What a SI cover honoring women would look like

[BainsBane]

78. Focusing on what the women in those magazines do misses the point

The problem is not that women sell their beauty or sexuality. It is that women in our society are valued for physical appearance above all else. The point is whether we celebrate women for how they look or what they do. Athletes use their bodies, chefs use their hands, artists use their hands. We all use our bodies in some way. But if women are to be valued as full human beings with equal rights, they should not be reduced to commodified, photoshopped images that capitalist culture convinces men are beautiful and therefore valuable. Focusing on athletes, artists, scientists, etc... highlights women for what they do, not simply whether they appeal to the dominant culture's notion of beauty.

It's also about the fact that men who resent women use those sort of images to mark their territory, to create a hostile environment to show that their space is a male one where women aren't welcome. The men most insistent on promoting those images also resent the fact they have to compete with women in the workplace, resent the fact that women are honored for anything but their appearance, and resent the fact that they are no longer guaranteed to earn and own more simply by being male. They use the most vulgar language possible to refer to women and their sense of entitlement so great that become angry when anyone suggests they shouldn't call women "b...ches" or "c....ts." You can't possibly tell me men like that value or even like women. There is a reason they are most comfortable seeing women as disempowered, disembodied objects.

If we lived in a truly equal culture where female sexuality truly did belong to women themselves and was only one part of what was valuable out them, as it is for men, that it might be just another attribute. But that is far from the case. No thinking, honest person can pretend otherwise.

Having had other conversations with you, I'm finding it difficult to believe you don't understand these concepts.