The Idea Shop

To my devoted readers:

            It has been far too long since I last penned an essay dealing with the social troubles of our time.  I must apologize for the lack of correspondence.  I will endeavor to appease my readers’ massive hunger for intellectually stimulating discourse with a topic close to my heart: that of sexism.

            I began contemplating this issue when talking to a dear friend of mine.  The double standard inherent in dress codes had caught her attention, and her fiery temperament (truly a thing to fear, if you be a misogynic lout with little or no manners) had immediately erupted.  “What the hell?  I am sick of the tan lines on my upper body.  Guys get it easy.  If they want to get rid of their farmer’s tan, they can just walk around without a shirt.”  The grim line of her lips informed me that this was a situation that did not agree with her.  She immediately expanded on her thoughts.  “Also, what’s with the dress codes at schools?  Like the schools that have their own uniforms.  Guys wear slacks and a white shirt with tie.  Girls are given skirts that either go down to the ankles or barely cover the thighs.  Who designs these things?”

            Well, being the helpful and understanding friend I am, I suggested that my friend show the world that she was a free woman by stripping off her shirt (as well as everything underneath it).  She threw me a glare that would have rendered most men impotent.  “You,” she stated. “Are a pig.”

            Let us examine this issue from a different perspective.  Why exactly is it that we forbid full or partial nudity in women but only full nudity in men?  What are the social pressures that force us to avoid nudity when our European cousins have much laxer rules on the subject?  What exactly is responsible for this disjoint, the simultaneous aversion and attraction to breasts?

            Why exactly am I focusing on breasts?  Because of all the paradoxical feelings about nudity and female organs, this seems the most problematic.  One could say that in polite society we ought not to wave around sexual organs.  However, even if we accept this as true, there seems no reason for us to ban bare breasted females.  Mammary glands produce milk for our young.  They serve no “natural” sexual function, and do not constitute sexual organs. 

A biologist with an affinity for relational studies might propose that men find the mammary glands attractive because firm, fairly large breasts suggest that a woman would have no problem feeding a child, thus protecting the well being of our as of yet unborn offspring.  A Freudian might imply that our subconscious memories of feeding on our mother’s breast lead us (in an odd twist on the Oedipus complex) to find breasts that imitate our mother’s attractive.  A boor might intimate (between slurps of beer) that breasts are “God’s gifts to men’s hands.”

I must disagree with the biologist on several points.  Firstly, the image of what is “attractive” varies from generation to generation.  There was a time when people thought a full set of curves was the way to go.  If I was to judge women based on the “Barbie complex” as set forth by popular television today, however, I might be aroused by women who were so skinny as to be almost skeletal, despite the fact that my unborn offspring would never flourish in the womb of a woman who eats nothing but salad.  Secondly, though there might be an attraction to mammary glands, there is no reason that this attraction be sexual.  Why can’t we love women with healthy mammary glands platonically?  We, as humans, find certain aspects of a person to be “attractive” without being sexual.  “Healthy mammary glands” would fit nicely with “nice smile” and “firm handshake.”  Though a female may want to have sex with a man who has a “nice smile,” she does not have to see the “nice smile” as sexually arousing.

Freudians have always provoked feelings of disgust in me.  Perhaps it is their obsession with sex, or their greasy hair and fat lips.  Maybe it is those hands, always sweaty—but I digress.  The claim that we find breasts attractive because we sucked on our mother’s breasts when we were a child is utter nonsense.  It disregards all sorts of background influences.  If a child was to find an issue of Playboy underneath his father’s bed, who knows what he might grow up to desire in a woman.  Or maybe a baby was not breast fed.  Does that baby grow up to be utterly insensitive to the social pressures that dictate “sexual normality?”

As for the boor, I cannot say that I disagree with his statement.  I do, however, disagree with the sentiment.  I have always found it odd that even as we anthropomorphize objects like our sexual organs and hair dryers, we continue to objectify women as objects of sexual pleasure.

To get back to the main point, dress codes also attribute to this objectification.  The truth of the matter is that it should not matter whether or not mammary glands induce sexual arousal.  If men can walk around bare-chested, it is only fair that women be allowed to as well.  I might (and this is purely hypothetical) find a man with well formed pectoral muscles to be sexually attractive; this does not prevent him from jogging without a shirt.  The fact that women cannot do the same suggests that we have a problem with our own sexuality, and that women with bodies that stimulate should be ashamed to compound on our sexuality.  Nothing could be unhealthier.  Women are not creatures of pure carnality, wantonly flaunting their assets, and they are not beings that exist purely to please men: women are sacrosanct, vessels of life, and above all women are human.

A final word of advice: sexual intercourse is exactly what it sounds like.  It is intercourse, not a singular action by a lone person.  Too often men are inconsiderate lovers (if I can even use that word) plunging for the “goal” like a horse who has forgotten that someone is riding him.  Men, I promise you, if you listen to a woman, you will learn things that you never thought possible.  Don’t let your sex life be another victim of the objectification of women.

[Many thanks to Etienne in convincing me to post this]