If you want evidence of how few genuine problems western women have to complain about, just look at the way feminists fulminate at certain magazine covers. You know the ones I mean, the ones that show women whose images trade on sex as if they were, er… women whose images trade on sex.
The most recent example of this porridge-brained idiocy is, of course, the Lana Del Rey cover for GQ’s Men of the Year issue. There was much hand wringing about young Lana’s nudity as compared to the alternate covers which showed male recipients like Robbie Williams wearing suits. The entire thing was decried as sexist, misogynist – all the usual crap – and I’m sure that somewhere on the internet the many ghosts of Andrea Dworkin were yelling hysterically that such “objectification” leads to violence against the wiminz…
What the female supremacists are deliberately ignoring is that there are, obviously, several valid reasons to portray Del Rey in such a radically different way from the fellas.
First, Del Rey would look stupid wearing Robbie Williams’ suit, especially if he was still in it at the time.
Second, GQ stands for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, not Gelding’s Quarterly, and is hence a magazine for which the audience is primarily men who still retain some sort of sexual interest in women. That a mostly male audience might want to see a relatively attractive young woman wearing no more than some tacky jewelry and nail polish should neither surprise nor offend any but the most stridently anti-male.
The third reason is that we are talking about a woman whose public persona is a highly sexualized one. This is Lana “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola” Del Rey – it aint The Flying Nun! The men on the alternate covers, on the other hand, are a bunch of British wankers who, apart from Robbie Williams, have images that have little to do with sex, sex, and more sex. As for Williams, maybe at one time the girls might have wanted to see the inexplicably popular popster in the altogether, but those days are past. As for the other guys…er, who are they again? Unless they are sex symbols in the UK, their modesty is of little import.
The ink had barely dried on Pepsi Cola’s cover when the feminuts went bonkers over Rihanna’s cover for the American version of the same magazine. Rihanna appears, if not naked, then certainly not as well covered as Ben Affleck and Channing Tatum . Why such a disparity? Has misogyny struck again? Is it another sign of America’s “War on Women.” No. I suspect that, much like young Lana, the sexual nature of the photo has something to do with the young woman’s persona, her image, the way she has chosen to present herself to her public. Call this a wild theory if you will, but I am pretty sure the lasciviousness of the cover has something to do with the fact that the subject is someone who sashays around singing about S&M while shaking her pert little ass all over the place!
Fact is, women who are in the business of titillation will be portrayed in a titillating way, and that aint misogyny, that’s just both the girls and the mags getting what they both want. When Aung San Suu Kyi turns up on one of these covers wearing nothing but a pair of earrings and a diplomatic smile, the feminists will have something to get genuinely pissed off about. Until then, this is just another case of western feminism claiming to see female oppression where everyone else sees some good looking young woman doing what most feminists can only dream of doing – showing off her beauty while she still has it.