Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-h Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:aeq From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Re: Penthouse/Pageant Message-ID: <954@pucc-h> Date: Fri, 17-Aug-84 21:42:15 EDT Article-I.D.: pucc-h.954 Posted: Fri Aug 17 21:42:15 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 19-Aug-84 02:27:49 EDT References: <1841@stolaf.UUCP>, <946@pucc-h> Organization: Tucumcari Divinity School Lines: 37 It has been rightly remarked that beauty pageants such as Miss America give a false idea of the optimal woman, by emphasizing the pulchritude of the physical body (well, all right, the face too), with only a token glance at the mind. But what about the men's pageants, Mr. America and the like? As far as I know, they don't even pretend to consider the guy's intelligence. They hold up as the ideal man a guy with 200 pounds of rock-hard muscle and zero ounces of fat -- despite the fact that the guy may be (in the traditional phrase) a macho asshole, or even (in the traditional semi-joke) a homosexual. This is not nice to those of us who do not boast a 60-inch chest measure and who do have a tough time keeping a few superfluous pounds from accumulating around the waistline, but who at least try to be considerate and sensitive (not that I always succeed) despite being heterosexual.... Then, of course, in recent years magazines have come out giving men just as much -- er, exposure -- as Playboy at least (I don't know if any mags depicting men are yet as raunchy as Penthouse). Again (at least so I infer; I've never examined Playgirl) the ideal man is held out as one with a beautiful body. It seems to me that the trend is in the wrong direction; no matter how much talk there is about personhood, dignity, intelligence, and what not, now both sexes are being subjected to objectification more and more. I will give Playboy this much credit: Rarely, if ever, does it present parts of a woman's body without her face also in the picture; and I will give myself the credit for [when I yield to the temptation to buy it] actually looking at the facial expressions of the women pictured, and evaluating their attractiveness to a great extent on the person they seem to be, not only on the body they obviously have. I wonder how many purchasers of Playboy et al. do that? Do not many readers fall in with the objectification? Struggling to be a real person, to be treated as such, and to treat others likewise, -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq "We can build a beautiful city, yes we can, yes we can...."