The imagery of women has gone back to where it was before the advent of feminism, writes BREDA O'BRIEN
VOLCANIC ASH may be far more worrying, or perhaps the fact that Greece threatens to pull us along with it into the abyss but, as an irritation, it is hard to beat a certain advert for crisps.
I know that by commenting on it I am playing into the hands of the manufacturers, or the next grinning moron who thinks an advertisement featuring female flesh is a wonderful way to get publicity for a mediocre product.
Most of the commentary (aside from a perceptive article by Tom Humphries) announces that the only ones objecting are dried-up hags who never managed to leave the man-hating 1970s behind.
Apparently, such straw women are incapable of seeing that it is “just a bit of fun to cheer us up in recessionary times”. They are just too puritanical and un-hip to get the ironic, post-modernist humour of women flashing cleavage and buttocks.
Some commentators located two of the models, Lian Schreuder and Isabela Soncini who, surprise, are shocked and amazed that anyone would find the pictures anything other than “beautiful and artistic”. And men still read Playboy for the articles.
Let me just say it. The pictures are wrong. They are not wrong in the sense that rape is wrong. But they are wrong in a grating, irritating, lesser way. They are wrong whether the women were well paid, or see it as a smart career move, or think the images are “beautiful and artistic”.
They are wrong because they are part of a whole cultural movement that has skilfully manoeuvred the imagery of women right back to where it was before the advent of feminism but this time as mainstream, and with women as willing accomplices.
Once upon a time, objections to using images of semi-clad women came from religion, which saw bodies as precious, and sexuality as something private.
Then came feminism, which saw women as more valuable than decorative objects designed to titillate men. Perish the thought, but they might have brains, and ideas, and something to give to the world other than a large cup size or a curvy ass.
It’s a funny feeling, being in the middle. My generation was the first to really benefit from the sacrifices that the generation before us made for equality, and we are watching our daughters being mercilessly urged by market forces to use that freedom to dress like teenage hookers.
And you know what is really ironic? This eye-rolling generation – who just don’t get what the problem is with Playboy logos on pencil cases, much less with flaunting your boobs on your Facebook page – are actually far less comfortable with sexuality than previous generations.
From the age of eight, girls know their main role in life is to be hot, and God knows the strain that goes into achieving that goal.
Us dried-up old hags, we had a quaint notion that female ideas of sexuality, which to a large extent are about pleasure and bonding in a context of commitment and nurture, might actually begin to have some influence.
But there’s no profit in that, is there? No massive profits like there are in internet porn, or all the products that are needed to keep the female form vaguely acceptable? Or even in crisps?
Sure, we wanted to wear lipstick and perfume, and have real choices about careers and motherhood. We liked and fancied men, and wanted to spend our lives with them. Instead of relaxed equality, we got frantic juggling, and the feeling that neither our careers nor our mothering could get our full attention.
Instead of values based on what makes life good for everyone, we got values based on exaltation of personal choice. The feminist movement split, with some deciding any choice was as good as any other, including the choice to be exploited.
“If it’s her choice . . .” became the killer punch to end any argument.
Except if that choice happened to makes a woman less sexually available than more so. Then it’s just the influence of the man-hating feminists.
Never mind if this culture is harming people, and especially children, who absorb the message every day that women are fine about being sexual objects – and in fact are thrilled about it.
In Equality and Power in Schools: Redistribution, Recognition and Representation, as part of a much larger survey, Kathleen Lynch and Anne Lodge recorded the experience of women and girls in co-ed school corridors. Daily, females experienced the threat of, or actual, sexual assault. The “milder” assaults were attempted or actual breast squeezing, bum pinching and crotch grabbing. The boys described it as “a bit of fun” and “harmless” (just like crisp ads) but the girls described it as “running the gauntlet”.
Men who are uncomfortable with this kind of culture are just as disenfranchised as women. But even men who revel in our “pornified” culture experience unease at times.
David Loftus, in Watching Sex: How Men Really Respond to Pornography, describes a range of male attitudes to porn, but almost universal unhappiness with the idea that their (female) partners might access it, like men do.
A review showed men felt male images in porn to be: “Insulting, impossibly ideal, oppressively perfect or one-dimensional, and otherwise unsuitable as models for behaviour, either in bed or out of it.”
Funny, that. We thought it was just us puritanical feminists who thought porn damages everybody.
Still, we women wouldn’t go back. But we are sure as hell bewildered as to how the brave revolution ended up here.