Tom Ford comments on the lack of male nudity

I stumbled on this New York Magazine article via Ms. Naughty's blog, and I am truly intrigued. Not because I think that one (or even 100) pictorials of nude men will change the way male and female bodies are/not produced as 'sexual.' As with many many gender and sexuality issues, the problem is not (only) with correcting misrepresentations by merely adding to the ones we have, just like more women as corporate CEO's is not all that is needed to change the way business and economics are centered around the worker as male. It's a start, but it's not the whole story, not even close.

I'm more interested in what Ford said.

[...] the male nude is one of our last taboos. There's a double standard at play here: magazines that are happy to fund ads featuring an artfully lit female nude will balk at an image of her male counterpart.

Bodies themselves may be, for the most part, natural raw material. But the value societies gives to bodies, what we see those bodies as useful for, what uses are appropriate for which bodies, how bodily qualities (i.e. beauty, strength) are defined, are all socio-cultural and ideological, thus also political.

To Ford's point, women's bodies have been constructed as inherently sexual, beautiful, and visually appealing. The sexualization of women's bodies in advertising, "erotic art," and a slew of forms of entertainment are symptoms of gender hierarchies that objectify women, and they also reproduce and reiterate their objectification in defining the 'inherent' sexuality of the female body. In our culture, women's bodies are for being looked at; they are for someone other than themselves. While these representations are a symptom of inequality and don't directly cause it, the system of representation is circular and feeds itself.

Men's bodies presented as sexual is considered an anomaly, and often is scandalous. Men's bodies are constructed as useful, instrumental things-- men's bodies do. They do work, (they 'do' women! or men!), they perform feats of strength, athleticism, agility; for most men they are means to an end-- they are incidental. The only real eroticization of male bodies is in the sex act itself, only in front of lovers. Their bodies are typically not something to be looked at and criticized publicly, causing a self-policing among men about their own physical appearance. Ford asks,

Why, he asks, is it "gay" for another man to comment on another man's figure, when women can freely tell other women their boobs look great?

The beauty of male bodies, in our culture, is supposed to be limited to sexual intimacy, whereas the beauty of female bodies is for public consumption and commentary. The femininity (sex appeal) of the female body is tied to women's identities, and complementing a woman's body (in the appropriate context) has the effect of reinforcing and praising her feminine identity. Further, when women's bodies are posited as the inherently sexual ones, we are used to women's bodies being desired by both sexes: they are the ones men desire to have and women desire to be. In our cultural context, for what purpose would a het man comment on a man's body? Visually possessing women through the gaze is part of the production of masculinity and is a privilege of it; looking at bodies is tied to sexual desire. Under such a limiting construction of sexuality and "the look", what other explanation can we provide to men looking at men's bodies but an assumption of gayness?

Alanis Morisette said, " I like to think of my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament." I don't think the idea of body-as-ornament is close to the top of the list of things men are concerned with regarding their masculinity.

Because these ideas are reinforced throughout various arenas (sport, film, art, fashion, 'sexuality' as represented in pornography, etc.), and are linked to ideological power structures (gender dominance, or patriarchy), this isn't just a matter of representation. Sexual asymmetry is one of the last acceptable gendered power differentials in western society. And it's also not a matter of prudishness. My critique sexualized images of women objects to the fact that the only valued social space available for women in the realm of sexuality is being the object on display. Thus simply adding some naked men here and there does not change the structure of how sexuality is produced through particularly gendered bodies and the resulting sexual assumptions and sexual possibilities. It's lip service and a way to say, "see, they do it to men too." But in the presence of social norms and expectations that define sexual gender roles in a way that reproduces patriarchal power hierarchies, images of nude men and women are not equivalent in meaning. This is oh so apparent in comments I've heard from guys saying:

"girls [sic] are so lucky they can get paid so much to take their clothes off," or
"if I was a girl [sic] I'd love it that everyone would want to see me naked," or my favorite,
"I don't get the big deal about rape-I wish girls would force themselves on me."

Sexualization of bodies does not mean the same thing for women as for men. And since what 'sexy' looks like is also something we learn, and since we are not taught how to see men's bodies as sexual nor is it easy to find representations of eroticized male bodies (it's no surprise that lots of het women watch gay porn!), for the most part, viewing men's and women's bodies is also a different process, signifying differently to different genders.

Representations of the body as sexual are not plopped into an otherwise neutral social context, and therefore are loaded with meaning from the get-go. This quote of Ford's is rather indicative of contextual difference I have been trying to elaborate:

Imagine … if our suits were entirely designed to show off our penises. Imagine if contemporary fashion demanded that you left your cock hanging outside your trousers, with perhaps just the head trussed up in a tiny pouch like a dick bra. Everyone would see our cocks all the time, in the same way that fashion features women's breasts.

Part of the problem is that women want to look...and have little to look at. Meanwhile, women's bodies are exponentially increasing in availability at the click of a mouse. And the cultural policing of women's bodies as properly sexual is undeniably inescapable. This isn't an issue of adding more naked men to the mix. I'm not sure even having an equal number of visually sexually available men and women on the internet and in film and advertising would necessarily "fix" things is the values and meanings attached to sexed bodies remains static.

Lastly, how unfortunate that this is in Britain's GQ, and not the U.S.'s.

**also, I understand that I am speaking of these issues in terms of heterosexuality, as sexuality is constructed through heteronormative culture.

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On Becoming a Sexual Female, via Miley Cyrus

I tend to agree* with this analysis of the photos of Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair that we've seen so far from Vanity Fair, that they're not "that bad."

*sidenote: Except that the bare skin and sultry looks are for your prom friends, not the American Celebritocrical Gaze. And typically you go to the prom at 17-18, not the age of 15. Mir Kamin makes the distinction quite well between these images and simply wearing a backless dress:

For me, my problem lies with the fact that she's underage and I find the picture intentionally sexual. It's not her naked back -- it's her tousled hair, her come-hither look, and the bed-sheet-esque cover; all of those things together combine to portray a post-coital vixen.

(end of side-note)

But the whole thing still troubles me for a few reasons I know, and probably some I can't articulate yet. And I think the question of whether the images themselves are "that bad" isn't the real issue here.

And I've really become disappointed in Annie Leibovitz who, back in the day, took this amazing image of Yoko Ono and John Lennon that surprised our gender expectations. She has recently become more known for replicating racist images of the recent past, and now this. And while, as I said "they're not that bad" (isn't is sad we have a world of sexualized teen girls to compare this image to that we can make the judgment, 'it's not that bad'? Ugh)

This comment on Female Impersonators is quite striking and right-on, and I think it sums up what was really giving me anxiety:

a fifteen year old girl should be beginning to discover her sexuality. She should understand how her body works and why. She should appreciate her body's feelings and responses, but she should not be doing it in front of the world. To sell magazine covers.

That's exactly it. In a world where women's desirability matters more than her desire or that she desires at all, this is sad yet unsurprising. This 15 year-old girl is learning the very real and 'truth' of our modern culture that posing and being socially stamped as 'sexy' is an important (if not the important) part of women's 'sexuality'. That her being sexy is defined through, well, this. I'm not denying that a 15 year-old can be a sexual being. But the problem is that our culture perpetually defines sexuality and sexiness in terms of public validation of public sexual display. And hers being a sexuality-in-process...sigh. And what were you saying about 'The Sexual Revolution'?

And Gawker's provocative take on the photos is pretty interesting: grooming for pedophilia. I would never argue that's what is consciously and absolutely going on, but it's a compelling suggestion.

And it also makes me think about how our culture "grooms" women to become public sex objects, to desire the validation it provides, to justify it to themselves until it's "no big deal." We don't live in a vacuum, and women (or girls) don't one day jump out of bed and say "I think I'd like to show my tits to strangers while I'm drunk next spring break."

I think I'm just going to leave this here for right now. Thoughts?

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Sexualized Ads Become "Obscene" When Guys are the Objects

So this video and news issue is a wee bit old, but the idea it raises isn't at all.

Apparently an in-store Abercrombie ad campaign (see video below) received complaints for being too sexual/obscene. Abercrombie has been doing this for years, for example, depicting cartoons of topless girls (yeah, they looked awful young) in pools and having threesomes in their catalog back when I worked in the mall 10 years ago. And in this day and age of hypersexualization of women's bodies and the general pornification of everyday life, you would think these ads must be awfully revealing to be so scandalous.

The thing is, the ads aren't that revealing. Not by far, and especially not compared to most ads we see everywhere. we. look.

Except that most sexualized ads we see are of women's bodies (I said most-I am well aware of the sexual and homoerotic tones of several cologne ads). However, the Abercrombie campaign includes some sexy images...of guys. And the marketing target is upper-middle class, heterosexual teens, both female and male.

via msnbc.com:

This is the part that struck me most:

"there's half naked guys running around--it's obscenity--is Playboy able to hang naked pictures in their store?"

Um, sorry dude, but the half naked men shown in Abercrombie ads is not the same as fully naked Playboy pictures. Like, at all. It's more like Victoria's Secret ads (and even then not quite the same there either)...and oh yeah, they are able to show those, and not only in their stores, but on billboards, the sides of buses, every f*cking magazine you pick up, not to mention, the goddamn TV!!

The ads are only 'scandalous' because guys are being (mildly) depicted as erotic objects of heterosexual desire. And this just doesn't happen. Even when there's male (frontal) nudity in movies, it's typically either goofy or is not eroticized. Women as sexual objects, as seen as serving a sexual function for men (being sexually desirable rather than having sexual desire) have functioned in a particular way in western patriarchy, along with wife/mother, to produce female ideals whose value relies on seeing women in terms of how they function for men's benefit. This is the very definition of objectification--defining (a person) in terms of how you already see them to be, in how they're useful for you, rather than seeing them on their own terms. Men are really only able to objectify women in this way because such narrow and all-defining judgment is never returned to them; they are rarely, if ever, made the objects of female-centered desire. It's awfully hard to objectify someone when you recognize they have their own desire--and that you might not be up to their standard.

I'm getting a bit off track, and I'll continue to blog about that in the future, but getting back to the anxious guy...his comments are screaming male privilege. The fact that these images bother him so much can be attributed to him rarely having to be faced with the eroticization of his own body, even in the mild Abercrombie images of guys in jeans showing a little buttcrack. What's fascinating is that he is so bothered by it. I'd like to say that he's finally getting a small taste of what women go through, but that's not even close to the truth: he has the luxury of being able to avoid dealing with the images by walking out of the store. These kinds of images (and so much more) are simply unavoidable for women--we can never just walk away, because they're there whenever we turn around.

Another fascinating thing about his comment was his analogy of these images to Playboy images. On an obvious level, he's so wrong, because, um, come on, they're nowhere near close: they're not the same degree of nudity, not the same degree of sexualization (there's little about the Abercrombie poses that are seductive or vulnerable), and not the same intent. On another level, they are similar, because sexualized women's bodies are so commonplace these days, that we wouldn't even blink an eye if we were to replace the guy in the Abercrombie ad with a woman. We probably wouldn't even think it was racy, or even that sexual. So his analogy, in a way, speaks very much to the ubiquitous sexualized female body and the rarely eroticized male body.

Finally, what I'm also quite interested in regarding this video news story, is that the campaign included images of girls, depicted in much the same way as the guys are...yet he never mentioned being bothered by the "obscenity" of those! When we take this reaction, and think about the male anxiety around male nudity in general, and especially gay male sexuality (but of course, not lesbian sexuality), it it very clear that, in popular culture, sexuality becomes 'obscene' when it does not reinforce heteronormative masculinity. Images are only seen as improperly sexualized when it's the male body on display for a (presumed) het female audience.

(Cross-posted to The Reaction)

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On 'Beautiful' Women Looking 'Unhuman'

(This post is kind of a smattering of several sites I've seen recently about photoshopping the life-literally-out of women in mags and some of my semi-random thoughts on the topic.)

Shakesville has a great analysis of Vanessa Williams' photos in Ebony vs. what she looks like in real life (to the extent that any image can reflect "real life"). And this photo comparison in a terrific commentary on the beauty of 'real life' and the tyranny of photoshop from AfterEllen is quite pointed:

(actually, check out that whole AfterEllen Article with pics--it freakin' pisses me off that 60 year old women can't just be beautiful 60 year old women--I absolutely adore that photo there of Helen Mirren!)

It also reminded me of Jezebel's analysis of Faith Hill (who is 39 and great looking) on the cover of Redbook over the summer, which was equally disturbing.

This professional photo retouching site has some examples of celebrity retouching. Click "portfolio" then choose a thumbnail. Move your cursor on and off the photo to see the photo vs. the retouch. It's amazing! The untouched photos look like beautiful women still, but they're beautiful like the "regular" women in our lives are--our friends, lovers-sisters. They're beautiful, but they have wrinkles, freckles, bags around their eyes, complexions that look--real. Seriously...look at the "before" and "after" of several of those images and after just a few the retouches start to look really creepy and alien. And just think...those are what we're accustomed to seeing in the mags and internet. Those are what "beautiful people" look like! Freakin' aliens!

But regarding wrinkles especially, my question is simple: why do insist on an "ideal" female appearance that makes it look like you've lived a boring life? Is "correcting" the flaws that come from actually doing things in life via actual cosmetic surgery or the virtual Photoshop "quick fix" in fact more a testament to wealth than to so-called "neutral" and "natural" aesthetics? As in, a reflection that one has the money to surgically or chemically erase the wear and tear of real life off their physical body, or that one has the money to not put the strain of physical labor on one's body in the first place (which would minimize some but not nearly all of the wear on the physical body--the rest could be "fixed" cosmetically). Not to mention, of course, the economic and time resources required to have the personal trainers, dieticians, fashion consultants, hair and makeup designers, nannies, gardeners...that permit the physical fashioning that goes into being a (predominately female) celebrity.

But since your everyday woman has a job, responsibilities, a limited budget and expendable time, and you know, a life, I s'pose we gotta pay somebody to offer us "the ideal" in the form of oddly bland and, ultimately, boring physical features.

QUICK UPDATE: Feministing had a great post about the need to photoshop curves into magazine images of skinny women. This quote hits it right on the head:

the message is that you should be super, super skinny, borderline skeletal, but without any of the things that come with the territory, like jutting hipbones or small boobs. So even the skinniest celebrities STILL require Photoshopping to meet this standard. You can be less than a size zero and still lose this game.

And this great comment on that thread:

Just because I was bored I copied and pasted these images in photoshop and overlayed them to see what the differences are. Much to my horror (not suprise) she was actually made narrower thru the ribcage and waist in the 'photoshop' picture. READ- she was made skinnier! Her muscles were removed, and her arms were made thinner. So in reality- she wasn't made plumper, she was made curvier and overall narrower. Her hips were also narrowed and made less curvy. Amazing. We all think she looks plumper in the second image, when in reality she is actually narrower, lighter, and slimmer thru the hips.

"Normal" and "heavy" women are photoshopped to remove "excessive" bulk or to at least smooth out their curves--no chunky tummies or rolls allowed (example: this Dove ad). "Thin" women are photoshopped to look not-so emaciated--no bones or thin breasts allowed. To be honest, I'm a pretty thin gal, but I have both a visible breastbone and some bulk around the tummy. That's just the way bodies are. In the end, we are never seeing what actual "thick" or "thin" women look like, only a oddly perfected version of each.

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WOMEN: Please consider participating in Esquire's Survery

Via WIMN's Voices: This is not to endorse Esquire at all, but they are wanting to hear from real, actual women the answer to one question: What is something that men don’t know about women?

Since I am one who loathes men's magazines and does not cease in perpetually critiquing their phallocentric approach to het relationships with women, this seems like something women ought to participate in. Since, ya know, they're actually asking. Not that I have a ton of faith in accurate reporting, but hey, it's worth a try, yes?

Read the info at the WIMN's Voices link above. Think about it, and make your response articulate and meaningful.

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Props where props are due: Entertainment Weekly

AfterEllen comments on Entertainment Weekly's "50 Actors We'd Watch in Anything" list. The downside? Only 18 out of 50 are women. The upside? The women chosen are actually good, respectable actresses, their presence on the list seems to actually be about their acting! As opposed to the lists that, ya know, end up being more about popularity and sex appeal, and rarely correspond to actress' talent. Bravo!

Some of the women named include Rosario Dawson (! a woman of color!), Allison Janney (I'm a huge West Wing fan), Kate Winslett, Catherine Keener, Julia Stiles, to name a few. And no, there's no hottie-of-the-moment-that-gets-ignored-once she-gets-prego-and/or-older-than-24. For once.

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Positive Sports Reporting

Since I last week gave a mini-rant about the sport and gender--how female athletes are represented in that their are either sexualized, passive, and looking "feminine" while playing sports (i.e. the beauty and grace-not strength-in tennis, the media and advertising images of female athletes), OR how they are distinguished from "proper" female bodies and their activities (i.e. the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue), and how this is consistent with the way that women's accomplishments and skills are persistently assessed--I thought this was worth a nod. Via Feministe, the New York Times in reporting about female athletes used photographs of female athletes in action and on its front page. And not in grace and poise, but in raw strength and power of athletic activity.


Significantly, one of the stories was not even relating to a sport activity-the ideal opportunity to emphasize the beauty and femininity of the athlete over her athleticism. But they didn't.

This anomaly doesn't mean that sexism and heteronormative gender-production in sport doesn't exist. This isn't "proof" of any sort. Gender and sport (and I'm talking more about representation of women than participation of women in sport) is a big concern on mine, and I expect it is something I will continue to address.

But props where props are due.

And as Jill @ Feministe said,

I just keep repeating to myself: Baby steps.

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Prostitution: After the Sensationalism

Well, it's been a few weeks since the whole Spitzer-prostitute thing, and it would be an understatement to say the whole event created an online "buzz." Some has been very good--as I wrote about previously, there has been much discussion about the criminality of prostitution, the differences between decriminalization and legalization, about the theoretical and "ethical" (?) distinctions between buying sex and selling it, and about how the prostitutes themselves (rather than their "pimps" or the "johns") suffer the worst penalties and take the greatest risks. Some has been not so good, with the slut-shaming, and the objectification and dehumanizing critique of her body ("that's worth $4,000?!), and the looking for any sexualized images of her that people might have, despite her lack of consent to the publishing context (yeah I'm taking about you, Girls Gone Wild and The New York Post).

While this story brought into relief the connection between male privilege and cheating via prostitution, indeed reminded us that paying for sexual services is often (not always) bound up in male privilege, I found myself frustrated, however, that this particular example of prostitution was the centerpiece of the discussion. For while Dupree's "life story" (at 22 years old) is quite typical of sex workers generally--moved away from home at a young age, was homeless, drugs, no college education, possible abuse--her working conditions were not at all typical. It is easy to see why prostitution is "no big deal" and is just like any other physically exploitative labor-intensive work when you can hand-pick your clients and have to work very little to get a handsome paycheck.

This isn't the truth of most prostitution work. And I think it's important that we don't forget that in all the glitz and glamor and sex-money-politics juiciness of this particular story that sound more like a made-for-TV movie. And not all of prostitution's problems can be solved by legalizing and regulating it. Some of the violence and abuse on the job comes from how masculinity and sexual dominance and ownership is linked in out society. And sexual abuse and violence is a strong common denominator among those who get into sex work of all kinds, prostitution, stripping, porn, etc. When these things are so connected, it's imporantant to not only talk about the legal issues but the social ones as well.

When becoming a sex worker is a way for women to cope, but not deal with, past sexual abuse, is it really beneficial to simply legalize it, call it their choice, and wash our hands of the damaging social factors that perpetuate both the "supply" and "demand"?: the social inequality of men and women, sexual violence against women, the objectification of women, the way men feel emasculates in a society where women have become more independent and in control but we have yet to produce a positive egalitarian idea of masculinity. Many of these women need emotional and physical counseling and support, they need help coming into a healthy relationship with their bodies; they don't need to be alienating their bodies as a response to previous abuse. And we need a serious revolution in the ways we value women's work. What does the instant fame, glamor, and big dollar sex contracts thrown at Ms. Dupree say to our young women working hard in school? When Lindsay Lohan is a train wreck and is throwing her life away, but stop the presses, because we may have found a video of her giving a blow job? When being called the Unsexiest Woman Alive can shake Sarah Jessica Parker, who on TV represented a self-reliant, successful, self-defined woman for so many woman my age? Whose post-TV work has been about women's fashion and mothering, and not about bodily alterations or posing for men?** Just saying.

I am not saying some women who hasn't been abused or is not in such economic dire straits that no other options are viable should not be able to choose prostitution or other sex work as an informed choice. But I think that sex work is a social and legal and cultural issue and needs to be addressed on both levels. We need to talk about how male privilege to (own) women's bodies is part of the cultural breath we breathe. We need to talk about women's connections to their bodies and sexualities and how social objectification, self-objectification, and sexual violence all disrupt that connection. And women's bodies and desirability need to stop being the measure of a woman's worth. Period. There need to be better economic options for women who are in desperate situations or who are single mothers (or both) so that prostitution and other sex work is not "choice" via coercion. Addressing these issues will help sex work being a truly informed choice. And further, we need to be aware of the realities of prostitution and other sex work when we are discussing and debating solutions, and not just what is glamorized by the media and films.

Here's a visible look at some of the daily realities, lest we get too comfy with the pretty-young-choosy-expensive-glamorous prostitute image we have been inundated with lately. (image via Mentrual Poetry):

visit Prostitution Research and Education for more info.

**(and as an actress, her target audience was for women's entertainment and inspiration, not at all for men. And she's the "unsexiest woman"? She also hasn't caved in to "fix" her "Jewish" nose. Either one coincidence? Prolly not).

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A comment on "the best" sex EVER!

In "The 'best' is an enemy of the 'good'" Dr. Charlie Glickman at the Good Vibrations blog writes what I've thought. We should strive for pleasure, not achievement.

It's also important to remember that having good sex is not the same as a) looking "good" having sex, or b) looking like you're having good sex. Said otherwise, what looks good isn't always what is good.

I think a significant aspect of sexual displeasure is in the conjunction of 2 assumptions: that people in porn are having the best sex and that "I don't have sex like that". This is evident in the way we say "fu-k like a porn star" or the periodical Maxim article "How to date a porn star/stripper". The assumption is the actors who are paid to "look like" (whatever that means) they are are having the best sex ever actually are. I'm sure they are sometimes and sometimes they're probably planning the week's dinner menu's while they're continuously and monotonously moaning. The other assumption comes from the first: if they look like they're having the best sex and I don't have sex like that then maybe I'm not having the "best" sex.

And lo and behold, we have magazines that tell us how, in stories recycled on a quarterly basis, to have this "best" sex. And the cycle of culture continues.

What the article doesn't go into are the gender-variations on this theme in magazines. I have been meaning to do research on this by purchasing a year subscription to Maxim and Cosmopolitan (anyone want to fund me?!) and comparing the cover stories and analyzing the ads. Unfortunately, I really need to write my Master's Thesis first. I don't have the statistical proof, so we'll leave it at my observation: women's magazines articles around sex tend to focus on sex that "your man" wants, "your man's" secret desires, how to please "your man"; men's magazines tend to focus on how to get "your girl" (not woman!) to do ---", how to get a hottie to sleep with you, how to convince your girlfriend to let you go to strip clubs. Notice a trend? I'm not saying articles that focus on women's own sexual pleasure don't appear in Cosmo or that Maxim doesn't ever have a story about pleasing your girlfriend, but these are significantly disproportionate to the ones that focus on pleasing men.

Of course, these articles are unproductive besides-they assume everyone's sexual responses are the same and are articulated with heteronormative assumptions about sexual pleasure among heterosexual couples.

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Msn.com/hotmail.com reiterations of gender stereotypes #1

I have really been taking notice recently of the relationship and lifestyle articles on both msn.com and hotmail.com. I have particularly been interested in the way the articles' language and placement serves to produce and perpetuate gender stereotypes and traditional gender roles in articles which are of "popular" interest and oftentimes can be read as reiterating "common sense." However, these light, shallow, common-sensical articles are replete with assumptions about gender and sexuality, and can be read with a critical eye as a backlash against feminism and progressive notions of gender and sexuality.

One the one hand, msn.com isn't really high-quality or insightful reading, so it a) really should be "no big deal" and b) it's non-progressiveness should be assumed. But, on the other hand, it seems that it is exactly these kind of pop-cultural artifacts than normalize our behavior and reiterate sexist assumptions in often subtle ways. Sometimes what seems the least serious of all is what we should be taking more seriously. Since this is quite a trend I have noticed on these sites, and considering the ubiquity of hotmail e-mail addresses and therefore incredible exposure to these "news stories," I think they deserve some attention and critique.

Therefore, I present part one in the series, Reiterations of Gender Stereotypes in msn.com and hotmail.com:

From today's hotmail.com articles (when you log into your hotmail account): an article titled, "Subtle ways to be sexy everyday"

From the intro:

• More than anything else, sexy is a state of mind, and it starts with you! It’s a feeling that’s all about being warm, inviting and approachable, while maintaining a little bit of mystery. But most importantly, it’s about being confident and comfortable in your skin, and your clothing. So put the idea of the "bombshell" aside, ladies. There are plenty of understated ways for you to feel flirty every day.

So on the positive side, being sexy is about being confident in and comfortable with yourself-this is a good thing! But we also find out that this is something the "ladies" should be concerned with. Hmmm, not so good.

So what are some suggestions toward feeling comfortable and confident in yourself? Well, performing for a male spectator of course, but performing while looking like it's effortless!

• ...your most intimate layers and mini makeup tricks will work wonders toward altering your attitude. Hot hosiery and sexy shapewear are items that are meant to make you feel feminine and fierce — and also excite your guy! Hints of red on your nails or lips are likely to stir up flirtatious feelings...And finally, perfume peaks the sense of smell and makes an invisible seductive statement that will linger in a man’s memory.

Geez, this doesn't sound like being "comfortable in your own skin", it's more like creating a "skin "that has been culturally-approved as sexy so that you can then feel comfortable! Here we also find out who the real target of "sexiness" is-it's about exciting your guy! It's all for someone else, not about being confident...unless such confidence is coming from conforming to the social/sexist dictates of female sexiness. Here is also where the heterosexist bias of the article comes in-because no woman who wants to be sexy could possibly be sexually interested in a woman!

• ...disarm yourself by dressing in light, delicate colors such as blush and cream. Slip on sensuous-feeling fabrics such as cashmere and silk that conjure up images of cuddling and caressing — something that says sexy in a subtle way! Sheer peek-a-boo effects with a sleeve or thin overlay, and feminine details such as a flirty slip exposed at the hemline, hint at something to be explored later on.

To be sexy, a woman must be feminine-delicate, soft, an object of sexual desire (rather than the active pursuant of it). Yawn.

• The girl next door is a classic symbol of sex appeal, and this look is easy to accomplish!...from a guy’s perspective, casual cute clothing equals adorable and approachable. After all, who isn’t drawn to someone who appears to be fun and easygoing!

Nope-women can't be too serious you know! And I love how in this "tip" she uses celebrities to make her point-Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston-which I guess just reinforces that being sexy is about a "look"-how she looks to others- and not at all about how a woman herself feels, as the intro so misleadingly claims. And I love here too that it's not important to be fun and easy going, just look that way by dressing cas.

• Stand out in a crowd with a pop color, and consider a saucy wrap dress, which will show off your most womanly asset — curves...According to a beauty book she [Sophia Loren] wrote back in 1984, colorful jewelry can enhance your allure, but attitude and charm can make anybody beautiful. My two cents...: Don’t forget about a deliciously fun pair of heels! My favorites, to this day, are a pair of pink round-toe slingbacks with red suede roses on the toes. They just make me happy every time I look down. Fabulous accents like these will not only make you happy, but believe me, he will notice!

So here we are reminded that our most feminine asset is our "curves"-clearly not our attitude, intelligence, wit....all things that in addition to good fashion sense could create the confidence and comfort about oneself this article led me to believe (ok now I'm just being silly) that sexiness was! And of course heels are of utmost importance-they are sexy because of how they engage leg muscles and therefore emphasize leg tone, but are notoriously uncomfortable and very bad for your ankles and toes. And not only will you be sexy, but happy! And-HE will notice! The best part is how the Loren quote contradicts this entire article!

After each "tip" are shopping examples for the tip being offered. I mean, to be sexy I absolutely should run out and buy the "Ivory bell-sleeve cashmere sweater, $220; Cream slip dress, $389." I think now we see why sexiness can't possibly be about self-confidence that is produced by developing your emotional, intellectual, sexual and physical health...there isn't a commodity to sell! A profit can't be made over and over again as female sexiness is continually slightly modified to continually sell products!

Clearly we have the contradictory message that sexiness comes from confidence, but confidence comes from performing classical femininity wrapped up in commodity consumption, all for the (assumed) male viewer (and male CEO!). This pop-advice article reiterates gender stereotypes and heterosexism-apparently, men don't need to or don't care to be sexy, and neither do lesbian and bisexual women.

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