Double Standards Cut Both Ways
A lot of feminists that I admire a great deal will tell you that women are objectified. Men expect women to dress prettily and wear makeup and do their hair, and somehow these expectations are oppressive.
And yet, we ask the same things of men. Okay, sure, we don’t ask them to wear makeup. (Or, well, most of us don’t. I’m actually oddly fond of men in makeup. And glitter. And/Or Kilts. But that’s my thing. Erm.) We giggle over the Old Spice Guy, who is funny as hell, but he also has all of those nice rippling abs. We might complain over the amount of time it takes to go the whole nine yards, with elaborate hairdos and makeup, but we do it while gawking over men who could only look that way with hours every day spent in the gym.
And yeah, while I appreciate the aesthetic appeal of those pecks, I’ll admit that my personal weakness is a skinny, brainy guy with glasses. (Ph. D.? Hair like a Ralph Lauren model? Slightly metro? Oh my. *swoon*) I like my men well dressed, even though most of the time I’d rather be wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Thing about all those brainy, bespectacled guys is that usually they dress pretty well, in nice button-down shirts or polos and khakis and suits. Luckily, I managed to find one of these well-dressed blokes, and he doesn’t care if I’m dressed down while he dresses up.
Thing is, why do we complain that men like for women to look pretty while expecting men to look pretty (or, erm, handsome) too? A man can be as macho as he likes, but if he smells, he’s unlikely to get a girl. On the other hand, if he smells really good, even if he’s not all that good-looking, there will be girls that sigh when he comes by. I have seen this happen. Just ask the local FedEx guy.
We expect men to take care of themselves and look nice, and yet complain when the same is expected of us.
And I’ve always wondered why being expected to be beautiful, or being recognized for beauty, is somehow a bad thing. Sure, there are those guys who think girls only exist to look pretty, and that anything going on inside their brains or hearts is inconsequential, but those sorts of guys are the rarity these days, though it seems the beauty pageant circuit tends to cater to that sort.
I like to look pretty. While most of the time, I’m a jeans-and-t-shirt girl, my one fashion-related obsession is shoes, and I like them pretty and strappy and with heels on. And I like to dress up to have an excuse to wear those pretty shoes. I feel empowered by it, rather than objectified by it.
When I play video games, I like the fact that the character models for female characters are beautiful. In games with many varied races, you can get all sorts of beautiful. And these gorgeous characters go out there and they kick ass. They’re strong and wonderful, they’re dragonslayers and sorceresses and soldiers, but above all, they are strong. The fact that they are also beautiful does nothing to diminish that strength. This something I’ve always found rather empowering.
I also have a great love of old-school burlesque, which, yes, involves women taking off their clothes. However, it’s more about the tease than the nudity, which most of the time consists of little more than a short peak before the curtains close or the dancer dashes off stage. It’s about humor and showmanship and being comfortable in your body, which is a hard thing these days. I know it’s often been a hard thing for me.
I suppose the difference between being objectified and empowered has everything to do with the context of the situation. A woman (or man) reduced to body-parts, with no face or emotion for an advertisement, for instance, is nothing but pure object. And of course, that’s only one example.
But I’ll never be convinced that this is only a one-way thing, where women are the only ‘victims’. Men are objectified just as often, and women pay attention to appearances just as much as men do. And never will I believe that the enjoyment of looking nice comes solely from the attention of others, sometimes it’s nice just to look in the mirror and think to yourself “Hey, I look good.”
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When you first posted this I did a little double take, because I was actually thinking about precisely this that same morning. Namely the way that the Old Spice commercials would go over if they featured a woman instead of a man, and how men in general aren't bitching.
We've either been berated so much by our culture that we no longer feel safe standing up for our gender, lest being pro-man be seen as anti-woman–which would be bad. Or, as a species, we're gaining the ability to be casual about gender issues, which would be awesome, because I really love sexist jokes. I tend to make them somewhat constantly in my head, if not outloud.