Your thoughts...?

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Registered: 11-30-2006
Your thoughts...?
22
Sat, 06-30-2007 - 10:54pm

How do you feel about men in recent years using the word "hot" to describe women in public?

I find it distasteful. People dont realize it but it actually degrades a woman publicly. It actually strips her of her femininity and categorizes her in a way that you could just visualize her with her strip club pole in her living room. It demeans a woman and assumes superiority of the male who bestows her with that title. He is letting her know where she places in the pecking order of life.

Years ago, I used to hear men use that word with women they didn't even know in bars as last call was being taken. I also used to hear men use that word when a guy was making it clear that she was the night's entertainment for them, like "hey babe - you're hot." Yeah, so is a pot of boiling oil - stick your d#ck in that.

If a man wants to use that phrase with with a woman he knows it best be used in the bedroom - it is one of those words. I see people on tv using it with their guests on their shows and it amazes me that no one sees how they just got insulted on public tv - instead they are grinning from ear to ear happy to be given a backhanded compliment - being knocked down to a thing instead of a person - a toy. How can these women not realize they are being insulted? I guess because it is done with a smile and wink - and lord knows many people need that attention even if it means nothing.

If a guy expected to pick me up using that word I would suggest to him that an inflatable doll would do the trick.

When a woman uses that word about a man there is almost a hero worship in her tone - not when spoken by a man. I dont know why but it doesn't sound the same.

I know I'm older than many of you, but if a guy I was dating described me in public that way, I'd be pissed. If I heard him use that word to describe another woman in public, I'd be pissed. That would be same as telling his wife that he would like to screw that woman.."and you wouldn't mind, right darling"? And if she says something about - he'll tell her that she is too sensitive or insecure or jealous...all the ways men have successfully trained women to eat dirt in the last decade. My motto: "see ya".

i dont know how the wives of men today tolerate their husbands or SO going on tv and talking about how hot another woman is or how they would like to boink them. I would feel mortified and publicly humiliated. I know men sometimes learn best when the shoe is on the other foot. I guarantee you that no man worth his salt would tolerate his wife yammering about how hot Matthew McConaghy (?) is. And if the topic of the day was migranes and orgasms a real man would not tolerate his wife then saying "Where is Matthew McConaughy, I need to get laid because when I frequently orgasm my migranes go away." Those jokes are not funny for a man or a woman. If you need to disgrace your SO for a ratings boost or because someone needs to look cool...then step all over someone else's feelings, not mine and she can have you.

Today many women dont ask for anything from a man in terms of respect, compassion, admiration or dignity - so many are just pleased that a man gives them a call and a squeeze. Women dont expect to get calls from men indicating if they plan on seeing them or any kind of real date - expectations are at an all time low - which is a field day for men.

i know that the society "does what its told" these days and no one questions authority but men have brainwashed or convinced women to accept treatment that is unbelievably degrading. Just look at today's fashion: pregnancy type smocks or tops with flip flops (barefoot and pregnant) or shoes with arches so steep that we'll develop fallen arches or hammer toes from being wedged downward.

Here's what I think about a society that has no mind of its own anymore (from the song, "Say I"): "The spirit is so lifeless with no spirit in your soul. Like children with no vision do exactly what they're told. Being led into the desert. For your strength will surely fade. Who is to blame? We'll surely melt in the rain. Say I." Perfect depiction of today's world.

Look at the size of breast implants - to the point of freakish (huge breasts dont equal attractive to me) and done in a way that will stretch out their skin - again - incurring damage to please some man. For men bigger is better - okay then they wont mind if I suggest that they get a penal implant because to me - size matters.

Somehow men have convinced women to lower themselves or damage themselves just to get a guy and twist degrading behavior around so that the "Girls Gone Wild" women think that they are cool, fun and wild - when they are completely the opposite. You can be fun, wild, sexy and cool without installing a pole in your home or degrading yourself. For some reason women have forgotten how to do it.

Sure...I enjoy looking at the gorgeous men used in tv commercials, movies, shows and magazine ads. And if I called one of them hot to his face, he'd take it as a compliment because the rules of engagment are different for men. A man can walk around in his jockeys and not worry about inciting women to attack him and being told he asked for it.

As far as porn goes - some videos can be used to enhance sex or sexual play between partners, but it is difficult to find videos that a straight woman would enjoy. Porn magazines: if a guy wants his Playboy then I hope he doesn't mind my Playgirl. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Luckily, I have not experienced what so many women have experienced with men being addicted to internet porn or any kind of porn. No man I have dated or slept with has ever had a stack of porn magazines lining his coffee table and...they did not frequent strip clubs. That doesn't mean we didn't watch porn. If a stack of porn is what a man values over a live woman...the magazines can have him. I'm outta there. If another woman manages to get a guy I'm dating to cheat in any way...I'm outta there..she can have the s.o.b. I dont beg a man for anything like that - there will always be another man out who will want me. I wish other women felt this way.

Oh, and if a man wants to sleep after sex, please do, because I want to, as well. Contrary to what men think, not all women like talking after sex.




Edited 7/1/2007 12:12 am ET by snafu2006
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-03-2007 - 2:08am

Quite an interesting post. Glad you got on that soapbox, Snafu.

I, too, am an "older" lady, but I am dating a 42 year old man. He is more of my generation and mores than those in their 20's. We do, however, frequent some downtown clubs and restaurants where the younger set hang out a lot and we have had plenty of occasions to observe them in action. I am referring to men and women in their 20's.

My guy will observe these provocatively, scantily clad women and he will look because they are putting it all out there, as will I, because we are people-watchers and not prudes, by any means. I dress in a young style, but with taste and dignity. And my BF has occasionally in private commented on someone we see in public or on tv as being "hot." I have often wondered what he means precisely by "hot", and I plan to ask him. But he has told me once it was a mixture of humor, brains, and a classy bearing in a woman, in addition to an attractive body. I gave him an A+ for that answer!

I have noticed all the older guys at these clubs gawking at these young women and their antics, I was happily surprised to hear my guy ask the other day, "Why do they all want to act like pole dancers and strippers when they dance?" He clearly did not understand why they would demean themselves in that way. They simulate sex acts on the dance floor, cling to men and chase them around, and mug for pictures with their girlfriends with their tongues sticking out. I asked my BF what he thought about the tongue shots, and he said he thought it was unattractive. I was a bit surprised because he always watches it.

So, young women, if you aspire to be a "lady" with all the honor and perks that title bestows (and I do not mean in an old-fashioned sense, but in a modern way), rest assured that there are wonderful guys out there who do not think wearing street walking clothes, doing suggestive pole-dance gyrations, and sticking out your tongue like a three-year-old is attractive. Sure, they will look, just like they will look at a train wreck, but you won't be the ones they take home. Not the quality guys. End of rant.

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Registered: 11-30-2006
Tue, 07-03-2007 - 7:29pm

Interesting info - I have always known "hot" to mean someone who a guy would like to screw and makes it blatant in a crass way. Your BF's definition is what they want us to feel about the word and I dont buy it. Now, I'm sure he had you in mind when he told you that so I do give him an A for effort. But again, I dont buy his definition. Now a guy could feel the same way about a woman he called "attractive", but "hot" really shoves it in your face with no mystery about it.

Oh, I disagree - men will definitely take home the hot women and screw them. Since society ( basically men ) has being trying to make that word more socially acceptable (just look at the media and how they continuously work it), along with the label that is associated with it, women have been bending over backwards to keep up with the changes. It's almost like women have become the little dogs in the circus who will jump through all the hoops to snag a scooby snack. Instead of pushing back a little, they will wag their tongues (which I feel is most unattractive on a woman) just like the little dogs to get a pat on the head for approval. Instead of becoming more confident and in control of their lives women are heading in the opposite direction.




Edited 7/3/2007 7:31 pm ET by snafu2006
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Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-03-2007 - 10:53pm

Snafu, I think you are right. So, "hot" implies just plainly, "I would like to screw that"? Wow, how demeaning. Worse than I thought. Quite direct. Well, in defense of my boyfriend, he does like brainy-looking women like Jenny McCarthy, and he has called her hot. So, he is probably mostly attracted to a bit older, smarter, accomplished, beautiful woman. (Me! Right. LOL) BUT I think you are right in that he probably has another, more direct definition of "hot", which implies a sexual act, that he was too polite to tell me. I guess most guys do. What has the world come to?

And you are also right that the drunk, gyrating women do frequently get taken home with someone, but you will notice I used the word "quality" guys. MY GUY would not do that, although he will look. If he really wanted to do that, and he was unattached, he would just go pay a "dancer" for a certain amount of time, and walk away with no strings attached.

Why would a woman give up all her control and practically beg for someone to notice her and "do" her in a one-night stand or be passed around from guy to guy? Women, we have so much more power over ourselves and our bodies than that! Maybe we need to revisit the Women's Lib movement a bit.

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Registered: 11-30-2006
Tue, 07-03-2007 - 11:48pm

"brainy-looking women like Jenny McCarthy" ---> how do you figure brainy looking? I havent enjoyed her style of comedy but that doesn't mean she is not funny to someone. However, she has a shrill of a voice and that will probably keep me from watching anything she is in for a long time.

"If he really wanted to do that, and he was unattached, he would just go pay a "dancer" for a certain amount of time, and walk away with no strings attached." ---> and you are okay with that? I wouldn't be okay with that - that's cheating and prostitution. Where is the religious right on this issue? probably getting lap dances, hehe.

The word "hot" has many meanings to many people. the problem is that women are brainwashed into believing that what is demeaning is not demeaning...but maybe "cool". So society (which is run by males) turns everything we have ever known upside down to confuse and reassociate different words to us. The problem is that I am get the feeling that I am from a different time and place where no one ever used the word "hot" unless it involved tempoerature or was spoken between two intimates.

The problem is that people go on tv talking aoubt how hot someone is like as though they screwed her last night when they dont even know her. "Hot" is not a word a mayor should use about a governor. That is not professionally appropriate. I'm sure it was done purposely to illustrate that no matter how high on the food chain a woman climbs, some a$$ will make sure she understands that she can be brought down in a minute by deeming her hot. So now weforget all the work she has done over the years as a public servant and just focus on her t!ts and a$$. It is being used to make sure no one ever takes any of us seriously and that includes accomplishments, fears, safety, respect, etc. Am I getting my point across? I hope so. Men are making sure we dont think too highly of ourselves and men that who refer publicly to women that way have no place in my world, because he'll bring me down the same way.




Edited 7/3/2007 11:52 pm ET by snafu2006
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Registered: 10-14-1999
Wed, 07-04-2007 - 9:42am

I get the points you are making - but my take on it is simply saying something about me doesn't make it true and doesn't demean me unless I allow it to. I know who I am and what I am and am not. Nothing anyone says will change that. I do agree that far too many women do accept labels that they aren't comfortable with just to get or keep a man's attention. But there is equal responsibility here - first from the unenlightened man speaking in demeaning ways and the woman who chooses to tolerate it and act in ways that are also demeaning.

Pwople will treat you at the level of respect you require - which is usually the level of respect you have for yourself - and its is clearly visible in the rather sad actions many women and girls engage in and perform. I think the way to change this is one woman or girl at a time - teach them to love and cherish themselves and they are less likely to demean themselves and allow others to do it.

I remember an interview with Dolly Parton a number of years back - she was asked how she felt about being called a dumb blonde bimbo - she simply laughed and said (something like) "That's ok - I know I'm not dumb, or blonde or a bimbo!" I thought - you go - what a better way to shut up a critic than with laughter and self confidence.

Toni

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Registered: 11-30-2006
Wed, 07-04-2007 - 10:42am

I agree with a lot of what you posted.

"I do agree that far too many women do accept labels that they aren't comfortable with just to get or keep a man's attention." --> the scary part is that half of the time women accept these labels, not so much to keep a guy's attention, but because their minds have been twisted around to see those labels as cool, hip and modern. No one is noticing that everything is a$$backwards. Women dont even notice that the shoes they are wearing have arches too far back and will flatten their feet. I was in a store trying on shoes and another woman had the same pair of shoes in her hand and I asked her if she noticed that the arch was too far back, putting pressure towards her heel and she said she didn't even notice.

"But there is equal responsibility here - first from the unenlightened man speaking in demeaning ways and the woman who chooses to tolerate it and act in ways that are also demeaning." ---> very true. That is why the slow rise out of this muck will be twice as difficult.

"I think the way to change this is one woman or girl at a time - teach them to love and cherish themselves and they are less likely to demean themselves and allow others to do it." --> I hope it works.

I was working out one day at a gym and some guy starting talking to me about being "dewy" and it took everything I had to not clock him in the face with my dumbbell - that's "hot" for you. Men are expecting women to be "hot" - ready, willing and able to have sex with them at the drop of a hat - like a prostitute. So, if you are not "dewy" you will need lube and start your masturbation before they get home so you can be "hot" (that is the real definition) for your man. Men dont want to engage in foreplay anymore because it takes too long and prostitutes dont require that - they have their lube and the dancers down the street will rub up against you for $400 in a private room - why bother trying to please the missus?

"but my take on it is simply saying something about me doesn't make it true and doesn't demean me unless I allow it to." --> that's fine for an adult's personal life, but something does need to shift in media and entertainment so that young girls dont desensitize that concept to be benign. Somehting bigger needs to happen.


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Registered: 10-14-1999
Wed, 07-04-2007 - 12:45pm

"but my take on it is simply saying something about me doesn't make it true and doesn't demean me unless I allow it to." --> that's fine for an adult's personal life, but something does need to shift in media and entertainment so that young girls dont desensitize that concept to be benign. Somehting bigger needs to happen.

Agreed - which is something I feel strongly about doing with the women and girls in my life. And I'm working on developing that avenue as my life passion. Sad but true, that insecure and unenlightened people raise up even more insecure and unelightened people.

It on those who have learned in the trenches to help guide and teach others by words and deeds, that there is another choice to make - of self love and self respect.

It is an uphill battle, but not one to give up on.

regards,
Toni

Toni

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Registered: 11-30-2006
Wed, 07-04-2007 - 4:05pm
"Agreed - which is something I feel strongly about doing with the women and girls in my life. And I'm working on developing that avenue as my life passion." --> how nice, you have a life passion. That's more than most people can say. Good luck with it.
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Registered: 11-30-2006
Wed, 07-04-2007 - 4:31pm

"Publisher Comments:
Meet the Female Chauvinist Pig — the new brand of "empowered woman" who wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, bares all for Girls Gone Wild, pursues casual sex as if it were a sport, and embraces "raunch culture" wherever she finds it. If male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women — and of themselves. They think they're being brave, they think they're being funny, but in Female Chauvinist Pigs, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy asks if the joke is on them.

In her quest to uncover why this is happening, Levy interviews college women who flash for the cameras on spring break and teens raised on Paris Hilton and breast implants. She examines a culture in which every music video seems to feature a stripper on a pole, the memoirs of porn stars are climbing the best-seller lists, Olympic athletes parade their Brazilian bikini waxes in the pages of Playboy, and thongs are marketed to prepubescent girls. Levy meets the high-powered women who create raunch culture — the new oinking women warriors of the corporate and entertainment worlds who eagerly defend their efforts to be "one of the guys." And she traces the history of this trend back to conflicts between the women's movement and the sexual revolution long left unresolved.

In the tradition of Susan Faludi's Backlash and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, Levy pulls apart the myth of the Female Chauvinist Pig and argues that what has come to pass for liberating rebellion is actually a kind of limiting conformity. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, Female Chauvinist Pigs makes the case that the rise of raunch does not represent how far women have come, it only proves how far they have left to go."

Here is a book review from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/books/review/18egan.html?ei=5070&en=700599145108917a&ex=1183694400&pagewanted=print

September 18, 2005
'Female Chauvinist Pigs': Girls Gone Wild
By JENNIFER EGAN
"Reading "Female Chauvinist Pigs," Ariel Levy's lively polemic, gave me an epiphany of sorts. Finally, a coherent interpretation of an array of phenomena I'd puzzled over in recent years: the way Paris Hilton's leaked sex tapes seemed only to enhance her career; the horrifying popularity of vaginoplasty, a surgical procedure designed to make female genitalia more sightly; and a spate of mainstream books about stripping and other sex work, some reviewed in these pages. Levy has a theory that makes sense of all this. Our popular culture, she argues, has embraced a model of female sexuality that comes straight from pornography and strip clubs, in which the woman's job is to excite and titillate - to perform for men. According to Levy, women have bought into this by altering their bodies surgically and cosmetically, and - more insidiously - by confusing sexual power with power, so that embracing this caricaturish form of sexuality becomes, in their minds, a perverse kind of feminism.

Levy's evidence is unsettling: that a number of female Olympic athletes saw fit to pose nude for Playboy before the 2004 games in Athens, for instance, or that Crunch gyms in several American cities offer "Cardio Striptease" classes, where women work out in bras and thongs. Much of the reporting is Levy's own (she writes for New York magazine), and her forays into a "Girls Gone Wild" shoot, several parties hosted by the neo-feminist group Cake, the lesbian subculture of New York and San Francisco, and the private lives of sexually active teenagers make for smart, acerbic reading. She finds a similar geometry in all of the worlds she visits. Women are preoccupied with a "girly-girl" aesthetic originating with strippers and porn stars, but they tend to view these images from a crude, objectifying perspective that has traditionally been male. In the lesbian communities she visits, "bois," many of whom have had "top surgery" to remove their breasts, say things like, "Some of these chicks, it's like you top them once and then they're all up in your face." A female publishing executive boasts of having the largest example of male anatomy in her office. At the Cake parties, promoted by their organizers as "feminism in action," female audience members coolly assess the breast size of women simulating sex onstage.

Levy makes her most daring leap when she likens this reductive female sexuality and its correlative chauvinism to the coping strategies of two of the black characters

in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin": Tom, who tries to fulfill his oppressors' every expectation, and George Harris, who is light-skinned enough to pass for white. In both cases, she writes, a subordinate group embraces stereotypes as a way to gain the dominant group's acceptance. A Female Chauvinist Pig deals with her femaleness by "either acting like a cartoon man - who drools over strippers . . . - or acting like a cartoon woman, who has big cartoon breasts, wears little cartoon outfits and can only express her sexuality by spinning around a pole."

Levy's argument is provocative - and persuasive - as far as it goes. But how far is that? She writes only about people and incidents that illustrate her theory; she doesn't discuss a single pop star or public figure who has escaped the reductive dichotomy of female behavior she describes. In writing about teenagers, Levy describes an alarming world in which young girls routinely lap dance for boys at school dances, perform oral sex on them without reciprocation and make out with each other in front of them, all for the ego boost of male excitement and the notoriety that follows. Levy says she spoke with 50 young people between the ages of 12 and 18, some of whom she quotes, but she doesn't explain how she arrived at this sample or how representative it is of American culture as a whole. Similarly, in the final pages she speaks at length with three sexually aggressive adult women whose descriptions of sex "sounded less than smoldering," and uses them to bolster her argument that female sexual desire is being ignored. Fair enough, but these are three people. Surely Levy must have encountered a few sexually aggressive women who did enjoy sex, but she doesn't mention them, and the anecdotal one-sidedness of her reporting hurts her argument.

Still, as a consciousness-raising call to arms, "Female Chauvinist Pigs" is clearly to the good. And it raises a question that reaches far beyond the faddish popularity of the sex industry. Levy never mentions John Berger, but at times her book strongly echoes his "Ways of Seeing." Berger wrote: "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. . . . The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object." "Ways of Seeing" was published in 1972, and Berger's theory of female objectification hinged on women's historical lack of real-world power or independence: "Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated." But things have changed a lot since 1972. Many women can buy their own plane tickets and pay their own rent. They can treat themselves. Why, then, do they persist in watching themselves through male eyes?

Jennifer Egan's new novel, "The Keep," will be published next year."

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 07-04-2007 - 9:30pm

Snafu, you have hit on what I was trying to say about Jenny McCarthy. I am not familiar at all with her, but she doesn't have the "classic" beauty I would think my guy would rank as No. 1 as his favorite movie star. She is not very attractive to me. So, even though I am unaware of her brand of humor, I was pretty pleased that he chose to like her because of something other than her body, not that he is obsessed or anything.

And yes, I would not tolerate for a moment my BF going to a strip joint. I said if he was "unattached", meaning not with me. But I do find that type of activity less than pleasing in anyone, as it objectifies women. I am also aware that so very, very many men partake of it on occasion, as I am aware that many women choose to "sell" themselves this way.

I am glad that I have raised two daughters whose self-worth is based in their accomplishments and careers and sense of ethics, et cet. I think perhaps we women of the feminist era have let our daughters down at times by allowing them to believe that liberation is giving your body away in a demeaning way, doing shocking things, being someone else's stereotype, and not understanding your own sensuality and power.

Some of these things just naturally come with age and maturity, but I also can't help but believe that the younger generation is really missing the boat by thinking that power-self actualization- self-confidence - fun - liberation is the same thing as mindlessly flaunting skin for some half-envisioned, temporary, external gain. At least, the women who sell their bodies in the strip joints have a set price and a clear expectation of what they will gain by what they are doing with their bodies.