Stockholm syndrome in cultural consumption
(In which the Scrivener once more lays herself bare* to charges of prudery. And possibly racism.)
Daring to question Page 3, Kira Cochrane writes:
A recent survey of 2,000 15-19-year-old girls found that 67% considered "glamour model" their ideal profession... With the proliferation of these images, is it any surprise that young women have further embraced it?
Warning: this next bit is quite upsetting.
In 2002 I read a report (in SA's Weekly Mail & Guardian) that researchers had found young girls in the townships were more likely than not to describe gang rape as "cool". Now, I've written before about the harrowing stats on rape in SA. If you're living in the township, you're pretty much going to get raped, sooner or later. And it's three times as likely to be gang rape as a solo attacker.
And, oh yes, it's pretty certain that your brother, your boyfriend, and all your male friends are out there doing the raping. Because this is what they do. The term "traumatised society" has become quite the South African cliche, but that's what it is. Things got fucked up. And this is one of the ways in which it's playing out.
So the victims themselves have come round to thinking that yes, gang rape is a cool thing for boys to do (I don't recall whether the researchers were brazen enough to ask if they thought it was cool to be raped, too), because how else can you cope with that reality?
Now, I'm not trying to compare being exposed to tacky topless photos with rape. That's one accusation I'd really rather not face. But there's a certain echo there, not so? Everybody's doing it, your dad loves the Sun, so it must be okay. Why not join in?
_____
* As it were.
14 comments:
My Dad doesn't read the Sun. I was about 11 or 12 when I saw my first Page 3 girl and I was horrified - I didn't know where to look.
I'd also really like toknow where they got the 67% figure from - what were the other career options I wonder....
I don't think it's an issue of racism or prudery, Scroob; there's a disturbing trendy towards 'sluttishness as the new cool' going on, too - a few examples: young Aussie women (and when I say women, I sadly also mean girls from 10 upwards) getting about in as little as possible in my local capital city on a Friday night, the acceptance and wearing of playboy-bunny logo everything to signal that you're 'up for fun', women and girls generally objectifying themselves.
I have no problem with women (me included!) identifying as sexual beings and embracing their sexuality and sensuality, but there's a difference between that and making oneself into an object by participating in chauvinism. I'd say the 'glamour models' and the 'cool rape' phenomena fall into the latter category, wouldn't you?
Ariel Levy takes a good look at the 'slut as cool' idea in her new book 'Female Chauvinist Pigs'. I have to say that I expected a self-righteous radical feminist rant when I picked it up, but after reading it, it sounds to me like she has her head on straight.
As you said, the lines are blurry. Even blogger is questionable: my word verification is 'kucfr'.
"young girls in the townships were more likely than not to describe gang rape as "cool".
I bet none of them had been gang raped though.
Loved Purple Owl's comment. Big amen from me.
There is a load of research out there equating porn and rape. Even "soft" porn desensitizes people to the issue. Yet we continue to present the women in the porn and glamour industry as ideals for young women. So why do we act surprised that they then become more acepting of rape?
I work with an illness that makes it very difficult to gain weight. But being underweight worsens the illness. However, one of our main problems is that teen girls quit treatment because they get so reinforced for being thin that they don't care that they'll die.
They may not think gang rape is cool, but one way or the other, our culture of glamour is killing their will to survive. It's killing us all, whether we choose to accept that or not.
Yes, Prowl hits it on the head - the problem is participating. But to what extent is that voluntary, and to what extent is it forced?
Anaglyph, almost all of them had, that's the point. It's about having to change your feelings about what you experience because of what you're made to think is acceptable. Like, they raped me/my friend/my sister/my mother, but that's just what guys do, so I have to put up with it... and it can't be a bad thing, really, right? Or on a quite different level: there's a naked lady in the paper, I don't know where to look (quite, Spinsterella), but hang on, everyone else seems to think it's cool so I must be the one with the problem.
Glo, I know. Thinness is the ultimate good. And standards of glamour are getting more and more demanding. And questioning it in any way is getting less and less acceptable. Heavens, you wouldn't want to be a feminist prude, now would you?
I like prudes. Even prude jui-- wait...
:-P
Sorry. This *is* serious I know. Another place where it's All Wrong and largely unchecked is music, particularly some of the (for lack of a better term) rap variants. I've had the misfortune to hear some incredibly graphic "lyrics" - the message being hammered? Women exist to satisfy men's sexual desires. Violence and brutality aren't issues, they're either enhancements or simply coincidental.
Even if I weren't a father of daughters I'd recognize it as wrong. If that's freedom of speech then I guess I'm not for it, at least not "speech" in those forms. *steps down*
Now where's that prune juice...
Count me in as a prude.
And I agree with Glo on the thinness issue. I get awfully sick of people telling me what a shame it is that I don't have a figure like my sister's. She's a chemo patient with breast implants. (I'm 5'9" and 135 pounds, but apparently that isn't good enough.)
The fact that we can't talk about these issues is one reason i claim feminism is well and truly dead. When did we get silenced? And why aren't we screaming about it?
We have a right to protect ourselves, our bodies, and our psyches! Who labeled it "prudish"? It was brilliant. You shut up an entire group of repressed persons with one single label. Bravo.
Anne, I'm completely shocked that anyone has the cheek (not to mention the stupidity) to say that. How is anyone, much less a teenager, supposed to have a healthy body image when that attitude is so prevalent?
But Glo, feminism will never die. And we are talking about it. There's a huge, wonderfully articulate and lively section of the blogosphere devoted to talking about these things, as I'm discovering to my delight. (Side effect: more rants on the Scrivenings, fewer jokes. Sorry... but this stuff is, to me, more interesting.)
Thank you all very much for joining in this conversation. We need to talk about these issues some more, if only so that saying "I have a problem with this" doesn't automatically make me (or, say, a teenage girl, who's trying to sort out what she believes and wants) feel like a prude.
Bleah. The spanky new blogger interface with the typing of warped gibberish, just hates me. It's taken me all day to post this. Discrimination against non-Bloggers!
I like Glo's points, but I'm not sure feminism is dead, per se - I suspect the current women-as-sluts thing is actually post-feminist backlash, in the sense that feminism did achieve something, and jolly old patriarchalist society is trying desperately to recoup its losses by a neat outflanking movement. (And other militaristic terminology). It's a fairly classic thing, to undermine resistance by re-defining its achievements as failures. ("Feminism hasn't empowered women, it's made them less sexy"). The problem is that female self-image is horribly bound up with the male gaze - we haven't yet really invented strong, symbolic ways for seeing ourselves as glamorous and attractive that are not reliant on male response. When we do, patriarchy is lost ;>.
Not discrimination against non-Bloggers, but discrimination against spammers. Your livejournal makes me do the same thing on occasion. It is a pain though, I know.
But yes, how to reclaim self-image from male-defined ideas of sexiness? Iz problem.
I think the stat about girls wanting to be models is just another facet of the dumbing down of society in general. Teenage girls aspire to being models, and teenage boys aspire to being footballers. Or, both aspire to being thespians. It's where influence and contacts and wealth are lavished on you without actually requiring much in the way of work, intellect or discipline.
Thespians? pshaw! they don't aspire to be thespians, which suggests a solid awareness of acting as craft, Royal Academy style. They aspire to be film stars, i.e. media personalities, which means they have all the influence etc. as bumpy suggests, but don't actually need the personality.
But I still think the image to which women aspire is qualitatively different to the male image. Unlike male footballers, a model's only power is to attract male attention, which basically means it's the male attention which actually has the power. Footballers at least have skill. Models simply pout.
(and, scroob, posting prob. seems to be sorted. The new format needed a cookie. I have given it cookies. It seems happy ;>. The only problem now is whether I can accurately type the warped text after an evening drinking with jo&stv.)
Yeah, cookies generally make me happy, too. I am still puzzled by this "new format" whereof you speak, but hey, as long as it's working.
Bumpy, as extemp so elegantly argues, there's a very particular difference between aspiring to being a model (especially a "glamour" model) vs a footballer. But I have to say I'm still far too sceptical of where they got their sample to argue too much about that little factoid. Anyhoo, good to see you turn up here, wilkommen!
Post a Comment