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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Fighting Against Breast Cancer...and Also Against Breast Cancer Campaigns

I don't remember exactly what brought this issue to my attention-- it may have been this blog post I read, which prompted me to do some additional research. But I'm pretty irritated. And frustrated.

It's the Breast Cancer awareness campaigns and anti-breast cancer t-shirts that are being manufactured, bought and worn. Disclaimer: I am 100% in favor of fund-raising, awareness, education, what have you, about breast cancer.* That's not what this is about. However, the way advocacy is framed is just as important as the advocacy, for the "way you say it" speaks just as much as "what you say."

Why am I annoyed? The message of recent campaigns, advertising, and t-shirts are centered around the idea that we need to catch breast cancer early and research for a cure in order to save breasts. Silly me, I thought we fight against cancer to save lives. And if that weren't bad enough, the reason "the breasts" must be saved will make you puke a little in your mouth. Because men love 'em. Or in sexuality-neutral terms of some of the tees, your sex partner enjoys them, or needs them to attain a sexual conquest status:

This tee is also interesting in how it appropriates a "sport" theme, used as a metaphor for sex that is wholly centered on what the male "gets" the female to do, especially considering the objectification of women in sport. Compare to this tee, also on a sport theme:
So to recap, not only are saving the breast not the woman, the focus of the campaigns, but the reason for doing to isn't even about preserving the sexual pleasure that the woman's breasts give her, but is instead about their benefit to others, predominately to men--not only your (presumed male) partner, but to the community of men at large. "We men" love 'boobies' so we'll work real hard so you don't have to have them surgically removed. And we women should be "responsible" and look after them because the dudez love 'em. And we all know women should do things about their body because it's what men love. Not because, well, women might die!



I prefer this one:

Of course, the end message "look after your body" is correct but the reason to do so is 100% absolutely wrong. It is an unfortunately and troubling result of how women's bodies are seen: as first and foremost for someone else's pleasure, as something to be looked at and not something that works, that does things, that has a functional purpose, and that gives the woman herself pleasure.

Rethink's "Booby Wall" starts off saying about it's call to upload images of your breasts: "this isn't Maxim...this is beautiful" only to be followed by "this is worth living for." Excuse me? Um, no, my breasts are not worth living for, my life is worth living for! Yeah, let's display all sort of breasts as examples of the beauty in the variety of breasts to prove that your breasts are important, valuable and worth living for. Gee, that sure sounds like an awesome initiative!

And no, this is not a case of Aw, just lighten up!-Whatever will get people to fight breast cancer-What's the Big Deal? No, sorry. This is the message women get ev-ry-where. And now when the issue is supposed to be about women's lives, we're appealing to save women's bodies?! Women's bodies are valuable regardless of what they mean to men and the male gaze, and women's lives are important regardless of their bodies. End of story.

Reasons why we fight breast cancer?
Because it kills women.
Because it takes a chunk of your life away.
Because a woman losing her breasts can make her lose out on sexual pleasure.

The "because a woman's partner may lose our on sexual pleasure" is at the bottom of the list.

That "men like looking at as many breasts as possible and anything that makes them go away should be fought against" is not on the list.

In addition to my disclaimer above, an ending disclaimer. I am not criticizing men that are involved in breast cancer organizations whatsoever. Please keep it up! I am criticizing the way that action against breast cancer is framed, and I am not saying men involved are doing so with the motivations presumed by the campaigns. Instead, I think this tee better describes these men:

The campaigns rely on a sexist framework regarding the female body and what/who it is for, and they perpetuate such sexism in the design of their campaigns.



*Even though the way breast cancer has been produced in medicalization has a very gendered element to it, in the way that the comparative silence around prostate cancer and prevention is also quite gendered. I'll write on this in the future. But for now, ponder on why it might be that we encourage women to do self-breast examinations monthly--and this is a common-knowledge thing--and we don't advocate men doing self-testicle exams. Even though considering the various tissue obstructions in the breast, it would be much easier to discover lumps in the testicles than in the breast.

(Cross-posted to The Reaction)

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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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Mother-daughter bonding over waxing? At age 8 ?!?!

First, a really good article at blogher by Mir Kamin about the new trend of mothers taking their 8 year-old daughters to spas...to get bikini waxes. Seriously.

She quotes the fuck shaving livejournal community, where one person commented:

It's sad that all these moms can't think of anything else to do to bond with their daughters but go to the spa. What about taking a walk every evening to talk about their day, or cook together, or take up art classes or fucking something else.

[...]

Also, do any other these daughters have fathers? Do any of these women have husbands?
Don't they have some influence in their lives telling them that they're beautiful no matter what?

I thought these were great points. Daughters need their fathers and brothers reiterate their personal value beyond their physical appearance. Even more, fathers need to not be hypocrites when it comes to valuing women, having a complex and meaningful ideal of beauty and sexuality, and assigning a health place in life for appearances. Children pick up on non-verbal and implicit cues more than we think. Mothers need to bond with their daughters in ways that don't feed the patriarchal capitalist beauty machine. Girls should not be sex-objects-in training, despite what synonyms thesaurus.com gives for "girl."

Philadelphia Magazine had a nauseating article about the spa happenings of the pre-teen rich and famous, enabled by the moms and the almighty dollar-greedy beauty industry.

Melanie Engle was trying to just pluck the stray hairs here and there. She was trying to deliver an age-appropriate eyebrow wax to her client. It was hard, though, because there was a foot tapping next to her, and a voice shouting in her ear: “No! Not like that — like a supermodel’s. I want them arched.”
...
“It’s like, ‘Okay, you’re becoming a woman now, here are the things you’ll need to do as a woman.’”

Except, of course, they’re not women. This new, unstoppable desire of mothers to pluck and paint their daughters has created an unexpected conundrum for spa owners and aestheticians, who can’t afford to lose the moms’ lucrative business — but who also don’t want to be partners in crime.
...
The world has changed since my ’tweendom. Look at the media, and its obsession with fame, beauty, youth, celebrities, debutantes, celebutantes. It’s in our faces all the time. It’s in our kids’ faces, too. “It’s like this keeping-up-with-the-Joneses thing has stretched to our kids,” says Dasha Klein, a Main Line mom of an 11-year-old girl at Baldwin. She knows multiple teenagers who’ve gotten boob jobs for Sweet Sixteen presents, and a 20-year-old who gets Botox. “Except they’re trying to keep up with Hollywood — and Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus and whoever else they’re looking at. Well, guess what? You’re in Philadelphia. And you’re a kid. You’re not Angelina Jolie.”

Indeed. And I found this particular part to be especially interesting:

When I was in my teenybopper heyday, there were no pop chicks who I aspired to be. There were boys I aspired to marry. The media world surrounding us made us boy-crazy — maybe not a fabulous thing for a 10-year-old, but at least it didn’t lead my friends and me to inject botulism into our foreheads before we could legally drink. It was innocent: We giggled, swooned, hung posters of Joey Lawrence and Luke Perry, giggled some more. And our moms were … uninvolved. They didn’t drop us at the playground with instructions to bring home the boy who looked the most like Kirk Cameron. They rolled their eyes, bemusedly shaking their heads as they passed by our rooms: Oh, you silly girls. End of story.

Not anymore. Today’s girls aren’t looking at posters; they’re looking in the mirror. They have a new obsession — a self-obsession — and it’s being aided and abetted by their mothers. “It’s like this focus on their outer life is trickling down to their daughters,” says Rescue’s Albert. These women have to look a certain way, so inevitably, their young daughters, still under their control, do, too.

When I read this, I thought: that's it! Recently especially I have been struggling to recall what my 10-16 years were like. All I can seem to come up with is that they are nothing like the pornification of girlhood right now. But the author's point really resonated with me, and from her boy-crush examples, she is probably around my age. When I was younger, reading Teen and Seventeen, there was a much greater emphasis on the "cute boys" in your fave sitcoms. And the Preferred Stock model, Joel somebody-or-other. As the writer says, that isn't necessarily something to glorify, but it is quite distinct from what's happening now: there was indeed more a focus on girls' (teen) desire, fantasy, and imagination. The focus was less on making yourself the perfect porn-star object of desire. Now, the focus seems to be more who to look like, not whom to look at. It's a matter of passivity vs. activity, objectification vs. agency, self-scrutiny vs. desire. It's what feminism has tried so hard to steer against. And somehow more opportunities for girls self-development has been co-opted and become the freedom...to get bikini waxes at age 12. And pleasure has become derived from being pleasing rather than being pleased. At this is where is begins.

This should be a wake-up call for us. Unfortunately, it has all just become part of the game.

Oh, and this I just read about, and I don't know what to do with it...via Jezebel, "a plunging padded bra for 7-to-8 year olds." Seriously. And to connect this back to my growing-up years too, as adolescents, we were embarrassed about our bodies, and I don't think that was a good thing. At all. But it's interesting how attitudes have swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, yet still has not yielded a more substantial notion of sexual independence and autonomy. It's a "yes, but..." kind of situation, where yes, we do (have more 'autonomy'), but in our (still sexist) society, women's sexual independence still gets defined by (self) objectification and her value for-another. Are we (as women) able to have sex more freely than we used to? Yes. Does this mean society has achieved "sexual liberation"? Nope. Sexual "liberation" through a culture obsessed with visual sexuality (or being visually sexual) has been bought with socio-cultural (although not legal) sexual regulation. That's all I'm going to say on this now...but more to come on this topic.

further reading: History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault, Female Chauvenist Pigs by Ariel Levy. (both in my Amazon picks)

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Some comment-worthy articles about sexuality and body image

The British Daily Mail reported that men--especially single men--who read "lad mags" (the mags for (hetero) Men that equally objectify the newest babe in lingerie alongside the latest in electronic gear) are more obsessed with their own body image.

"The message in typical lads' magazines is that you need to develop a muscular physique in order to attract a quality mate," said Dr Giles.

"Readers internalise this message, which creates anxieties about their actual bodies and leads to increasingly desperate attempts to modify them.

"Some of the most worrying findings were that heavy consumers of lads' mags think about taking anabolic steroids or use protein or energy supplements as part of their diet and exercise regimes to improve the way they look."

Forgive me if I'm slightly amused by this, but, um, DUH! These magazines have the same kind of effect on women (not to mention on men's expectation of what a particularly beautiful woman is). At least the men who read these mags don't have the have the message that body=worth thrown at them from every which way like women do. While body image can be one aspect of success, men have many more valued ways to be successful than women do.

I also find it interesting that the researchers thought the men were internalizing the ideal images of men found in the mags--maybe the British versions are significantly different than the U.S. ones, but I don't recall any real emphasis on male bodies; the male physique seemed to be just one aspect of men's lives they covered (as opposed to the portrayal of the women which are presented as eye-candy first--ya know, the important function of women in a man's life--then maybe the reader gets to see others aspects of her life). My guess? Men who consistently objectify women, and see their worth first in terms of their value to the guy as an object of sexual desire, tend to start to see themselves in the same light, despite that women's mags don't tend to portray guys in that way.

______________________________

These men shouldn't worry to much, however, because what consists of "sex" and "good sex" is still measured in terms of PIV sex (aka intercourse). A new study has concluded that how long good sex should last:

1) is measured in terms of time the penis is inside the vagina;
2) doesn't include foreplay (which, for women, is much of what they consider "sex");
3) can relieve most men that their lasting time is "satisfactory."

What's interesting about this is that "how long is optimal intercourse?" gets translated into "how long does it take to satisfy a woman?" For most women I know, these are not the same question. My equating these two ideas, the assumption is reinforced that a woman's satisfaction comes from sex defined as PIV intercourse.

And while it's nice that men get to feel all "normal" and stuff, that women's pleasures actually contradict conventional wisdom and representations in porn (while women still seem to be held to ridiculous standards of what their sexual pleasure should be and should look like), it would be nice for a study to come out (and receive as much press as this one has!) that actually talks bout what women's sexual pleasure consists of. My guess is if one did come out, it's findings would make the findings of this study a lot less relevant. Check out this too on Slow Sex Movement (part of the Slow Movement).

______________________________

I am really delighted that Babeland employee (a women and queer-oriented sex shop) has been hired by Cosmo to dole out sex advice. Maybe her presence can help work against the cult of sexuality that Cosmo espouses that thinks good sex advice is primarily about how to please your man, do a striptease, perform like a porn star, fulfill his ultimate fantasies. Perhaps instead we'll see a little more about experimenting to find your own pleasures, how to communicate what you want and ask him what he wants, how to use sex toys in couple sex. I mean, totally revolutionary stuff!

______________________________

Lastly, in late March an 18-year-old high school senior died after elective breast surgery from an albeit rare surgical complication. Two things from the MSNBC story stand out to me:

Stephanie Kuleba’s friends called her “Sunshine” because that was the perfect nickname for the outgoing and bubbly girl who was everybody’s friend, the cheerleader with the near-perfect grade-point average who was too nice and too perfect for anybody to resent.

This is all too typical--that women can be accomplished in all sorts of ways, but they are never "good enough" unless our bodies "match up" (according to cultural expectations) with the beautiful person we truly are. She wasn't getting implants, but rather "corrective surgery," which many feminists who loathe implants might be willing to overlook. But in reality, breasts come in all shapes and sizes, and they're all normal. The image we see in film, magazines, and porn is a result of some intense photoshopping (not to mention all the implants), even when they purport a "natural" look. Check out this great site that shows what actual breasts, in all their variety, look like. (site isn't porn, but it's also NSFW)

The death has focused attention on elective breast augmentation surgery, a procedure that 347,500 women of all ages chose to have in 2007 alone. That number is 6 percent higher than in 2006 and 64 percent higher than in 2000.
...
D’Amico repeated the FDA recommendation that no one under 18 undergo breast augmentation surgery. Despite its popularity, the procedure does have a high rate of complications and often requires additional surgery within five to 10 years of the original surgery.

The point is, that women are getting elective breast surgeries, which, like all surgeries, have significant risks (not to mention the risks related to the material in implants) in droves. It isn't that these women are stupid and don't understand the risks. It's that they overwhelmingly do, and the potential complications of the surgery outweigh the social risk of a "failed"' feminine body and the risk of not being deemed appropriately sexually worthy. Of course, the health risks to women in surgery is coupled with the risks to a woman's sexual pleasure through decreased nipple sensitivity from the augmentation.

Do think that men would submit themselves in significant numbers to a surgery meant primarily to please actual and potential sexual partners, while risking decreasing their own sexual pleasure? Do men submit themselves in huge numbers to penis enlargement surgery and other procedures that could increase staying power? Then answer is, no, they don't. But they don't need to, because we've already squashed the "size matters" and "lasting longer is better" myths about female sexual pleasure. When will start acknowledging our unhealthy obsession with bigger or "perfect" (whatever that means) breasts, and show that an awful lot of guys are happy with many kinds of breasts, and those who aren't need some reeducation, and there are a lot of ways they can be pleasurable to a partner. But ultimately, we need to remember that the primary sexual function of breasts (or we could be talking about vaginas, for that matter) is for the person they belong to--the woman. And you can't enjoy them if you have few nerves left, or worse, if you're dead.

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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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