotic imagery, but are deprived sexualized male bodies. In other words: when it comes to porn, women who want and enjoy porn as a category have to simply choose between the options they are given, which may or may not actually be 100% what they want. It’s just what’s easily (or freely) available.
Back to entertainment “in general”: These assumptions are further problematic:
- Sexism/racism/homophobia/xenophobia/heteronormativity in entertainment is appropriate because it simply reflects the “truth” of what an identity group “wants” (i.e. sexism is ok because these games are “for men.”): -Isms are not just a “personal preference.
- “Got a problem with it? Don’t buy it/play it/watch it!”: see above and also **above.
- These are the kinds of entertainment that sell: ever think to question how much money and other resources goes into developing entertainment that is non sexist/racist/heteronormative etc? Or how such entertainment is marketed?
Entertainment for guys (read: straight guys) is only defined as such because of the sexism/heterosexism involved. There is no reason why women and gay men can’t enjoy certain entertainment, and they shouldn’t have to put up with BS hetero/sexism to do so. Take games for example. Games that would appeal to guys do not need objectification and homophobia. That is not the reason why guys play these games. Instead, they function to outline the proper audience for these games and to reaffirm hetero-masculine identity. And the fact that women play these games serves as “evidence” that women don’t mind or that women enjoy the roles they are given in these games. As I’ve been trying to show in this post, these are misguided conclusions/assumptions. But since women do choose to play these games (since there are little if any sexism-free equivalent alternatives) there is no incentive to make their games differently since it clearly isn’t affecting their bottom line. But women and queer gamers do voice their dissatisfaction. And the solution is not to make some second-class, underdeveloped alternatives that rely on pathetic tropes and stereotypical marketing (see this Broadsheet article that in part prompted me to write this post today). For example: if women only have the choice between lame-assed girl-games and more complex and interesting games with implicit or overt sexism, women choosing the former does not necessarily mean that’s what “women want” (they may in fact be so sick of the sexism in most games) or that their choosing the latter means that the sexism is acceptable to them.
Bottom line: what we “choose” is not always what we want. It’s just what we have to choose from. And what we want for the most part comes from somewhere-it is shaped by what’s available.
On a related note, keep an eye out next week for a guest post on current issues in gaming!
(cross-posted to The Reaction)
June 11, 2008
More queer invisibility
This Boston Herald headline refers to a lesbian couple as “galpals.”
The article refers to their being lesbians, and that they are in fact a couple, but I’m not sure how being lesbians get equated to being just friends in the headline. Way to make their sexuality invisible.
This on the back of the obscenity of lesbians kissing.
June 6, 2008
A lesson in heteronormativity
from CNN.com (not to mention a slew of radio talk shows!):
Lesbian kisses at game ignite Seattle debate
The usher, Guerrero said, told them he had received a complaint from a woman nearby who said that there were kids in the crowd of nearly 36,000 and that parents would have to explain why two women were kissing […] The code of conduct — announced before each game — specifically mentions public displays of affection that are “not appropriate in a public, family setting.” Hale said those standards are based on what a “reasonable person” would find inappropriate […] “I would be uncomfortable” seeing public displays of affection between lesbians or gay men, said Jim Ridneour, a 54-year-old taxi driver. “I don’t think it’s right seeing women kissing in public. If I had my family there, I’d have to explain what’s going on.”
This is the very definition of heteronormativity. This is the kind of thing Queer Nation used its performances/demonstrations to point out. This kind of thing is not just a double standard but it’s evidence that “acceptance” of queer people does not mean social equality and does not mean that we have by any means had any sort of self-reflexive pondering of what sexuality means and about assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality.
Why do we have to “explain” queer sexuality? Shouldn’t we need to “explain” any sexuality? Is it really time to pull out the Heterosexual Questionnaire to point out the lunacy of Jim Ridneour’s statement? Read the rest of this entry »
June 5, 2008
Sometimes Cosmo readers say interesting things
The problem this Cosmo reader encountered is one that I have always been irked by.
From a semi-related post on Female Impersonator:
This attitude was shown in one of the “Cosmo Confessions” featured monthly in Cosmopolitan magazine:
“Once a month, my boyfriend has a guy’s night out with his buddies. Normally, they shoot poll or go to a ball game. But last month, I overheard him making plans to go to a strip club. It really upset me that he didn’t bother asking how I felt about his sticking dollar bills in other women’s G-strings. Instead of confronting him, I did some investigating and found out that the night he was planning to go to the club happened to be amateur night, which meant that any girl could get on stage and dance. So I called a few girlfriends, and we headed to the club. After a few drinks, I surprised my guy as one of the novice strippers. He was so shocked that he just froze–until I started undressing. Then he jumped on the stage and begged me to come down, promising me he’d never go to a nudie bar again.”
I think it’s great that the male partner in this story realized how his female partner must feel about his being there by how he felt seeing her up there. I wish more men could have the visceral experience this one did. Many men say that they should be able to go to strip clubs, but wouldn’t want their girlfriend to strip. They justify this by saying that they themselves would not strip, and that they wouldn’t care if their girlfriend saw a male strip show. This is not a equivalent comparison to me, and I’m going to try to elaborate a little on why I think this. Read the rest of this entry »
June 3, 2008
More than the sum of her parts: AfterEllen’s ‘Hot 100’ list
I hate ‘Hot Lists.’ I hate the idea of them. Someday I will rant on them. Not today.
AfterEllen.com, a website about lesbian and bisexual women in entertainment, publishes an annual Hot List. When I first started reading their site, I had noticed they had one. I checked it out, hoping that it would not just be a replication of the uni-dimensional hot-at-the-moment-until-they’re-prego-or-passe’ of most Hot Lists. It was not. I was pleased.
So let me qualify my first sentence:
I hate (most) Hot Lists, especially the one’s put out by lad-mags and their ilk. I hate the idea of them, which not only sees ‘hot’ in the narrowest of senses, but also they’re ‘hot’ because these women are overwhelmingly (with token exceptions) the flavor of the moment, and it also seems to favor women who participate in the culture of ‘posing.’
(Not for nothing, but the exposure-no pun intended-that women with little professional accomplishment are able to garner in the media by simply being young and pretty and thin is incredible! They are paraded around for having a nice face and/or body-and being willing to display it-but having little talent. This happens in a way completely unlike men who are in the same position-those small time accomplishments or poor acting ability but are incredibly good looking. Men definitely have it harder in this way. But women pay for our quick and easy value as eye candy with appallingly few strong female roles, and with the near-impossible task of being a successful actress or performer without participating in posing culture. I couldn’t even make a men’s parallel list to Maxim‘s 100 even if I tried!)
So AfterEllen just released their Hot 100 of 2008.
A few non-surprises? The woman who made Maxim’s 100th spot, Tila Tequila, wasn’t even close to making our list, and their number-one choice, swimsuit model Marisa Miller, barely received any votes from AfterEllen.com readers. In fact, just like last year, only two of Maxim’s top 10 showed up anywhere on our list.
[…]
Other stats about this year’s list? There are 18 women of color — a definite improvement over last year — and 21 openly gay/bi women on the list (seven of whom are AfterEllen.com vloggers), which is more than double the number on last year’s list.
[…]
Our list includes women from all over the world — from countries as diverse as Canada, England, France, India, Mexico, Norway, and Spain — and women who vary in age from 18 to 57 years old. Although the vast majority of women on the list are actors or TV personalities, there are some musicians this year, as well as a few writers, a chef, and an athlete.
Diversity is valued, age isn’t a barrier, and when you look at the kind of women that queer women find hot, you’ll quickly understand why there are few cross-overs with the lad-mags. Queer women clearly value flat, physical beauty (although their idea of beauty is not the narrow version purported by most lad-mags). But they also value talent, wit, humor, intelligence, success, not as separate from but as part of what makes women hot. It’s a little different from another counter-hot list: the excellent non-celebrity The Real Hot 100, where smart=hot and physical beauty has nothing to do with it. AfterEllen’s list seems to embrace physical beauty, alongside and equal to other aspects of women’s personhood. Beauty is part of being human, but unlike other Hot Lists, AfterEllen readers seem less apt to value women who are only beautiful but as people seem less-than-interesting. And I find this really fascinating.
I also love the photos they use to illustrate their list-no lingerie here!
And I love this part:
The following pages provide photos for all 100 women in ascending order according to your votes, with some further details provided about the first 25. We’ve also linked each woman’s name to other articles about her on AfterEllen.com, in case you want to do some more reading about them, and we’ve listed each woman’s rank on the 2007 list below her name.
Imagine that?! ‘Hot’ women aren’t just for looking at-their ‘hotness’ isn’t simply based on their measurements, so they’re actually people you would want to read up on!
The thing is, I think beauty is wonderful. But a hell of a lot of women are beautiful, celebrities and peers alike. Honestly, I don’t think beauty alone is all that ‘special.’ Put most of the women I know on the cover of a magazine with the kind of lights, makeup, and photoshopping that goes into a celeb or model photo shoot (and especially add in personal training and wealth needed for complicated beauty regiments), and they’re just as ‘hot’ as the women on there each month. Hot lists that are only about physical hotness are pointless and are more about selling magazines by reiterating the importance of the people (well, really women)-of-the moment.
AfterEllen’s list? There’s more going on here and I’m liking their idea of ‘hot’ and the context they view it in.
May 9, 2008
Sex educator Sue Johanson quitting “Talk Sex”
This makes me sad. Sue Johanson is calling her show quits. I always loved Sue Johanson’s “Talk Sex.” She is blunt and humorous, she encourages callers and viewers to not buy into representations and stereotypes around sex and encourages sexual communication among lovers. She speaks loud about the importance of safer sex practices and calls bullshit in callers’ unrealistic porn-and-media influenced expectations about sex. One of my favorites was when she called a caller out on the real reason he demands (yes, demands!) that his partner shaves her ladyparts. And she’s Canadian! All coming from a 77 year old awesome lady.
I first saw her when I was an undergrad at the University of Toronto 8 years ago, when I had no clue who she was. After that experience, I adored her! But alas, she’s retiring.
From CNN.com:
“I’m going to miss it terribly,” Johanson told The Associated Press. “It’s been part of my life and I just love it. I’m going to miss writing scripts. I’m going to miss having to read books. I’m going to miss playing with sex toys.”
Her final show will count down the year’s top 10 sex toys.
Check her site out on my blogroll.
May 8, 2008
The persistent relevance of Rich’s ‘compulsory heterosexuality’
I was just re-reading Adrienne Rich’s influential essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” for the thesis chapter I’m writing. In reading it, I was particularly struck and rather saddened by how so much of what she said is still relevant nearly 30 years later.
Quick summary of Rich’s article: an institutional analysis of heterosexuality is needed. Most feminist texts (at least at that time) assumed that heterosexuality is “desired” by “most” women. Rich argues that this can only be assumed because we do not consider the ways in which heterosexuality is compulsory for women, and the article in part suggests many of the ways it becomes compulsory. Further, adherence to heterosexuality requires lesbian invisibility, which is also produced in many ways (including lesbian visibility in terms of exotic or fetish for male pleasure and the need to present oneself in terms of heterosexual desirability and availability, as indicated by the quote below).
Unfortunately, I don’t have time for much actual exegesis, but I wanted to post one of the quotations that I found particularly interesting.
In discussing Catherine MacKinnon’s Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, Rich says:
Two forces of American society converge; men’s control over women’s sexuality and capital’s control over employees’ work lives […] Economically disadvantaged, women– whether waitresses or professors– endure sexual harassment to keep their jobs and learn to behave in a complaisantly and ingratiatingly heterosexual manner because they discover this is their true qualification for employment, whatever the job description. And, MacKinnon notes, the woman who too decisively resists sexual overtures in the workplace is accused of being ‘dried-up’ and sexless, or lesbian.
[…] A lesbian, closeted on her job because of heterosexual prejudice, is not simply forced into denying the truth of her outside relationships or private life; her job depends on her pretending to be not merely heterosexual but a heterosexual woman, in terms of dressing and playing the feminine, deferential role required of ‘real’ women.
We see that this happens not just in the workplace but in social identity generally. But aside from identity production, that there are economic consequences that emphasize the need to present heterosexual femininity, whether lesbian or not, perpetuates both gender inequality and the erasure of lesbian existence.
Read it in full:
journal article (accessible through most universities)
in her book, Blood, Bread and Poetry
May 7, 2008
I want. to see. this movie.
I can’t wait til XXY is showing nationally.
From the official website:
Alex is a 15-year-old teenager with a secret. Soon after her birth her parents decide to leave Buenos Aires to make a home out of an isolated wooden cabin tucked away in the dunes of the Uruguayan shoreline.
XXY begins with Alex´s parents receiving a couple of friends and their 16-year-old son Álvaro from Buenos Aires. Álvaro´s father is a plastic surgeon who accepted the invitation because of his medical concern for their friend´s daughter. The inevitable attraction between both teenagers forces them all to face their worst fears…
Rumours are spreading around town. Alex gets stared at as if she were a freak. People´s fascination with her can become dangeous.
Right now it’s only showing in New York, but at soon as it’s national, I’m all over it (and I’ll review it).
Trailer:
May 6, 2008
Where are all the sexy men?
OK, so I’ve been writing a bit about sexual representations recently. It’s not on purpose, just what I’ve read about recently. I’ll try to get to a new topic soon :-). Yesterday I stumbled on 2 articles that speak to the post I’ve written recently about the disparities in publicly eroticizing men’s and women’s bodies.
The first one speaks to the idea that concepts of ‘sexy’ by default refers to women’s (not men’s) bodies. Forbes.com has an article titled “Hollywood’s Sexiest Celebrities.” Guess what? They’re all women.
My first thoughts were: Is it because when we’re making top lists of sexy people, sexy “people” implicitly and really means “women”? Or is it because Forbes.com doesn’t think any men are sexier than these 15 women? But no, these were taken from an E-poll, not a single person’s choice–and the top male, Matthew McConaughey weighed in at only 41st. What does this say about what or who we consider ‘sexy’? Is it that women are “really” sexier than men? Or is it that “sexy” has been defined in terms of women? I at least think part of it must be that we are provided with sexualized images of women quite frequently, where actual images of celebrity men all sexy, posed, and scantily clad is significantly rarer. So why would we even think of men when asked about who’s “sexy” when their bodies are less than accessible (in magazines or films) and hardly on the radar? Read the rest of this entry »
May 2, 2008
Tom Ford comments on the lack of male nudity
I stumbled on this New York Magazine article via Ms. Naughty’s blog (NSFW), and I am truly intrigued. Not because I think that one (or even 100) pictorials of nude men will change the way male and female bodies are/not produced as ‘sexual.’ As with many many gender and sexuality issues, the problem is not (only) with correcting misrepresentations by merely adding to the ones we have, just like more women as corporate CEO’s is not all that is needed to change the way business and economics are centered around the worker as male. It’s a start, but it’s not the whole story, not even close.
I’m more interested in what Ford said.
[…] the male nude is one of our last taboos. There’s a double standard at play here: magazines that are happy to fund ads featuring an artfully lit female nude will balk at an image of her male counterpart.
Bodies themselves may be, for the most part, natural raw material. But the value societies gives to bodies, what we see those bodies as useful for, what uses are appropriate for which bodies, how bodily qualities (i.e. beauty, strength) are defined, are all socio-cultural and ideological, thus also political. Read the rest of this entry »
April 30, 2008
On Becoming a Sexual Female, via Miley Cyrus
I tend to agree* with this analysis of the photos of Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair that we’ve seen so far from Vanity Fair, that they’re not “that bad.”
*sidenote: Except that the bare skin and sultry looks are for your prom friends, not the American Celebritocrical Gaze. And typically you go to the prom at 17-18, not the age of 15. Mir Kamin makes the distinction quite well between these images and simply wearing a backless dress:
For me, my problem lies with the fact that she’s underage and I find the picture intentionally sexual. It’s not her naked back — it’s her tousled hair, her come-hither look, and the bed-sheet-esque cover; all of those things together combine to portray a post-coital vixen.
(end of side-note)
But the whole thing still troubles me for a few reasons I know, and probably some I can’t articulate yet. And I think the question of whether the images themselves are “that bad” isn’t the real issue here. Read the rest of this entry »
April 25, 2008
Sexualized Ads Become "Obscene" When Guys are the Objects
So this video and news issue is a wee bit old, but the idea it raises isn’t at all.
Apparently an in-store Abercrombie ad campaign (see video below) received complaints for being too sexual/obscene. Abercrombie has been doing this for years, for example, depicting cartoons of topless girls (yeah, they looked awful young) in pools and having threesomes in their catalog back when I worked in the mall 10 years ago. And in this day and age of hypersexualization of women’s bodies and the general pornification of everyday life, you would think these ads must be awfully revealing to be so scandalous.
The thing is, the ads aren’t that revealing. Not by far, and especially not compared to most ads we see everywhere. we. look.
Except that most sexualized ads we see are of women’s bodies (I said most-I am well aware of the sexual and homoerotic tones of several cologne ads). However, the Abercrombie campaign includes some sexy images…of guys. And the marketing target is upper-middle class, heterosexual teens, both female and male.
This is the part that struck me most:
“there’s half naked guys running around–it’s obscenity–is Playboy able to hang naked pictures in their store?”
Um, sorry dude, but the half naked men shown in Abercrombie ads is not the same as fully naked Playboy pictures. Like, at all. It’s more like Victoria’s Secret ads (and even then not quite the same there either)…and oh yeah, they are able to show those, and not only in their stores, but on billboards, the sides of buses, every f*cking magazine you pick up, not to mention, the goddamn TV!! Read the rest of this entry »
April 4, 2008
Some comment-worthy articles about sexuality and body image
The British Daily Mail reported that men–especially single men–who read “lad mags” (the mags for (hetero) Men that equally objectify the newest babe in lingerie alongside the latest in electronic gear) are more obsessed with their own body image.
“The message in typical lads’ magazines is that you need to develop a muscular physique in order to attract a quality mate,” said Dr Giles.
“Readers internalise this message, which creates anxieties about their actual bodies and leads to increasingly desperate attempts to modify them.
“Some of the most worrying findings were that heavy consumers of lads’ mags think about taking anabolic steroids or use protein or energy supplements as part of their diet and exercise regimes to improve the way they look.”
Forgive me if I’m slightly amused by this, but, um, DUH! These magazines have the same kind of effect on women (not to mention on men’s expectation of what a particularly beautiful woman is). At least the men who read these mags don’t have the have the message that body=worth thrown at them from every which way like women do. While body image can be one aspect of success, men have many more valued ways to be successful than women do.
I also find it interesting that the researchers thought the men were internalizing the ideal images of men found in the mags–maybe the British versions are significantly different than the U.S. ones, but I don’t recall any real emphasis on male bodies; the male physique seemed to be just one aspect of men’s lives they covered (as opposed to the portrayal of the women which are presented as eye-candy first–ya know, the important function of women in a man’s life–then maybe the reader gets to see others aspects of her life). My guess? Men who consistently objectify women, and see their worth first in terms of their value to the guy as an object of sexual desire, tend to start to see themselves in the same light, despite that women’s mags don’t tend to portray guys in that way.
These men shouldn’t worry to much, however, because what consists of “sex” and “good sex” is still measured in terms of PIV sex (aka intercourse). A new study has concluded that how long good sex should last:
1) is measured in terms of time the penis is inside the vagina;
2) doesn’t include foreplay (which, for women, is much of what they consider “sex”);
3) can relieve most men that their lasting time is “satisfactory.”
What’s interesting about this is that “how long is optimal intercourse?” gets translated into “how long does it take to satisfy a woman?” For most women I know, these are not the same question. My equating these two ideas, the assumption is reinforced that a woman’s satisfaction comes from sex defined as PIV intercourse.
And while it’s nice that men get to feel all “normal” and stuff, that women’s pleasures actually contradict conventional wisdom and representations in porn (while women still seem to be held to ridiculous standards of what their sexual pleasure should be and should look like), it would be nice for a study to come out (and receive as much press as this one has!) that actually talks bout what women’s sexual pleasure consists of. My guess is if one did come out, it’s findings would make the findings of this study a lot less relevant. Check out this too on Slow Sex Movement (part of the Slow Movement).
I am really delighted that Babeland employee (a women and queer-oriented sex shop) has been hired by Cosmo to dole out sex advice. Maybe her presence can help work against the cult of sexuality that Cosmo espouses that thinks good sex advice is primarily about how to please your man, do a striptease, perform like a porn star, fulfill his ultimate fantasies. Perhaps instead we’ll see a little more about experimenting to find your own pleasures, how to communicate what you want and ask him what he wants, how to use sex toys in couple sex. I mean, totally revolutionary stuff!
Lastly, in late March an 18-year-old high school senior died after elective breast surgery from an albeit rare surgical complication. Two things from the MSNBC story stand out to me:
Stephanie Kuleba’s friends called her “Sunshine” because that was the perfect nickname for the outgoing and bubbly girl who was everybody’s friend, the cheerleader with the near-perfect grade-point average who was too nice and too perfect for anybody to resent.
This is all too typical–that women can be accomplished in all sorts of ways, but they are never “good enough” unless our bodies “match up” (according to cultural expectations) with the beautiful person we truly are. She wasn’t getting implants, but rather “corrective surgery,” which many feminists who loathe implants might be willing to overlook. But in reality, breasts come in all shapes and sizes, and they’re all normal. The image we see in film, magazines, and porn is a result of some intense photoshopping (not to mention all the implants), even when they purport a “natural” look. Check out this great site that shows what actual breasts, in all their variety, look like. (site isn’t porn, but it’s also NSFW)
The death has focused attention on elective breast augmentation surgery, a procedure that 347,500 women of all ages chose to have in 2007 alone. That number is 6 percent higher than in 2006 and 64 percent higher than in 2000.
…
D’Amico repeated the FDA recommendation that no one under 18 undergo breast augmentation surgery. Despite its popularity, the procedure does have a high rate of complications and often requires additional surgery within five to 10 years of the original surgery.
The point is, that women are getting elective breast surgeries, which, like all surgeries, have significant risks (not to mention the risks related to the material in implants) in droves. It isn’t that these women are stupid and don’t understand the risks. It’s that they overwhelmingly do, and the potential complications of the surgery outweigh the social risk of a “failed”‘ feminine body and the risk of not being deemed appropriately sexually worthy. Of course, the health risks to women in surgery is coupled with the risks to a woman’s sexual pleasure through decreased nipple sensitivity from the augmentation.
Do think that men would submit themselves in significant numbers to a surgery meant primarily to please actual and potential sexual partners, while risking decreasing their own sexual pleasure? Do men submit themselves in huge numbers to penis enlargement surgery and other procedures that could increase staying power? Then answer is, no, they don’t. But they don’t need to, because we’ve already squashed the “size matters” and “lasting longer is better” myths about female sexual pleasure. When will start acknowledging our unhealthy obsession with bigger or “perfect” (whatever that means) breasts, and show that an awful lot of guys are happy with many kinds of breasts, and those who aren’t need some reeducation, and there are a lot of ways they can be pleasurable to a partner. But ultimately, we need to remember that the primary sexual function of breasts (or we could be talking about vaginas, for that matter) is for the person they belong to–the woman. And you can’t enjoy them if you have few nerves left, or worse, if you’re dead.
April 2, 2008
Another "music video" worth watching
I feel like I’m on a roll with more positive stuff, and I want to take a minute to say how important it is that we acknowledge media, representation, cultural production that “does good.” For one thing, it’s important for being balanced, and another thing, I tend to get down in the dumps when sexism and inequality seems to be so depressingly pervasive. We all need to see, cheer for, and encourage moments of positivity, resistance, and humor wherever we might find them.
So check out this video (after the jump), which presents a more honest version of those crazy love/romance songs, but is also a commentary on the difference between how our culture represents ideal sex and romance and how it more usually happens.
(One song/video disclaimer: not that its “realism” is an acceptable excuse for men not investing the time to be lovers who aim to please and not just be pleased, but take it for the humorous commentary that it is).
March 27, 2008
R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe "Outs" His Bandmates as "Heterosexual"
This is brilliant, and nothing less than I would expect from Stipe and R.E.M., who recently stated he’s a “queer artist.” This seems to me to be a response to his frustration over needing to “come out”; his lack of doing so had been read as “cowardly” rather than about one’s sexual and intimate life being irrelevant and no one’s damn business.
The coming-out parody that he performs is not with the point of criticizing “coming out,” which for may queers is an important act, especially considering the history of queer invisibility. Rather, this parody reveals culture as heteronormative in that heterosexuality is assumed unless said otherwise and unless marked properly. It operates in a similar fashion that following up the question, “When did you first realize you were gay?” with “When did you first realize you were straight?” does.
In our culture we have a compulsion to know one’s sexuality identity, which we presume tells us the “truth” about an individual, the “truth” of their sex acts, and allows us to render people’s action, speech, and beliefs more meaningful due to the centrality that sexuality plays in how we conceive identity. Sexual identity becomes the way we can be explained and understood. (See Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality vol. 1, summary here)
This was especially evident in the J.K. Rowling/Dumbledore is gay incident this past fall. The announcement upset people because his sexual identity as gay was not made explicit in the text. Rowling’s after-the-fact “revelation” of Dumbledore’s sexuality operated less like a “coming out.” Instead it underscored the cultural assumption of heterosexuality as the “default” sexuality, showing it to be normalized and exnominated. The personal lives of the book’s adult characters were almost never discussed, yet this only became an issue because Dumbledore happened to be gay and therefore his personal life became of the utmost importance in making sense of his character. In the books, there was no lover, no obsession with musical theatre, no use of the word “fabulous!” I’m exaggerating of course, but what I’m indicating is that there was no overt way that the text produced him as gay. There was also no “coming out” moment in the text and he was not introduced as “gay” in the character’s initial introduction (to the dismay of some gay activists). Of course, after the “revelation” people went through the texts and tried to re-read his character, with this “truth” in mind, and could thus “produce” him as gay.
I mean, look at the photo used to illustrate the BBC story, the caption “R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe in performance”:
If that isn’t an example of imposing a system of interpretation onto bodily acts that produce and understanding of gender and sexual identity, I don’t know what does.
This complusion to know and distinguish genders and sexualities by making meaning of bodily acts really reflects back onto heteronormative culture and how fragile and vulnerable its own construction is.
This isn’t to deny the value of “coming out”-clearly visibility of queer individuals as successful and caring people, present in every aspect of society is part of what is needed to disrupt social stigmas and assumptions. But I also think what Stipe is doing here is important too, and provokes a much-needed conversation about recent centrality and importance of sexuality to/as individual identity.
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don't ya wish your girlfriend was smart like me? 