I'm tired of women's bodies being used to sell shit

[Eloriel]

REALLY tired of it.

Here's a very intelligent blog of a person I find very intelligent, and very politically savvy. Apparently he's written a novel. An absolutely exquisite photograph graces the cover of the book -- and I do mean beautiful photo. Fine art, actually. But naked woman fine art, dammit, and AFAIC the cover just ruins everything for me, and disappoints me greatly about this individual whom I've admired so much.

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/

Is the book ABOUT a naked woman? Somehow I rather doubt it. If not, that makes the use of a naked woman photo -- no matter how fine the art -- simply gratuitious.

As gratuitious as the nearly nude models and actresses, striking all those incredibly seductive poses, in the TIRE ad I saw on TV last night (Bridgeton????) of all things.

I'm just tired of it.

[Hello_Kitty]

1. "Men are visual creatures"

Always the tired ass excuse to justify that. And it sells stuff. So there. You will worship at the altar of the Almighty Marketplace.

Also, studies have shown that both straight men and women respond sexually to images of nude women. Women are the official sex objects of the world. But that also belies the men are visual argument IMO. We're all visual. We're told what we should want to look at, though.

[Heddi]

2. The other day hubby and I were watching tee vee

and I don't even think we were paying attention at all, just talking with the box on in the background.

I think we had it on SPIKE or one of those other awful pseudo-channels and a commercial for SOMETHING came on. Have no idea what it was. All I know is that it (the commercial) contained a barely dressed woman writhing around and simulating sex and we just looked at each other and were like "what the eff is that all about?"

I asked mark 'So, uh, what WERE they selling?" and he said "Vaginas? I really don't know..."

I don't recall a product name or placement in the ad. Hell....it could have been a TV show for all I know, but I know it wasn't. It was a commercial with NO point other than to have an opportunity to show a barely dressed woman writhing around and stimulating sex. They coulda been selling Easter Peeps or Diaper Ointment. We don't know. WE just sat there scratching our heads for a bit trying to figure out what it was that we just saw.

---

Mark and I both have worked in advertising/sales/marketing/newspapers for a long time before getting into nursing.

The thing about ads is that you want the customer to get to KNOW your brand, your name, your logo.

Kind of hard to do that when there is NO brand, NO name, NO logo, NO product NO NOTHING but butt and boobies.

It's the antithesis of marketing. We were told that in order for an ad to even register in someone's mind, they must be shown that ad a minimum of 7 times in 7 days--basically, once each day. In order for them to THINK about the ad, the ad needs to be shown 14 times in 14 days, or 14 times in 7 days. In order for people to recall the NAME of your company product whatever, you have to increase the exposure.

But we've gone past that and now just show gyrating pelvises (pelvi?) and nipples and we (the consumer) are just supposed to KNOW what the product is?

Were I advertising director for that ad firm, whoever came up with THAT idea would have been canned---not JUST for the blatant sexism, but for being a dumbass and not subscribing to the golden rule of advertising: DO NOT MAKE AN AD WITHOUT PRODUCT PLACEMENT AND BRAND NAME ASSOCIATION. sheesh....

[Hello_Kitty]

3. Actually you're right

And I take back one part of my previous post. I've got a marketing degree myself (though I don't work in the the industry) and you are correct about what works and what doesn't. It's recognition of your brand that makes advertising effective, not the gimmicks you use. That's why it's advised to use humor cautiously. Your ad might be funny is hell but if no one knows what it's for it's not working.

The same goes for sexy images of women. People may remember the hot half-naked babe (doubtful since they're so generic these days) but it's likely they won't remember what the product is. I think you just see them everywhere because the guys who run that industry are as steeped in the woman-as-sex-object paradigm as everyone else.

[Heddi]

4. not gender, but race related

long ago (7 or 8 years ago ha ha), my husband was a graphic designer at a newspaper in South Carolina.

He was given a project for a new home development. The customer pretty much wanted the background of the ad (full page, full colour) to be of a park or something, and in the foreground, a picture of a family with the blah blah blah about their housing community.

So, hubby (being the type that he is) went to the clip art file, went through hundreds of pictures of families in various states of pose, and found the perfect family for the ad:

A black man, black woman, two black children. All dressed conservatively and professionally. Below them was the byline of the 'imaginary' homeowners that the company wanted, about how these 'homeowners' are so happy to live in the neighborhood, blah blah blah.

So he made the ad, and sent it out for approval.

Ad rep came back and said basically "uh, no. The ad itself is beautiful but the customer wants a different family"

Hubby is like "What? Why? Why aren't these people okay?"

and rep is like "Uh...stammer stammer...well, they want to REFLECT the ACTUAL people who would pay $450,000 for a 2 bedroom house, basically uh uh uh"

Hubby sez "Oh, so you don't think that people that look like this can afford half a million for a house?"

Rep is like "Look, they want white people in the ad. I gotta satisfy them. Put a white family in the ad"

so he did, but knowing that he won the argument, basically. Even though he relented and put the white family in, he had not only exposed the rep's potential bias (I was an ad rep and we do have to satisfy the customer's advertising needs, even if we don't agree with it), but the DEFINITE home buyer's bias.

A few weeks later he relayed the story to a black co-worker who was talking about how she and her husband were getting ready to buy a house. WHen she found out, she was shocked because *SHE* had considered buying a house in that community and changed her mind COMPLETELY and wrote a very scathing letter to the owner of the company because of their bigotry.

Well, they lost at least ONE $450,000 sale because of it, if nothing more.

[Hello_Kitty]

5. I guess some things ARE more important to some people than money

Like protecting their pathetic little worldviews from perceived threats.

[Heddi]

6. You know, we talked about another situation

where he refused to change the ad and either got reprimanded or fired. You know, standing up for what's right.

However, we realized the necessity of our situation. He was making around $34k at the time---a very high salary for coastal South Carolina. Unfortunately, economic won over morals, and he changed the ad.

He did the same thing for a furniture company.

It was Thanksgiving, and they wanted turkeys in their ad. So he gave them turkeys. Naked, bland, uncooked turkeys. Not that we're vegetarian, but you know....you get what you ask for.

Some schlep at the front office approved the ad when the boss was away, so it ran NOT with the 'cartoon' turkeys that they most likely had in mind, but with this stark realization of dead meat in a furniture ad.

tasty.

Oh god. They complained, customers complained, readers complained. Ha ha ha. It was great. He didn't get in trouble, tho, because the ad was approved as is.

[Hello_Kitty]

7. Oh how funny!

Subversive marketing. I like it :evilgrin:

[Nikia]

13. I read somewhere

That men will remember the commercial better if it is sexually stimulating, but he is also more likely to forget what the commercial was actually selling.
A commercial should show lots of the product, brand name, and any easily recognizeable logos.
I remember commercials from when I was a kid. Commercials used to be more direct and to the point

[tishaLA]

8. Gratuitous vulgarity or gratuitous nudity?

Some people believe scatalogical language is every bit as offensive as images are.

I personally have a hard time getting too worked up over either.

[Eloriel]

9. Why am I not surprised?

:banghead:

[tishaLA]

10. Is that a rhetorical question?

[Eloriel]

11. Yes, it is. n/t

[tishaLA]

12. In that case, I don't know that it was a particularly useful comment

it was a particularly useful comment, or one inclined to help foster feminist solidarity, especially in light of the recent comment: "While I use the word "fuck" and variations myself at times (not all that frequently) and "shit" occasionally, I really, really don't like crude and/or sexually explicit language. I've never cared for bathroom humor, either. All of that just offends me. It coursens (sic) the dialog, and it cheapens and demeans both the speaker (uh, writer) and the listener (reader)."

[Eloriel]

15. and yours is?

inclined to help foster feminist solidarity, that is??? For that matter, was your ORIGINAL response inclined -- or even remotely intended -- to help foster feminist solidarity?

Oh -- just so you don't have to ask, these are two more rhetorical questions. I already know the answers.

[tishaLA]

16. No you don't

After all, I remember your "research" about "postmodern feminism" that presented something not even remotely resembling the entity it pretended to describe. It wasn't even a parodic representation of the thing, as others who understand the school of critique well enough to form an opinion about it have, which I could at least respect; instead, it presented only one of many stomping, blustery posts that attempt to proscribe behavior (language and content, although your scatological OP here is apparently immune from the prudery you expressed when you kvetched about bad language only last week) nd failed to actually engage with the thing it presumed to vilify.

It's sad to say--although it doesn't make me sad--that there are an infinite multiplicity of feminisms available today and yours is only one of them. Mine diverges from yours at various points and intersects with yours on others (although at different planes, I am hoping). If I want to disagree with someone's feminism, I can do it in a more useful, engaged way than with "rhetorical questions" that don't fit even the broadest definition of the term.

Unlike you, I don't disparage people who really are feminist with snarky comments and phony rhetorical questions because, to coin your phrase, it "coursens" the dialog. I prefer a real engagement with the issues instead of overdetermined, innuendo-packed posts.

[Eloriel]

18. Ah, you want engagement

I can do that. I can be engaging. :evilgrin: (Little joke there, so you don't feel the need to jump on my "improper use" of the word "engaging.")

Well, Tisha, first I was going to jump down your throat and so I spent some time writing a post in which I did just that. Felt good, but then I reread both a thread I started about a week and a half ago and the Mission Statement for this group and thought better of it.

So I then decided on a nice long list of "engaging" questions I was going to ask you. Things like: how's that book club coming along? But I decided to do a little research first, and that ruined that plan as well.

My research took me first back to that thread you continue to take such exception to -- the one wherein, according to you, I inaccurately blamed postmodern feminism for some things I see attributed to various schools of contemporary feminism that I take strong exception to:

Postmodern Feminism -- Isn't
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x252

I was pleased to note as I reread the thread just how potent it really was. I think some VERY useful and interesting things got said and discussed in that thread and in fact, while I don't mean this as a criticism of this forum, I think it's too bad the forum as a whole hasn't matched the quality of that thread to a greater extent than it has.

Okay, so I mis-attributed some things I don't like to POMO feminism. Shoot me. It's not as if the thread as a whole dissolved into an unabating pile-on of POMO feminism or indeed really had anything more to say about, aside from your post in it (and my response to that). IOW: the value of the thread was way beyond that apparently unforgivable error of mine. You corrected me, and I'm sure everyone saw the correction.

So then I reviewed the thread you started in which you attempted to explain POMO feminism. Disappointing, frankly, and you didn't even respond to others' questions of you about it: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=341x539

Then I looked at all your other posts in this forum. Yes, every single one. Some of them were quite nice, and I started to warm to you considerably, thinking to myself "Well, maybe there is some common ground there, between us."

And then I found this post:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=341&topic_id=4093&mesg_id=4109

First, I found it profoundly sad that the simple act of sharing honestly of yourself and your experience, as opposed to hiding behind the university persona, was something you considered "self-indulgent." And your self-consciousness about it made me acutely uncomfortable. We used to call that sisterhood: being honest, self-revealing, engaging in heartfelt conversations and "consciousness-raising." Some of the women who have come here to this forum have craved that, as I also have. Further, I can assure you that 2nd Wave Feminism never would have gotten off the ground had we not spent a LOT of time sharing our most personal experiences, and learning -- seeing demonstrated firsthand -- that "the personal (really) is the political." No wonder things aren't going so well for women these days.

But the part that wounded me to the core and reduced me to tears was this -- the part in bold, about your mother:

I started going to reproductive freedom events with my mother when I was very young. I was born in the mid-70s and those events (and the ethos of community they provoked) were integral to my youth.

snip

I remember also thinking derisively about some of my mothers feminist notions and, to tell the truth, I still reject some of her most facile ideas (as kids we could never watch "I Dream of Jeannie" reruns on TV because she didn't want her children watching a show where a woman calls a man "master," but a critique of the pervasiveness of patriarchal domination--for want of a better term--eluded her).

Yes, how dare she not have sprung fully formed, grown, and educated in feminism from the brow of Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan or --fill in the patriarchal-domination-critiquing feminist(s) of your choice -- .

No wonder women are in such trouble right now, after all this time, after all we've been through and THOUGHT we had accomplished. What better demonstration could I ask for to explain it all than this?

For all your fine feminist education, Tisha, all I can think is apparently you don't have a clue. And I don't say that uncharitably, I'm genuinely stunned -- and, as I said, quite wounded. I'm wounded not just for ME, but for your poor mother, for this unfair judgment of yours about her. And my whole generation.

Can you even imagine how hard women had to work to develop anything approaching a coherent "critique of patriarchy"? Or how many very bright, dedicated and committed women it took to do that?

My God, I wish you had some sense of the not flurry but FURY of activity which early 2nd Wave Feminism unleashed -- sending university and other women on a mad, frenzied dash to fill in the holes in our history, our literature, our contributions to mankind, to figure out how language harmed us, AND ------- to find SOMETHING, anything, about what the "authentic feminine" would be and look like, AND to deconstruct patriarchy, AND to fit sexism and the oppression of women into something of a unified understanding of other types of oppression, and on and on and on. AND to fight for jobs and credit and the right to rent apartments on our own AND to fight sexual harassment AND to start identifying and working on violence against women and on and on and on.

AND amidst all that (looking back, I think it rivaled the Renaissance, personally), to learn who we were or could be as individuals, now that we were free to be ANYthing. Can you understand: maybe this didn't apply to all women, but it applied to some of us (yes, including me): now that we could be ANything, what would /could that mean? What would it be like? There weren't many role models.

I feel quite certain it was very much like when the slaves were first freed. I'm sure some of them had no problem whatsoever being free and taking advantage of that, dashing right off to become farmers and businessmen and such. But I'm equally sure some of them were dazed and confused (no matter how happy otherwise), and lacking many role models about who and what they could be as well as never having had the chance to nurture any goals of their own, just weren't quite sure how to proceed. I'm not just talking jobs or careers, but personas as well.

And you fault your poor mother for not having developed some full-blown "critique of patriarchal domination"? I'm stunned. Reduced to tears.

I keep thinking to say that you're half my age, but I'm not exactly pushing 70 quite yet, so in reality the truth is you're younger than my own son. I don't expect thanks from your generation for what my generation did in 2nd Wave Feminism, but I do think a little more respect -- and I'm really thinking of your own mother here, and MUCH less so myself -- would be in order. YMMV and it's your life anyway and technically none of my business. And Thank GAWD for that (God, A Woman Deity).

Unlike you, I don't disparage people who really are feminist with snarky comments....

I dunno, Tisha. Call me crazy, but I think you missed and I've just done a thorough review of the available data. You might want to do the same sometime.

In Sisterhood -- my very best to your mother.

[tishaLA]

20. "Mis-attributed"? No

It displayed no understanding of the thing at all. It presented it in a way that anyone familiar with it would be unable to recognize it. But I guess that why I'm a poor, deluded academic feminist and you are someone who critiques academic feminists--the vast majority of whom are "postmodern feminists"--even though you don't care enough about what we do to ask questions. It is our experience, after all, and you want to trample over it as you think I do my mother's feminist memory.

Instead, you say that what we "do" isn't feminist even though you cannot describe what we do at all because you "know the answer" without even beginning to engage the question. Sort of like asking a quasi-rhetorical question. It gives you the answer you want but without the pain of asking the question really.

And of course you'll have to forgive me for not returning to answer the questions in that thread where I discussed what pomo feminism might really be, pace your earlier claims. As it turns out, real life intruded and I was away from this forum, at least, for a while. It just happens. But it accomplished my goal of clarifying what I wanted to clarify. If it got lost in the shuffle, that's OK too. I don't just the success of a thread on the number of responses to it or the number of people who read it. I only care that it allowed me to represent the thing fairly and to allow others to judge as they might.

FWIW, I still consider that post self-indulgent--even more so since you linked to it. I'm not one who prizes "experience," although I used the term facetiously above re: pomo academics. In this way, I know I am different from most second wave feminists. But I see experience as always an interpretation and in need of interpretation. What counts as experience is neither self-evident nor straightforward; it is always contested and its political engagement is always open-ended.

At any rate, is it a bad thing to say my mother didn't have the language or tools to critique the pervasiveness of patriarchal domination? I don't think so. I think it's a symptom of the growth of feminism--that we actually have that available to us today, in part because of people in Ivory Towers who yammer endlessly, much to your chagrin, about feminist ontologies and epistemologies. The world and my mother have both changed since she lacked that vocabulary--but she does have it now. In fact, the more I write this, the more absurd it is to me that you criticize me for saying my mother couldn't or didn't perform the larger critique: how many did? Only a few, and I would not count Friedan or Steinem among their numbers (but I would count Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde).

I'm glad to see, though, that you continued your snarky posts with their hyperventilating tears and shock (not to mention your unwarranted attempt to use my mother against me! The poor woman had a stroke--during that time I didn't answer questions about pomo feminism, BTW--and my post was meant to honor her by showing my discomfort at her activities when I was younger, not to make her look foolish. I think that part of your post is entirely out of line and despicable.)

[Eloriel]

22. Let's try this one more time

And then if this doesn't work any better, we're done.

It displayed no understanding of the thing at all. It presented it in a way that anyone familiar with it would be unable to recognize it.

There's a key piece you're missing. No matter what I called it, what I described exists. HOWEVER, according to you I misidentified it, and YOU corrected me. No one has challenged or argued with you, so: tada! YOU WON!! Error corrected.

The REST of what I said and what others said was discussed at some length completely apart from ANYthing to do with postmodern feminism. Again: YOU WON. We all agree (or at least no one disagreed): what I described isn't postmodern feminism.

I think everyone in this forum would agree: YOU ARE THE UNCHALLENGED EXPERT AT DU ON WHAT IS AND IS NOT POSTMODERN FEMINISM. And what I described is NOT postmodern feminism, but it still exists and we went on to discuss whatever "it" is, and had a good discussion...

... meanwhile YOU are stuck back here still fighting the battle you already won, and in fact won without a fight at all!

In fact, consider this incredible irony. YOU are now the one (the only one) calling what I described postmodern feminism, because I and everyone else moved on. It's just YOU -- fighting some lonely battle that you've already won.

LOL -- and this is my last attempt to save you from further unnecessary expenditures of your time and energy. By golly, if continuing to fight that fight makes some sense to you and gives you pleasure, who am I to try to deprive you?

At any rate, is it a bad thing to say my mother didn't have the language or tools to critique the pervasiveness of patriarchal domination? I don't think so.

No, and what a pity that's not what you said the first time around. THIS version is considerably more charitable, and one I'd not have taken exception to at all. What I found objectionable was your negative judgment of her given that few of us at the time had or COULD have had what you thought she lacked.

In fact, the more I write this, the more absurd it is to me that you criticize me for saying my mother couldn't or didn't perform the larger critique: how many did? Only a few, and I would not count Friedan or Steinem among their numbers (but I would count Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde).

In bold: ah yes, precisely my point. I am SO glad you got it.

There's obviously much more I could respond to -- but as tempting as it is, I rather suspect it's pointless.

I'm terribly sorry to hear about your mother. I hope she has made a full recovery and is well. I'm sure she is very proud of her daughter.

[tishaLA]

23. The "charitable" post is

more or less the same as the original. Your reading of it may have changed because I am guarded about revealing too much of myself on an internet forum where people who are not find of my ideas, feminist or not, might offend people who have control over my future and who might read the board.

I understand you have a problem with certain versions of feminism and I can respect that. I do too. The ones I have problems with have spokeswomen named Paglia, et al. But--and I mean this seriously--I at least try to engage with her ideas before I judge what she does.

I take you at your word that you misunderstood pomo feminism. Many people do and it's no big deal. But I don't think response you might have to my post is "pointless," as you say above. I am interested in dialog with people, not in assuming I already know what they have to say, like posing a quasi-rhetorical question. Indeed, I think it does a disservice to us all to assume we know what others have to say.

As for my mother....well, she is not well, unfortunately. She is unable to walk, her memory is still mushy (but improving), and she cannot write. That's the hardest part of all, and she's only 62 and she has always been terribly vain (a quality she passed on to me!). But at least my post exposing myself allowed you to get your digs in about our relationship. And yes, she is proud of me, even though she most often refers to me as "that girl who lives in California" (she lives in Philadelphia) because my name doesn't come to her easily.

[Eloriel]

25. I am terribly sorry to hear about your mother.

That's far too young to be ill in that way. And despite your cynicism and misreading of MY comments, I really do feel a connection with her after what I read from that other thread.

I understand you have a problem with certain versions of feminism and I can respect that. I do too. The ones I have problems with have spokeswomen named Paglia, et al. But--and I mean this seriously--I at least try to engage with her ideas before I judge what she does.

I see that (again, the bolded part) as a value that you hold for yourself that I can respect, I suppose, tho abstractly, but at this point in my life reject for myself.

There is absolutely no point in it for me. None. I have been around long enough, been OPEN-minded and "fair" and "objective" about so many things and so many people people for so many years, that I have by this time developed a pretty good eye -- and a good, fairly solid intuitive sense -- for determining rather quickly what is and is not relevent or important to me. After all these years, I grant myself permission to follow my finely tuned instincts. It's one of the real joys (and there are few) of being my age.

I have no reason to know anything more about Paglia than what I learned about her the first time around (long since forgotten in specifics). If there is some change that it's important for me to know, I feel totally confident I'll get a whiff of that so I can inform myself. Otherwise, she is a total waste of time for me. Total.

I am sure I would feel differently about things if I were a teacher or perhaps a writer, etc. But I'm not. Nor will yours or anyone else's negative judgment about me on the subject bother me in the least: fortunately, I no longer answer to others' expectations in that way (another of the acquired joys of reaching cronehood).

I can also tell you that editing out all the OTHER things I could have (and started to) address from your previous post was -- appropriate.

Tisha, I hope at some time you will go back to that original POMO thread if you haven't, go back to the POMO thread you started if you haven't and also re-read this thread.

From my perspective, and I am surely self-interested but I don't think quite so biased I am imagining things, throughout our exchange in this thread, you have repeatedly accused me of snarkiness, etc., where there was none (which I know because I worked very hard at not even writing while even FEELING those emotions -- even my very first comment was actually half joking and not merely 100% snarky). You have impugned my motives and sincerity in my remarks about your mother. You have put words in my mouth in order to refute them (classic strawman logical fallacy). You have ridiculed me for a single spelling error and what you considered errors of diction which harmed me not at all but which I was always taught was bad manners, and which was especially surprising coming from an educator. You have called me rude (when I really wasn't) while being what felt to me like unremittingly rude yourself. Hell, I think you even called my honesty into question, didn't you?

So, anyway, forgive me if your suggestion for more "dialog" leaves me a little -- um, shall we say, unenthusiastic.

[lukasahero]

17. I believe it was "simply gratuitous" in the OP

Marketing women's bodies to sell products that have nothing to do with women's bodies is nothing more than using women. It's sexist marketing in it's basest form and perpetuates the "woman as object" mentality that keeps women from being viewed as living, breathing, thinking human beings. I thought that was the mentality this group was formed to deal with, not dismiss.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the "hard time getting too worked up over" line is expressly referenced in the rules of the group as is "- Attempts to minimize or dismiss women and/or the issues being discussed are not welcome." That shouldn't be too hard a rule to live by here.

[tishaLA]

21. I understand your position

I don't agree with it though.

many feminist artists use women's nude bodies to critique objectification instead of perpetuating objectification. I think that's a legitimate thing to do. One of the difficulties, for me, is that I see in the photograph part of a woman's torso partially covered with a fig leaf (or something that is supposed to resemble a fig leaf, I suppose, as I don't actually know what a fig leaf looks like). etc.

I take as axiomatic the belief in the radical instability of all forms of representation. In one of my classes, I teach the TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and I ask the students to decide whether it is gay-positive or "homophobic." The students usually are divided, even though they have seen the same thing, because they view the representational apparatus differently depending on a variety of factors. The same thing is true of "fine art" and the way artists, subject, and viewers interact. It's one of the great vicissitudes of representation.

[lukasahero]

24. Perhaps this might have been a more productive original post than

the one I responded to. You originally responded that the OP's topic is simply not one you "get too worked up over" which is not an opening for informative discussion but simply a means of dismissal of those concerns and is "not welcome" in this group.

In the future, I would recommend stating your thoughts and position rather than just dismissing another group member's concerns. Another option is just to bypass the post if it doesn't warrant your concern.

Thank you for your explanation of your opinion. It is considerably more productive than your original response.

[chicaloca]

26. umm.....

what does "scatalogical language" have to do with this thread? Last time I checked, we had a separate thread about swearing.

[tishaLA]

28. I'm referring to the thread's title

[chicaloca]

29. but the point of the thread isn't the word "shit"

It's objectification of women's bodies. It seems like a diversion to me.

[tishaLA]

34. Language

and other forms of representation are frequently called "distractions." At our peril.

[Love Bug]

14. Don't blame the author for the cover of his book

The publisher makes the decision regarding book cover art based on what they think will attract a particular audience to that book. I think only heavy weights like Stephen King are allowed any input on cover art, and maybe not even then.

[Eloriel]

19. You know, that's a good point. Thanks for making it.

I think I'll go ahead and check with the author on how much (if any) input he had into it,a nd then register my sorrow.

[chicaloca]

27. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, too.

You know what pisses me off lately? Those stinking IPod ads, with the silhouette of a horrendously skinny bikini-clad woman who probably doesn't have room in her abdomen for both a liver and kidneys. I especially love how it's a drawn picture, because I'm pretty sure they couldn't have found a woman alive who would be that skinny, tall, large-chested and have such a long abdomen. Even with digital manipulation, no women alive could look like that and still be believable. They are frickin' EVERYWHERE in my town, and they make me want to punch everybody I meet. I'm sorry, but my body is not a bloody commodity, and it makes me sick that asshole execs are profiting from the bodies of a group of people they could give two craps about.

Also, this may be a bit of a drift, but has anyone noticed that women in ads and TV lately have frighteningly long abdomens? I'm guessing it's desirable because then women can have big breasts and their middles will still look thin. But from going to a lot of drag shows lately, I've noticed that guys are the ones who have long abdomens. Women usually don't. I find it kind of funny that the types of misogynist, homophobic men who drool over objectification of women are actually drooling over a sort of male-ified body shape.

[Hello_Kitty]

30. I've often heard the comment

From guys that certain transvestites look "better" than real women. They're talking about the skinny young ones of course. I wonder if they realize that what they're implying is that their ideal woman is biologically male.

What's considered beautiful today is basically a teenaged boy with big boobs.

[Eloriel]

32. You know what, tho?

What's considered beautiful today is basically a teenaged boy with big boobs.

Except for the big boobs part, during those period when women were making the most gains, the "fashionable" woman was boy-ish. Think 1920s' flappers, just after we won the vote. Think 1960s (and early 70s), after we got The Pill and the Women's Movement got good and started.

I have been fascinated by fashion and its impact on women, and what it "says" about society and women's place in society over the many years. If anyone has a good reference on that subject, by all means give us a cite.

I've spent considerable time thinking about the long skirts of the 19th Century, the corsets inhibiting breathing itself sometimes. LOL -- and what are we to make of bustles, emulating a really big butt? These long-skirted fashions were not only a manifestation of an upper class woman who had servants, but prevented her from doing much without them, even getting in and out of vehicles without help, or getting thru doors without someone (a nice man) to open them for her -- especially once you added hoop underskirts.

And we won't even get into Chinest footbinding, which I consider only slightly more barbaric than high heels, surely the modern equivalent if there ever was one. It's a fascinating subject to me.

Another thing I've been thinking about. I learned to knit back in the 1960s, when my first husband went off to Vietnam. There was something of a resurgence of that domestic art, along with crochet as well, at that time, and damned if there isn't ANTOHER resurgence going on right now, attracting scads and scads and scads of younger women, from in h.s. on thru their 30s. I myself picked up my needles again in July last year and am enjoying it immensely, having found a couple of knitting discussion forums where you can get help for ANY problem or question you've got and a lot of cameraderie. It's been so helpful, I've actually become "a knitter" instead of just someone who "knows how to knit." There are also numerous knitting groups springing up all over the country -- "Stitch 'n' Bitch" is the name of the book that got a lot of young women involved (and Stitch 'n' Bitch Nation is the follow-up), and many of the groups are named SnB groups.

Anyway, my point is not about knitting, but about the fact that the resurgence of knitting in the 1960s mirrored a wonderful resurgence for women's rights, and I'm hoping that the same is true this time. We could use a boost in the arm for women's rights.

[PassingFair]

33. Madame DeFarge,

...paging Madame DeFarge.....

[atommom]

31. Very true. I've noticed several popular models lately that have

unusually long torsos and necks (and, of course, big round silicone breasts!) And lately I've started seeing more young women IRL who have similar bodies. I can't imagine that body shape is even possible for most women, unless they eat very, very little and have very large implants.