Good article. It reads like

Good article. It reads like one of those snappy Rick Mercer riffs, the ones where Rick is walking and speaking quickly into the camera, filmed all in one take. I like that.

We're all sold on our insecurities. Women's insecurities are tied to their sexual desirability, and men's insecurities are tied to their socio-economic status (which ultimately goes back to their desirability) - In other words, marketing presents women as sex objects and men as success objects. They're two sides of the same coin, and we all fall for it every time, men and women alike.

Gutsy and right on point

Wow. The Tyee and Ms. Rupp continue to challenge the new norms being implemented by North America's elites. Well done. The efforts to silence the women's movement by our current financial, corporate and media elites is in full swing.

Thanks to articles like these, we can remain cognizant of the real "central planning" goals being implemented by the neocon cartel. Which goals are routinely denied by the planners, consistent with one of their core value: dishonesty.

Disparaging women has a long, sad history, as we all know. Male elties appear to be drawn to bullying the weak. Thus, who would they have to bully if women, visible minorties and the disabled were allowed equality?

Thomas Frank's One Market Under God is a good analysis of the neocon trend to reinvent the 1950's and women's role therein.

I am always struck how most men don't reflect the loud, mean, angry tone of the elites. Many men I know are content to see equality implemented. It is the few angry males, invariably closet war mongers and misoygynists, who are the real obstacle to a better society.

Great article!

Lust-object leaders?

If Rupp's observation about the correlation of titilation to political ambition is correct, then Cicciolina should have been the prime minister of Italy, not a mere MP. Belinda Stronach should be Prime Minister of Canada, John Edwards should be the President.

In fact, as the article acknowledges, society's winner list is replete with those of more demure appearance. Paris Hilton is on a separate list: pop culture sight-gag, along with Ron Jeremy, Morganna The Kissing Bandit and that anus-spreading guy on the internet.

Though purporting boredom and distaste for "chub slapping" (whatever that is; the author appears to have originated the term) this article suggests a maniacal focus on phalluses and what might engage them. She ignores the fact that the packaging of women's products is also vaginal, e.g. the new Gillete Venus. There is no acknowledgement that our architecture is as full of cubes as of spires, of pools as well as fountains.

The naughty mind will make of these as it will.

I was going to say that the author could live in Saudi Arabia to be free of these oppressive images, but, even there -- or perhaps more so, there -- there is a constant awareness of sexual difference and desireability.

I'm not mocking the unhappiness or pain that is associated with the ribaldry and gross physicality of our society. It would be a better world if we covetted those with firmer intelligences, stiffer integrity, juicier wit, smoother diplomacy.

It's one of the conundrums that comes from being humans: sensible, but also animals.

beauty?

"So calling a woman beautiful really means that she will appeal to all men as a sexual partner."

So I guess if that is how the author defines beauty... all the straw people in the article can be forgiven their invention.

I'm not even sure where to start; this article is horrible. I'd rail against the point it makes if I could figure out what that point was.

Is shannon talking about real life or the one found on TV?

The suggestion that porn has given rise to that special equality where men now think they have to shave everything and buy lots of beauty products is my favourite unfounded assertion of the article.

For me, beauty remains squarely in the eye of the beholder. And, I retain the rights to use the word in the myriad ways intended.

Those dove ads seem to suggest that the beholder can also be the one 'beholding'... suggesting that the beauty one can see in oneself is valid too... and that beauty is a much wider topic than tv culture usually admits.
but whatever, I don't have a TV or feminist coloured glasses with which to view the world.

Yes

Great article!

Fab!

This was the best rant I've read in ages. It was sharp, clever, funny -- I read the whole thing aloud to a guy who is a Chris Matthews fan and he laughed louder than I did.

To Schmendrick -- Newsflash: Men waxing themselves head to foot has become a giant cosmetic cash grab lately. When is the last time you saw a hairy chest on television? Anywhere? I have female friends who say they won't go near a man with hair on his chest-- as though it were indicative of HIV or something.

ME2, I don't know where to start with you.
I don't see eye-to-eye on every sentence Rupp has written, but Christ Almighty have a sense of humour.

Yes, Yammer, I think she did invent many of the terms. That's where the humour comes in.

Good god... the finger-wagging of it all.
You sound like the kind of guys who ran to the woods to bang drums and smell bums in the 80s.

re censoring

Since Shannon can and does write perceptive and interesting articles, describing the one above as "sophomoric" was not in reference to her personally but clearly to the article itself, and was fair comment.

IMO, her effort was on the order of the typical assignment given to the high-schooler who is asked to contrast city living with rural living, a task which is absolutely guaranteed to produce the standard list of tired, overworked cliches and no new information.

That is exactly how I read Shanon's depiction of males as sex-obsessed morons forever pursuing their masturbatory fantasies, with that goal now being actively facilitated by advertising agencies, and worse, with the helpless, innocent female being sucked into the game too.

I had thought the women's movement had grown up, that we'd put all that combative, sexist - and sophomoric - nonsense to bed years ago.

byooty

Some sexists can say whatever turns them on and be published. Clinton's loss has flipped over the rock and the nastier critters are given a moment in the light.
For Angela Merkel, both a notoriously poor dresser and so dowdy she would make our PM look sharp by comparison, I say boo to the writer. Boo to angry sexist 1/2 wits who hinge their frail egos on an old school politico who had little if anything honourable to offer, and boo to sexist twits who fail to recognize that HC lacked the qualities the new age needs to succeed.
Boo to Clinton for being incapable of standing on her own two feet and boo to whoever wrote this bad article, for not respecting the women who succeed, who ignore the prejudices. I love Merkel, wish we could vote for her here, she would be terrific. She is terrific.
She doesn't fit the hatred mill that the author sports, and can hardly be described while coining some icky phallic catch phrase, so gets no mention from the angry lost soul who would vote for her only because she is a female.
Why does the Tyee print that garbage is my question, isn't that close enough to hate mongering to make it a no-go?
Not a beautiful piece of work this. It betrays an ugly mind.

ME2

Exactly.
Bu doesn't the sexist babble betray the work of true feminists? The stereotyping is so backward it hurts to read. Maybe I'll stick to the G&M, where at least the sexism is mostly in the advertising and not in the article.

dtat

While I agree with you that Rupp's allusions were indeed clever (and I'd never, ever accuse her of being stupid), your post sent me back to her column to look for humour.

I didn't get beyond the second paragraph in which was contained the following statement which I think for me coloured all that followed :

"I used to think porn culture's driving ethos -- that women have no purpose but to titillate men -- would fade as the sexist old guys died out."

Sorry, but as one of those "old guys", that stereotype, constantly reinforced by the MSM and the other sexual watchdogs that infest our lives these days, is extremely hurtful and has driven a wedge between the "old guys" and the young.

If the same characterisation had been made of a visible minority, Beers and Co would have deleted it on sight, and I very much doubt the always-PC Rupp would have written it in the first place.

For me, everything that follows afterwards has to be interpreted in the same light, "humour" notwithstanding.

Wow. You guys have totally

Wow. You guys have totally missed the point of the article. The issue is media/marketing saturation with porn and pseudo-porn imagery, and how this is warping our common culture, including our politics. Here's stripped-down (pardon me!) version of the article with its basic argumentation intact (as I see it). There's absolutely nothing sexist about it, and she makes two significant "concessions" to men, acknowledging that our forefathers were clearly motivated by more than looks, and that men today are starting to be subjected to the same porno-marketing pressures that women are:

1. Outside of the mating game, beauty is pretty much useless…The smart ones often play down their looks, noting that the wrong kind of attention isn't just irritating -- it's dangerous.

2. While fashions in ideal weights and adornments change, all humans define beauty the same way: we admire physical qualities that suggest health, fertility, and the ability to survive [these qualities] register on the subconscious of both sexes as good breeding partners, and translate to the conscious mind as "beautiful."

3. Judging by the number of [average-looking women] it appears average looks have done just fine for millennia. For all of us to be here today fretting over how much plastic surgery we need, many an average looking foremother must have caught the attention of our forefathers. So I'm guessing there's more to this mate-attracting thing than arousing every man who walks by?
4. To be fair, I have noticed some reverse sexism and can see that the dehumanizing impact of dominant culture of porn is beginning to affect men. They're being judged by the skin-flick yardstick and find they too are coming up short.

5. I'm no prude -- as the saying goes, I don't care what people do in their bedrooms as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. But our willingness to tolerate relentless pornography and its underlying philosophy is reducing us to little more than actors in a lifelong version of Girls Gone Wild….
6. …leading American pundits as Tucker Carlson and Chris Matthews sharing their views on why Hillary doesn't turn their crank. It's astounding that these [unattractive] men feel free to condemn an accomplished politician, lawyer, and U.S. senator, who is running for president, because they don't consider her a "knockout."

7. Porn has become the marketing world's answer to corn fructose syrup. It's cheap, earns big profits, and some people find it so tasty as to be addictive -- but a little goes a long way…So maybe it's time to start telling industry to stop slipping it into every aspect of life before someone gets hurt.

Beauty

I think that was a really good, if a bit angry, article.

I'm only really concerned with the line, "Outside of the mating game, beauty is pretty much useless." I disagree. Throughout my career, I've watched the beautiful people get promoted over others who are equally or even more qualified. And no, it's not so the randy boss can cheat on his wife and bonk his secretary. I've known happily married men and women who choose the gorgeous ones. These include fabulous-looking people with smoking bodies who are past their 'fertile years.' (And how do you explain couples falling madly and romantically and sexily in love with their 'beautiful' partners over the age of 50, 60, and 70?) I have a beautiful friend who's 60 and 20-year-olds chase her around. And beautiful women like to hire women just like them, so woe is the less attractive woman OR MAN who applies for that job.

I'd like to be absolutely drop dead beautiful to advance my career more than I would wish to be beautiful to attract every man I pass (who gives a s*** about that?!) And that doesn't mean I wouldn't also have a brain. So let's stop that old gorgeous-but-dumb stereotype right there.

Misread

I have to agree with Nightbloom - I didn't think this had anything to do with men and their "sex obsessed" views on women but everything to do with the commodification of looks for both sexes and the effect of pornographic visual representations on mainstream visuals. It's fascinating how people can read the same article and yet understand totally different things.

Change vs tradition

Any concerns about this so-called "commodification of women" by the advertising industry, and all this ranting about porn, have nothing to do with any "degrading" of women and/or forcing them into purely sexual roles.

Rather, it is all about continued enforcment of those same tired old Christian taboos which have long stood squarely in the path of liberating women from traditional stereotypes common to ALL current major religions.

It is little wonder then that because of the internal contradictions between trying to maintain sexual traditions and at the same time trying to free women from them, that we are such a sexually screwed-up society.

May I respectfully suggest to you women's libbers out there that you define your enemies more carefully, and then shit or get off the pot.

ME2, if you're really

ME2, if you're really interested in shattering male stereotypes exploited by paleo-feminists, then I'm surprised you're not on side with the article's main argument.

Let's try it from a different angle: don't you sometimes feel, as a male, just a little bit sexually harassed by the bombardment of flesh in media and marketing? Aren't there days where you just wish you could go about your business without having that big red button in your head pushed over and over again everywhere you look by every company, entrepreneur and carpet-bagger trying to sell you something - be it in the supermarket, on a bus, and even in the workplace?

I know a few recovering jocks who are now fathers to young girls, and they're every bit as appalled as the crustiest feminist at how authentic liberation has been appropriated by the media/marketing "whore culture" of Girls Gone Wild, Paris Hilton, hip-hop and its less hard-core but more pervasive manifestations that have become an acceptable aspect of mainstream society.

And Christian “taboos” have absolutely nothing to do with it, whatever those are. It's about re-establishing social norms in public space that every one can live with.

Nightbloom

No, I don't ever feel "just a little bit sexually harassed by the bombardment of flesh in media and marketing". I do, however, get a little irritated when I see that extra bit of flesh displayed or the suggestive situation portrayed, being the "tease" guaranteed to catch my attention.

I'm not irritated because I've been driven into a state of lust (I haven't), but rather because I've been suckered in again. Advertisers feed on the fact that most people are very concerned with what is, or is not, acceptable in our society, and challenging religious taboos on nudity, for example, is a sure way to catch our attention.

Incidently, Nightbloom, IMO "paleofeminism" is precisely what you advocate, since the notion that men are driven by barely conrollable lust is what that was all about.

For you then, it's obvious that means to control "norms", such as censorship, must be put in place, right?

Funny article. Rupp's wit is

Funny article. Rupp's wit is appreciated by some, and by others it isn't. Fair enough.
I'd just like to add, though, that I don't have a tv so had never seen that Dove commerical. It's awful. When I was 12 I don't think I was even aware that I LOOKED different from my 12 yr old guy friends, ha. I barely ever looked in a mirror. That commercial would have confused me. But then, I wouldn't have been inside watching tv. I would have been outside riding my bike to the boy's house....

feminism and priggishness

All too often it seems to me that feminist critiques are simply a form of puritanism masquerading as intellectual advancement. Indeed, it's often swept under the rug that the galvanizing force for women's suffrage was the teetotal movement, and that was (largely( aimed at men; it wasn't about the vote for its own sake, it was about getting the vote so women could make booze illegal for men (while the men were away in Flanders...).

Anti-porn rhetoric comes off like this a lot; I can't help but wonder about feminist critiques of "pornography" such as the fleshy beauties of Rubens or ancient materials such as the highly-pornographic wall paintings in Pompeii. Pornography, also, isn't just about the objectification of women; men get equal time. The Barberini Faun, for example, is a muscular male, sprawled on his back in a post-coital, or pre-coital state; his penis has been hammered off by dliigent Christians, and no dout (given he was a faun/satyr) it was a doozy; Christians also demolished the huge stone phalli of Delos (the massive testicles remain, with uncomfortably truncated shafts that bring to mind the stories of maenads emasculating sacrificial males).

What the Christian church continued, the cult of Artemis and other female deities had begun. In a religion where it was MEN who were objectified and dehumanized, and viewed only as a way for women to prcreate (and have someone to sacrifice to maintain their power). Strindberg and Robert Graves alike are upfront about this; feminist authors covering the same material extol it as a good thing. So apparently the objectification of men is not a problem; but any perceived objectification of women is the next best thing to rape. Male human sacrifice on the other hand, was a celebration of the power of the Mother Goddess.

cont.

It doesn't matter whether it's Ron Jeremy in-your-face weaponry or Mae West's suggestive lingo, or Rodin's various nudes, or Michaelangelo's David. There's always going to be some prig who wants to either clothe them, or cut their nuts off. Often couching itself, in fact, in the language of "diversity" and "liberation", while actually being very anti-diverse, and intent on limiting the actions and tastes of others. Feminism, when applied (e.g. in institutional policies like those at universities where gender rather than merit has become the equation of hiring/promotion/clout) in this capacity, is no better than sharia or fundamentalist Christianity. And other than the "ack, I can't stand the sight of flesh/beauty/sexuality unless it's in a manner I approve of" tone of Rupp's piece here (what would Dan Savage say in response, I wonder?)

Judging others because they don't think like they do....sorry, Shannon. Beauty may ojnly be skin-deep, but at least you can look at it and not have to bend your brain into a particular intellectualized distortion just in order to tell yourself you don't really have/need those emotions (e.g. appreciation of beauty, which given genetics/evolution is hard-wired, unless you take Genesis literally).

I don't quite agree with ho agathos ho kalos or its corollary ho kalos ho agathos (what is good is beautiful and vice-versa) but I also don't agree with "I think people should despite people who are beuatiful because it offends [/i]me[/i]". I don't care how dressed up in ideologically-driven analysis and "objectivity" you want to shoot for - it all boil down to the Sin of Envy.

Somewhere in the Symposium, maybe in Xenophon's easier-to-read version than in Plato's, Socrates - who claims expertise only the area of erotics, not aesthetics or ethics or anything else - that if you find yourself drawn to someone else more beautiful than you are, then RUN AWAY and NEVER allow yourse4lf to be swept up by that person; you will abase yourself, fawn and subjugate yourself, anything to try and get what you want; better chastity than a life of torment enslaved to a beauty that's not your own.

he was, of course, said to be the ugliest man in Athens. Or rather "the most beautiful of ugly men". But even he knew the reality of beauty, and wasn't prepared to condemn it in the way Rupp has here, or other feminist authors have in their time. Oh right, but he was only male so his opinion doesn't count (even if, by today's standards, he was "gay").

Skookum1, you've obviously

Skookum1, you've obviously given the topic a great deal of thought. Perhaps a worthwhile outlet for your ardour on this issue would be to start an online petition to restore the gonads of the kingly lion at the feet of Queen Victoria's statue on Parliament Hill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Unveiling_statue_of_Queen_in_Ottawa_1901.jpg closeup here: http://www.pbase.com/michaelsv/image/43982530).

Alas, the unfortunate King of Beasts was gelded, his bronze bullocks excised, at the urgent behest of outspoken women who could not bear the unseemly sight of an anatomically correct male specimen, even a non-human one - dangling free, unfettered and low - at the heart of our emasculated democracy...

Cheers ;-)