3 responses so far ↓

• 1 Craig // Aug 31, 2009 at 8:56 pm

  While I think that this kind of sexualisation of women isn’t actually about sex or sexuality at all (like rape, it’s about power & denigration) it is being fueled by our society’s inability to talk about what (healthy, normal) sex really is.

  Our mostly religiously based taboos on discussing sex, about teens having sex, about birth control, STD prevention and protection mean that not only can our society not handle the realities of sexuality, but it then uses these misogynistic, damaging, and totally unrealistic idealisations to replace the healthy sex that is nearly completely missing in our culture.

  Obviously this is a problem world-wide. When I lived in Europe I certainly saw many sexist and degrading depictions of women, but what I did also see (which one almost never sees in the US) was sexual depictions of men. Male sexuality and sex was used in ads as well as women – perhaps not quite as often, but still in similar ways which seemed to me to show a slightly more equal view of sexuality. Furthermore, the depictions of independent women who were sexual outside of a need to please men seemed also to occur.

  I think it is perfectly possible to portray sexy, nude, or sexual women (and men, obviously) without it being inherently sexist or denigrating. But this is so difficult to do because of our obsession with superficiality andour inability to allow/portray/let/encourage depictions of women who aren’t performing for the pleasure and whims of a man. Women need to be sexual beings in and of themselves, for themselves FIRST.

• 2 Craig // Aug 31, 2009 at 9:03 pm

  The point I was trying to make (but posted before I had finished my last paragraph), was that I think the healthier, more open, fact-based, and less religiously ideological view Western Europeans have of sexuality does specifically contribute to less shallow, extremely misogynistic, fewer hyper-idealised depictions of women as sexual objects whose sole purpose and sense of self-worth comes from how well and how many men are pleased by them. The negative depictions are certainly still very wide-spread there as well, but they do seem to be counter-balanced (if not at all equally) on the other hand by somewhat more realistic, egalitarian depiction of male & female human sexuality.

• 3 angryyoungwoman // Sep 1, 2009 at 2:17 pm

  That’s a really good point, Craig, and I agree that one of the reasons that the culture is sooo misogynistic is because we seem to be unable to deal with sex honestly.

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