UPDATE 2/25: Robin Hanson’s blog offers a defense of the Swimsuit Issue. (Strangely it fails to mention this post although it uses the same “Top 10″ link as below. Maybe Professor Hanson regularly surfs feminist blogs.)
This is a teaching moment for economists — does the relentless marketing of a “swimsuit” young female body type as sex object create a negative externality for women in general? (only economists use the words “externality,” “sex” and ”swimsuit” in the same sentence). I would say yes, Robin apparently says no. I think the explosion of such marketing has been a negative trend since the 1960s, inducing more women to be treated disrespectfully or harassed, partially offsetting other gains in women’s rights. If you believe individual rights are a key to development, then I think this is an important development discussion (in case you were very justifiably wondering?!)
Original post is below:
see lucid discussion Top 10 Ways Sports Illustrated Disrespects Women
a bit more jargon here
comments from my own sources:
“nobody really could have bust measurement that large and a waist size that small”;
“so the ideal is a half-starved 20-year-old Eastern European with implants?”
21 Comments
I heard from somebody working at Sports Illustrated that the Swimsuit issue is bought mostly by women.
That was a pretty lame list from the blog you linked to.
On a side-note, I’ve never understood how playing up the sexuality of women somehow “detracts from their humanity”, as if sexual appeal is somehow “base” and “vulgar”. It’s like the old prudishness wrapped up in new justifications.
The only way I see it as “objectification” is if someone is seeing women as sexual objects at the expense of their other attributes. I don’t believe that this is an automatic thing – that if you are appreciating women for their sexual qualities, that’s somehow detracting from your appreciation of their other attributes.
@Sam Gardener
I have heard the same thing. In my experience, some of the most divisive objectification of women comes from other women. Not enough people realize that it isn’t just an “us” versus “them” it is an us versus ourselves.
I curious what the difference is between appreciating a woman for the curves that she has worked her ass off for hours a day to earn, and for appreciating a man’s ability to bench press 500 pounds or throw a baseball 90 mph.
Male athletes are very much objectified in that magazine. Just in a different way.
What started as a comment, exploded here:
http://blog.sarahdavitt.com/post/3425225314
Thanks for the inspiration, I’d love to hear what Aidwatchers, is doing on this feminist/respect front.
Brett,
It’s not that playing up the sexuality of women detracts from their humanity. I’m pretty sure you’d be hard-pressed to find any feminist who is somehow against appreciating beauty. Rather, it’s that ONLY playing up the sexuality of women detracts from their humanity. Think that’s clearly what’s happening here.
I find it ridiculous to argue that discussing male athletes’ athletic abilities in a sports magazine is objectification on par with that of the swimsuit edition.
Let’s also not forget the increasingly perverse/photoshopped impossibilities implied by our standards of beauty. (This is an asymmetric development. Men do not need to be so much richer/smarter/more handsome/more muscular to be considered attractive.) There’s considerable debate on whether Marilyn Monroe was actually plus-sized, but it’s pretty telling that someone of her proportions today would clearly never be a swimsuit model.
Brett,
Athletes train and condition primarily to perform well, not primarily to look good. Looking good is just a byproduct of their training. Another byproduct is better health (as long as they aren’t taking enhancement drugs). And their muscles make them look strong and powerful.
Most swimsuit models are not athletes. They “train” (i.e. starve) to look good, not to perform well. A possible byproduct is anorexia. And they look vulnerable, weak, and waif-like.
A better model for Sports Illustrated might be ESPN’s Body Issue http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?page=espn-magazine-body-issue-2010 which displays both male and female athletes.
What the hell does this have to do with aid effectiveness? Aid Watchers, I love you, and I beg you to please stick to what you know. This post is an embarrassment to Aid Watchers and lovers thereof. I guess Bill Easterly was on vacation yesterday…
I feel that, at times, feminists like to change what it is that objectification is. Primarily: it’s when men look at perty women and go, mmmm, look at that fine piece of ass.
That’s it. Objectification. Done.
No, not really. I am an avid sports watcher, but I have to admit that at times I have been taken aback at the way people talk about athletes. They make them sound like cattle, or farm animals of some sort. If you’ve ever lived in a city like Baltimore, or Pittsburgh, or Green Bay, you’ll know what I’m talking about. When I was living near Charlotte people looooved Delhomme (the Panthers qb). He was the greatest thing since sliced bread, they had t-shirts, hats, etc. But when he started slipping, people turned on him so fast MY head was spinning. He is a piece of meat made to throw a football so that their football team can win games. Whether or not he’s a good person, whether he likes fishing or philanthropy, these things don’t matter. If his arm isn’t strong enough or accurate enough anymore, he’s garbage and he needs to fall off the face of the earth.
Die hard sports fans will remember the names of their heroes, yes, but they very rarely remember them for anything besides how hard they were able to smash into a wall of other men. They aren’t art lovers, or wine aficionados, or fathers. They’re 6’5, 240 pounds, and they can get that oddly shaped ball into whatever area it’s supposed to be in. People talk about them like they’re overcoming adversity, like there is war, like they’re heroes and whatever else, but at the end of the day no one really gives a rats ass about all that if they aren’t as agile as they used to be.
It’s a different kind of objectification, but it is definitely objectification. Being frustrated with a magazine for objectifying women one issue out of the year when their entire premise is based on it is a bit much.
Matt,
I wish the Sports Illustrated cattle made as much as the cattle on the sports field. They’ll more than likely never come close, unless they marry money.
Nor will the cattle who walk the streets turning tricks.
Nice try, though. Wouldn’t have expected too much different.
Meanwhile, women make 25 percent less than men on average, and the highly aware literati at The New York Review of Books (as one example) has an 80-85 percent male bias of books/reviewers.
Yeah, my heart’s breaking for all those overpaid athletes who must join the ranks of humanity ….. the masses fallen “heros.” However, you’re correct, our culture is based on objectification, and Sports Illustrated simply reflects that skew.
errata: “Sports Illustrated catttle” should read”Sports Illustrated swim suit cattle.”
“I curious what the difference is between appreciating a woman for the curves that she has worked her ass off for hours a day to earn, and for appreciating a man’s ability to bench press 500 pounds or throw a baseball 90 mph.
Male athletes are very much objectified in that magazine. Just in a different way.”
Because the history of male cultural superiority and power has subjugated women through sex and sexual mores for thousands of years.
Prostitution, marriage, lack of access to education, inseminating her and then leaving her with the responsibilities of child care.
Your responses indicate someone who needs to take a course in Women’s Studies, at the very least.
All best.
@Word_Bandit
Nice try, but I’m curious, if we paid women enough to act like cattle… would it be ok for us to treat them like it?
Your argument indicates someone who is too wrapped up in the history of WOMEN in culture and not enough in how society treats PEOPLE. A football player just shot himself in the chest the other day because of brain trauma caused by when he played in the NFL. I have heard analysts say they’ve never met a retired player without problems similar to this.
I suppose that since we pay them enough, however, treating them like animals is ok. I guess you shouldn’t feel bad for them though, the guys in Sports Illustrated are happy to be in the mag. The women are starved and forced into it.
@Matt
@Word_Bandit
Objectification is Profit. Exploitation. My wealth for yours at an unequal exchange.
Profit is bad accounting for wasted wealth.
Men/Nations/Goliath exploited because they were physically dominant.
@Matt
Unfortunately, your assertion about being unsympathetic as a humanitarian is a nice try, but the shrill feminist accusation is a dated.
There are plenty of women who are paid a lot of women to be cattle, and plenty of men who are paid a pittance to serve similar.
The skew of history is still on the side of male superiority, and, to be honest, it’s both surprising and not surprising that you’re asserting thus.
Now, before I take a line of fire that I will later regret, I will agree to disagree with those who still would be well served by a women’s history class.
ah yes, the galling little boy accusation.
Anyway, I at no point said that the history of women wasn’t wrong, bad, sad, upsetting, or in some way not horrible or unfair or unjust.
I said that expecting a magazine which makes all of its money on objectifying men, generally, is probably a poor place to make a stand on objectifying women. Because it is.
I never said anything about objectification being ok. You said, “Yeah, my heart’s breaking for all those overpaid athletes who must join the ranks of humanity.” I guess I misinterpreted your statement as sarcasm, when really you were being serious.
And for the record, I have.
This little boy has other things to do now. Lovely talking to you, though.
@Matt,
Similarly, I never wrote that the history of hermanity wasn’t plagued by man’s inhumanity and exploitation of man.
Another important subtext you overlook in your claimed humanitarian concerns is the race issue (a huge tell in my mind), sports being a further class ransacking based on your stated concerns here, which is another reason I think your original points of “objectification” are steeped in, if you will excuse me, a very myopic paradigm.
Women will react to the swimsuit issue based on the history of women’s exploitation: however, the deeper issue, which you rightly point to, and I wrote as much in my first response to you, which you seemed to ignore in your race to defend your point, is a social structure that exploits gender and race to maintain class.
Most men, I will add as aside, don’t take “Women’s Studies” courses in college: generally speaking, it is a waste of time, they have no interest, and they’ve been socialized to optimize their time to get as far as possible as quickly as possible.
Also, the mode of discourse, for the few who venture into the classroom, doesn’t appeal to them: it isn’t competitive, lacks hierarchical structure, and tends toward exploration instead of intellectual one upmanship. In other words, the very brawn, violence, and objectification you claim to rail against is greatly laid to the side.
Such courses, however, provide valuable context for any discussion of class and humanitarian. There’s a platitude that socialism is if the female paradigm, capitalism a male paradigm. The first being lateral, the latter being hierarchical. By understanding the exploitation of one class of humans, you presumably come understand the larger humanitarian picture.
Again, you would truly be well served by such explorations.
For anyone reading these responses, two sources for issues on race, gender, and class in America would be Cornel West and bell hooks.
Professor West, in my opinion, being a black man who has crossed the class divide without assimilation, and while remaining acutely aware, understands how gender and race stereotypes function to maintain the class structure via “objectification” in America (if that isn’t too obtuse).
bell hooks is another astute writer on these issues, having chosen to work with “less advantaged” students in the university system.
These are off the cuff references that a quick google can at least acquaint people with some more well thought out and adequately expressed ideas on these topics, while not going into excessively philosophical class theories, in my opinion.
Like I said in my last post, I have. I am currently commenting on an international aid blog, not business administration. Maybe social issues are important to me? To assume otherwise just shows your own biases.
Also, I actually had a paragraph discussing race issues in one of my previous posts, but I deleted it because I was trying not to lead the argument off into 15 different directions. I had a very specific point, sports illustrated objectifies men, railing against it for objectifying women in one issue a year is a bit ridiculous. Then you made it sound like objectifying them isn’t that big of a deal. Which I then disagreed with. You’ve accused me of needing to be “educated” with almost no pretext to do so… outside of disagreeing with you. Please reconsider this tactic in the future. It’s offensive and the ad hom attacks do not add to your point.
Let’s assume that the Swimsuit Issue promotes “objectification”. Is this an externality? As far as I know, no. Let’s look at two available definitions:
“[negative externalities] are costs that are infeasible to charge to not provide.”
“[A]n externality (or transaction spillover) is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit.
What is exactly not transmitted through prices here? And, according to whom? As mentioned by other commenters, examples of objectification (next stage in Marxian language: exploitation) abound, and no one calls them externalities. For the simple fact that they are not.
Thank you for touching on social justice issues overall– I agree that all these issues are related and at the very least we should be discussing them (even if people don’t agree with this blog’s views on each issue). I appreciate that you took the time to write this post.
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