Science Fiction Saint

My neice Liz has taken a break from galavanting across the globe to complete some university education. In celebration of IWD I’m posting her charming critical essay for English 302 at the U of Calgary. At the end of the document you can read the two comments that came after the posting if you’re so inclined.

I’ll Have One Woman Please

As the French film director Truffaut once said, “The film director’s task consists of getting pretty women to do pretty things” (Allen). It is apparent that this is also the responsibility of the editor of FHM magazine. Gone are the days of a woman standing in the background, perhaps smoking a cigarette or batting her eyelashes at an arrogant lover. Now the women of FHM must look sexy, covered in paint or wine, baring all, or almost all, for their male reader’s pleasure. The magazine is filled with scantily clad women, their mouths puckered and ready to suck while their eyes stare dreamily out at you from the pages. They are the perfect women; sensuous, enticing and always in their underwear. FHM magazine is a catalogue of women. All that is missing are item numbers. It objectifies and demoralises women, making them seem like nothing more than sex objects. Through it’s representation of the female body as a device and a trophy, it’s preoccupation with the physical assets of a woman and not her skills and in it’s distorted and misogynist perspective of lesbians, this magazine aims to project an image of women as commodities.

Looking at the front cover of the January edition of FHM one can plainly see that this magazine intends to literally paint women as breasts and bare skin and not much else Kristanna Loken, Hollywood’s “action goddess” is naked except for a layer of black paint covering her nipples, as if they need to be hidden while the rest of her body is on display, as if her nipples will be what makes this picture crude or indecent (FHM). One also wonders what kind of action she is capable of in this costume. Is this to be Wonder woman’s new uniform? As you flip through the pages, your eyes are inundated with corporeal images of tits and ass. Good girls, bad girls, skinny girls, perfect girls but rarely an average girl. In fact, one of the few pictures of a woman with a realistic body and more than a bikini on is an advertisement for a Sega video game, yet in this picture the woman has had her face and arm blown off while her severed hand rests on the table in front of her (FHM 59). It is a disturbing image which along with others, signify the synecdochial portrayal of women that is consistent throughout FHM magazine. Other “honeys” are photographed with their bodies in provocative and sexual positions while reporting that underneath the swimsuits and teasing smiles they really are just decent, modest girls (FHM 30). For instance, “Janeen” will “dance for four hours…(and) sweat so much it looks like (she has) been thrown in a pool” while insisting that “family is really important” and that if her parents do not like a guy she is interested in “there’s no point seeing him again” (FHM 30). Or Lauren Harris who while bending over in a black g-string and bra explains that all her friends “are good-looking and wholesome” (FHM 111). Perhaps wholesome has taken on a new meaning. Obviously women are more attractive looking scandalous while embracing virginal morals. The magazine’s Gadgets section displays every man’s “Ultimate Game Room,” with pictures of various games tables, a big screen television and a leggy blonde in a gold bikini and lace up stilettos bent over the billiards table aiming for the balls (FHM 62). She is there to complete the
room, to make it ultimate. She is as, but no more important to the room as the cue sticks and the poker chips; she is there to entertain just as the games are there to entertain. All of these women belong on a bedroom wall or in a basket in the bathroom. They are decoration, commodities and are as replaceable as the batteries in the remote control. They are a blend of fantasy and distorted reality but most of all they are objects, not beings, of desire.

Sarah Burke, a renowned female skier and the “acknowledged queen of female progressive freestyle” is another one of FHM’s January features (Anthony). In her interview this “snow angel” is briefly asked about her most daring tricks and what injuries she has sustained over the years while other questions focus on who stands a chance with her, what she drinks and how much she parties (FHM 83). However, the interview is not what catches your eye, nor does it befittingly describe the abilities of Sarah Burke. The photos of her crawling across the snow in a white bra and panties or holding a pair of skis up to cover her breasts with a quotation above her head that states that “most guys don’t believe that (she is) a skier” (who would in this outfit?) do not
document her expertise in skiing (FHM 86). She is a decorated competitor and “the winner of the Women’s Ski Superpipe with the first 720 landed by a woman in competition” (Anthony). She is not merely the snow bunny that these pictures suggest. Morgan Webb is another highly intelligent woman with an “expertise in Windows, (that would make) Bill Gates gasp” (Askmen). She is FHM’s “Gaming Goddess”, their “all-knowing video game expert” and she too is sitting in a bikini with her chest pushed out, looking inviting and alluring (FHM 78). Both of these women have been displayed for their beauty and not their accomplishments, but as Corey McFadden from Bethlehem, PA put it in his posting on a website created solely for misogynist quotes, “men (or in this case FHM) know what information is important to convey and what is just a waste of time” (Misogynist)

The magazine’s most audacious element is it’s depiction of lesbians. Female homosexuality in FHM is, as Luce Irigaray asserts “recognized only to the extent that it is prostituted to man’s fantasies” (183). The concept of women preferring women over men is non-existent; these women are simply acting out the desires of men. They are the “imitation of male behaviour” (Irigaray 182). FHM’s 2005 best kiss award goes to The OC for it’s celebration of love, “and not just any love-no, the special kind of love that occurs only between two blond, doe-eyed girls entering an experimental stage in their development” (FHM 93). Above this article are pictures of the two “lonely souls” kissing, only there are not just one or two images (FHM 93). Instead we are given play by play shots from each make-out scene. In Kristanna Loken’s interview she admits to being “definitely open-minded about kissing women” as she lasciviously poses and eye-fucks the camera (FHM 125). Wouldn’t the male populous just love to be the woman that she chooses to kiss or at least be able to watch? On another page we find Kara Lee and Jessica who are two best friends that love to hang out, watch television and take soapy baths together. Under headings like “we tussle” and “we molest” the two best friends tantalise the readers with their mock-lesbian behaviour, specifically hitting each other with their boobs or wrestling in Jell-O (FHM 41). As they gaze at us with arms wrapped around each other and Jessica’s finger seductively tugging at Kara Lee’s bathing suit in the tub, it is obvious to any critically thinking woman and I dare say man that they are simply acting out a desired role, a role that “is imposed on” them by male delusion (Irigaray 182). Would this lesbian fallacy exist if Jessica and Kara Lee were butch dykes or even ordinary dykes? Of course not, there is a strict criterion for lesbian behaviour and it must be followed. Men only want certain women interacting with each other and these women must not resemble a lesbian, instead they must “keep intact the circulation of pretence by enveloping (themselves) in femininity” (Irigaray 182). Nothing of these characterisations of lesbians is any more authentic than any other image in the magazine.

Of course, questions arise due to these misrepresentations. For instance, what affect does this have on women? Women whose partners ogle the pages of this magazine but then fail to look at them in the same way or on little girls whose fathers peruse these pages, knowingly or unintentionally paving the way for the self-esteem and self-worth problems that are a result of this misogynist portrayal of females. I fear that the damage is great, that women, young women especially, believe that this is what men want and that this is what they should strive to become. “Women are…expected to identify…with a masculine experience and perspective, which is presented as a human one. Since they have no faith in the validity of their own perceptions and experiences…can we wonder that women…are so often timid, cautious and insecure” (Showalter). This magazine alludes to “women exist(ing) only as an occasion for mediation, transaction, transition, transference, between man and his fellow man, indeed between man and himself” (Irigaray 182). The notion of Woman as life giver, nurturer and even human being is immaterial. She is instead seen as a convenience, something to be “consumed and invaded and spat out” (Hunter). Is this the example we want to set for the women and men of today and the girls and boys that are growing up surrounded by these illusions? As Dolly Parton once said, “I hope that people realise that there is a brain underneath the hair and a heart underneath the boobs.”

COMMENT
Author : boris_yeltsin
E-mail : boris_yeltsin123@yahoo.com
URI : http://talesfromasmalltown.blogspot.com

Interesting. How is it that these women who pose for FHM are being coerced into anything?

Isn’t all photography art? Isn’t all art subject to the tastes of the person who created it? If the visions of the creator of the art, are to be seen as coersion by the people who’re being paid to represent that art, then where exactly do we draw the line on that logic?

How do you know that women who’re posing, aren’t having a good time while getting paid big bucks? Can you definitavely crawl inside their heads and see that they’re somehow unhappy?

What about other people who’re unhappy with what they’re getting paid to do? Should they feel that their occupations are coersion?

Should all art fall under the supervision of English departments who all have a strong alpha-female leadership role?

Should we look to you to determine for us, what we should appreciate, and what we shouldn’t? I’m just wondering.

RESPONSE
Author : the writer of the essay
E-mail : somebodybutteredbetty@gmail.com

should all art fall the supervision of the “woman-run English departments”? and aren’t the models smiling and enjoying their life in the lights? I’m sure the models are happy, in a shallow, skin-deep manner. They are getting paid big bucks, they are getting pampered and primmed and ready to show all us women what beauty truly is. But are they really happy? Can you tell? Can you prove that they don’t feel like sex objects, sex objects that take the cheque because they have been conditioned to believe that beauty is everything. EVERYTHING. However, let us forget about those lost souls. What about the burgeoning female youth that starve themselves and punish themselves to become what they never will be….perfect, what about the girl who sticks her head in the toilet to expell everything that is her but isn’t her, because at the end of the day she is not the model that she sees posing in these masogynistic images. What about the fact that it is only the male that gets
fulfilled by these images while the young girls, and women mind you, are sent hell bent on some body improvement scheme, even though it might mean the risk of their health. And all on this quest to become perfect for imperfect man. You see, women don’t qualify you on your loss of hair or your beer belly. In fact, we embrace you for those qualities. Perhaps it is time that you see that this “art” as detrimental to the females that the future male population hopes to procreate with. Whether sluts or mothers we are here to stay and deserve a proper representation. As for the English departments, it seems to me that the faculties that promote the most freedom of speech are the ones that receive the most complaint. It was your patriarical society that forced us into this profession. Don’t insult us because we are good at it.