Bodies in Bikinis: Are You Buying It?

[seabeyond]

The following image and a related article were published in Maxim magazine in just 2003:



i was reading the article and thought it good. but, i came to this illustration and it took me beyond the article and i wanted to make this point. when we talk about rw creating a war on women, i always challenge that it is not just the rw we are fighting. and as we so often see on du, the same shit goes on here, just from a different direction. THIS is what men see. and THIS is not respect. and this is what men feed on.

now the article.


I did my best to explain how the majority of women are conditioned now to want to be skinny, booby, and sexual, so as to cater to male desire—women as the subject of the male gaze and the object of male gratification. “Like we’re things, for men?” my daughter said, her face twisted into deeper lines and furrows. “Well …” I said. Ever since, I can’t get her horror out of my head. I feel shaken out of my own numbness to the persistent sexism in advertising, and beyond. As the mother of two young daughters, the portrayal of women in popular culture has since weighed heavily and taken on greater urgency. I worry at the terrible messages our culture tells my two daughters, and girls and women everywhere.

The other night, during dinner, my daughter returned to our discussion of women in advertising. She had since noticed that women rarely spoke in TV ads and when they sometimes did it was usually to say something silly. “As if we have nothing worth saying,” she said. “Women in ads seem like they have no insides,” she continued. My daughter also noted that while the women in the Victoria Secret’s ads were at least modeling the merchandise for sale, there are countless other ads where women in bikinis are used to sell everything from yogurt to burgers to cars. Manufacturers don’t even pretend at any correlation between their product and the sexualized female(s) populating commercials. In cultivating consumerism, advertisers overwhelmingly appeal to male desire and businesses pour billions of currency every year into sexist advertising to titillate viewers and make us spend. A glance at these especially grievous 1960s ads below speaks to the history of guyism in advertising.

*

To gloss over the Belvedere Vodka ad in particular, and misogyny in advertising in general, as no big deal is a gross mistake. To dismiss as ‘harmless’ less overt, but no less harmful, misogynistic ads is also misguided and deeply damaging. Manufacturers and marketers bet billions every year on the power of media and the sway their messages have over us. The Belvedere Vodka ad sends a chilling message of tired stereotypes and flagrant prescriptions: predatory male and powerless female victim. Where did Belvedere Vodka imagine the promise of pleasure integral to marketing exists in this ad? Men: you’re going to get the girl, however how. Women: the guy is going to get you, however how. With mixed emotions, I showed the Belvedere Vodka ad to my twelve-year-old daughter and asked her to imagine she was the man in the image and to tell me her thoughts. She said, “He seems excited and dangerous, and a little crazy. He’s stronger than the girl and he’s going to make her do whatever he wants her to do.” I then asked her to imagine she was the girl in the image and to tell me her thoughts. Interestingly, frightening, my daughter spoke in the first person. “I’m scared and I want to get away from this man, but I can’t, he’s stronger,” she said. “I know he’s going to hurt me. He’s going to make me do something bad.” Even now, as I type, my teeth are locked and my body stiff with anger. I’m furious popular culture sends girls and women everywhere these damning messages about how men supposedly look and act and how women supposedly look and act. It seems the majority of businesses are soulless peddlers pushing us to spend, at whatever costs.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t seem to think too much about the ads we’re fed over and over everyday and coming at us from radio, phones, magazines, billboards, TV, and the Internet—an oversaturation of sexist ads that disregard women’s minds and spirits, and glorify only the ‘perfect’ female body. Damning ads that send a disturbing message to girls and women that our value lies in our ‘beautiful’ bodies and our desirability to men. Overall, we are a society complacent about these ads that objectify the female body and glorify male desire and dominance. We shrug at these (mis)constructions and (mis)representations of femininity and masculinity, saying, sex sells. Our language and attitudes here are negligible. The media’s debasement of women and glorification of male desire fuel our consumerism and corrupt our society. To pull from my tween daughter’s popular vocabulary, “That just sucks.” Our views of ourselves, of men, women, and our bodies, are so horribly limiting. We need more real representations of both men and women in our media. We need a more encompassing, realistic, and forgiving reimagining of masculinity, femininity, and human beauty and value. The healthy human body is beautiful. My dilemma now is how to empower my daughters and myself to enjoy and celebrate our bodies and our sexuality without giving in to contemporary culture’s limiting and damning definitions of what it is to be a woman of worth.

http://therumpus.net/2012/06/bodies-in-bikinis-are-you-buying-it/

[ismnotwasm]

1. 'The healthy human body is beautiful'

Exactly.

As far as beach wear, I don't care. I live in the northwest, where there are not so many sunny days for beaches, but some. We're a pragmatic lot up here when it comes to fashion. Less makeup, more layers. Bikinis are everywhere they can be I suppose. As long as they're comfortable and not in imminent danger of falling off they're ok.

But the topic was bodies. Am I going to put time and effort just to be comfortable wearing a fucking bikini? Fuck no. But I'm older, so I don't care. A average young women isn't going to see it as I do, she's going to comb her body for non-existent flaws, her boobs too big or too small, legs too skinny or too thick, waist not small enough etc. and that's your average young women. The ones who are heavier, despair, go out in shorts and tee shirts, suffer the comments of the unkind.

Ladies, let me say this for you, until you can on your own. Fuck 'em.

Those Others opinions that you base your self worth on don't matter, they're not living in your body--you matter. Set yourself free, as soon as you can. Takes a little work, but you can get there.

[CrispyQ]

2. Speechless

that anyone would think the the Belvedere ad was appropriate in any thing other than a porn mag.

Off to finish the rest of the article.

[redqueen]

3. “Like we’re things, for men?”

Even 12-year-old girls understand the meaning of objectification.

Even a cursory exploration of contemporary culture testifies to the ongoing and widespread debasement of women and the glorification of male dominance. Where once the misogyny in popular culture reinforced male dominance through representations of men commandeering the pubic sphere and women relegated to the home, contemporary representations have merely recapitulated male dominance and now, perhaps more than ever, men are portrayed as predator and aggressor and women as sexualized, objectified victim. Once upon a time, myth and story held up a mirror to the culture and told it about itself. More and more now, the media is the mirror and our reflections there, the stories of ourselves, are terrible and treacherous.

Excellent piece, thanks for sharing it.

[sigmasix]

4. maxim has always been misogynistic

These kind of magazines attract the kind of men that respond positively to this sort of misogony in ads. Advertisers generally tailor the ad to the target demographic- and maxim's demographics probably consists almost entirely of "dudes" that see women as objects to win, steal or display. I remain hopeful that these sexist marketing ploys will lose thier effectiveness as men in general become more aware of the damage and destruction of our daughters caused by these sorts of ad campaigns and world views.
Another damaging use of sexism in our media is the constant attacks and manipulation of the manhood of male consumers that do not consume the advertised product; boys are being taught that manhood=heavy alcohol abuse, gun fetishism and misogynistic attitudes and actions. This Maxim ad doesn't stop at harming women- it harms men as well by perpetuating the notion that REAL men see women as objects, and any man that doesn't, isn't REALLY a man.
My daughters have both made this point- the victims of media and corporate sponsored sexism are from both genders, and the egalitarian society Americans have been working towards for so long.
We have explained these types of manipulations to our daughters and make it clear to them that media is not reality. My wife and I have discussed this and believe that we have armed our daughters with the intellectual and emotional tools needed to understand the role of sex, gender and power in our culture- education is the best weapon against sexism and the forces of evil at work in our media culture.

[seabeyond]

5. love your post sig, and agree with all you say. and yes, i have done the same with my boys,

telling them, though as a society we address the harm this does to our young girls, KNOW, this harms our young boys also. that it behooves neither gender and causes issues for both.

you hit on it from about every angle.

and yea, to the aware parent. i always am thrilled for a child that has a parent that are aware and are able to provide the conversation that gives the child the tools they need.

agreed.

[seabeyond]

6. why that illustration was so important to me, is we have women today that say the are empowered

with using their sexuality. that qualifies them as feminist. they tell themselves that they have the respect from the male gender, which is a lie. we see clearly that men see it as power over the women. which many of us have recognized forever. and this is a clear illustration how they see turning a woman into a sex thing is for use, and no more. it is more than just maxim. maxim is suppose to be the middle of the road mag for men. and a lot of men and some women hold the belief that this is feminism.

[ismnotwasm]

7. I do appreciate the effort

But trying to use a women's sexuality as 'empowering' is still just prostitution. Women's bodies sell shit through their sexuality, it might make them money, but that's all it does.

[whathehell]

8. This is much more nuanced, but it's part of what's being called "The Most Honest 31/2 minutes on TV"

on GD on the Greatest Page right now and I thought it was worth pointing out...Let me know what you think:

Here's the vid:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101797590

ME: The only thing I didn't like was

using a female as the easy target of his condescension,

and no, I don't think that was a random choice.


Here's an experiment: Re-think the scene with Will addressing a male

instead of a female.


There wouldn't have been the cleavage, of course, and he

wouldn't have been able to dismiss her with quite that level

of flippant anonymity..."Um..sorority girl"?...It was almost like snapping his fingers.

Seriously...Visualize the scene again, this time with a guy...It wouldn't have

"worked" quite so well for him, would it?

[seabeyond]

9. i had already read where sorkin is not the best with womens issues.

When you’ve got a setup where women exist to serve men’s needs, as they do in “The Newsroom,” you don’t just end up with the kind of sexist mess that Sorkin has here, where women are neurotic, tech-incompetent emotional morons who snap into professionalism just in time to make the men they bolster look good.

Sorkin’s imposed an unnecessary, perhaps crippling, dramatic limitation on himself. Whatever MacKenzie and Maggie (a woefully-served Alison Pill) do in the course of the series, it can only reflect on the men they interact with, not back on them. MacKenzie’s hysteria in the most recent episode, kicked off when she accidentally emails the whole company to tell them that she cheated on Will rather than the other way around, is all about Will, about how much she wants his approval, what a saint she insists he is, that she’s done him wrong yet again.

*

It’s so disappointing, then, that “The Newsroom” seems so bored by its female characters, especially given its subject. It’s a show that will namecheck sports reporter Erin Andrews as one of Will’s girlfriends, but has no interest in drawing on the experiences of female war correspondents, from Lara Logan to Marie Colvin, to inform MacKenzie’s character.

At a moment when there are vigorous discussions about the byline gap and how to encourage young female journalists to cover hard news, Maggie’s character could be an opportunity to explore the choices women face as they’re pursuing media careers. Instead, the show mocked her the only time she brought up questions of work-life balance and the possibility that she’s perceived as a lightweight by her colleagues.

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120706/ENT03/307069935/1007/ent

[whathehell]

10. As I said, I don't watch The Newsroom, so I didn't know how it developed, BUT

I'm glad to see someone on SLATE critiqued it for sexism, too, and this kind

of "noticing" is why I think we are slowly (yes, too slowly) but surely, making strides.

Happy Valentines Day, Seab.