We’ve come so far, but not far enough

I wonder if shelf-stackers at English newsagents are all randy 13-year-old boys? Whenever I go into a small corner shop, a WH Smiths or a Tesco, my eyes are assaulted with pictures of beaming, orange-skinned women exposing their naked chests. Retailers seem to have abandoned the idea of opaque wrapping for these magazines – only the really hardcore publications are deemed top-shelf these days. The neat little black boxes covering the nipples serves as a message: ogle away young men, on public eye-level display no less, for this isn’t pornography! In fact, the young women inside are empowered creatures who are just fulfilling their own post-feminist sexual fantasies by stripping off for you – it’s what they live for! Those dummy men fall for it every time.

Women are in on the joke, apparently. Grinding against the groin of a stranger in a club – it’s empowering to dry-hump him in public and then walk away leaving hyped-up and ready for action. Better yet, why not truly empower oneself by taking this man home and having sex with him? Nothing says ‘I’m a smart, independent, responsible woman’ quite like catching chlamydia – think of it as a sexually-liberated badge of honour.

I think it’s the lads’-mag Nuts, or one like it, that makes a regular feature out of finding a typical girl on the street to strip off for the magazine (I lived with two boys in my final year of uni, so had the pleasure of finding such magazines in the kitchen – and, worse, the bathroom – and couldn’t resist seeing what was inside). Presumably the girl of the moment was just wandering around a shopping centre when approached by a man with a camera, and actually took leave of her senses to strip for him. There’s a great idea for all hard-up men out there desperate to be in the same room as a naked woman – print out a fake Nuts ID badge, take your camera to the streets, and see who falls for it. Sadly we live in such an age of exhibitionism that I suspect many girls would do it, thinking themselves as sexually liberated – and, of course, as long as one is liberated then it can’t possibly be a bad thing, can it?

The reason for this rant is that today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day. Thinking about how far women have come in the world is encouraging, and the work of the early pioneers of suffrage should be honoured. But there is still so far to go and the more I look at magazines and films, the more I realise that women might have escaped domestic slavery, but we have traded it for a new kind of slavery: sexual slavery. Obviously women are, or should be, free to choose how they behave sexually. But where women were once viewed as the preservers of decency, constantly trying to restrain men from acting on their every lusty impulse, women are now encouraged to be as sexually ‘liberated’ as men want us to be. It’s playing right into their hands – men get exactly what they want (free, easy sex or sexual imagery), and women get the kudos of being ‘liberated’ enough to actively pursue objectification.

Wendy Roby’s article on guardian.co.uk suggested ideas for ‘random acts of resistance’ that I wish to recommend to all nuggetoftruth readers out there who are frustrated with the rise of raunch. My favourite idea was that when an eye-level lads’ mag is visually raping you (strong words, but I feel violated as a decent human and woman whenever I see such blatant soft-core pornography) it’s suggested you find a few tame magazines (Roby suggested Good Housekeeping and I would even go so far as to use kids’ magazines) and place them in front of the raunch. She also suggested keeping a stash of pre-inscribed post-it notes with you in your bag at all times, to sneakily place inside these magazines, with some witty put-downs for any man pathetic enough to read such trash.

She had some other good suggestions, such as leaving feminist literature in public places. I don’t think burning bras or growing out armpit hair is the answer; women need to take control over how they are portrayed in the media. Being seen as nothing more than the busty fulfillment of male desire is not the path to true equality.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/18/gender.features11

http://www.amazon.com/Female-Chauvinist-Pigs-Raunch-Culture/dp/0743284283/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205015005&sr=1-1