Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Glamour

Now young women tend to label the topless photos "empowering" and "liberating". A recent survey of 2,000 15-19-year-old girls found that 67% considered "glamour model" their ideal profession. Faced daily with the evidence that women have to be sexually attractive to be considered successful why wouldn't young women choose to make a profession of it?

2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Brendan said...

I'd really love to see the citation of that survey. If it holds up on the face of things it's deeply depressing...or at least that's my initial reaction.

I wonder if, presuming for a moment that the survey is true, that it's read as depressing or tropublesome precisely because it's sexual. Removing the sexual component for a moment, the other attractions of being a model- fame, fortune, public adulation- aren't really all that far removed from those associated with, say, football star. So I wonder whether part of the read on a figure like that is due to lingering discomfort with female sexuality. It's really the same old debate- where does empowerment end and exploitation begin? Can a woman be empowered by something which is commercialized and exploitative? What exactly does "exploitative" mean? It's clear that there's an excessive connection between sexuality and success for women, especially since that definition typically excludes so many women; but I'm not sure that the recognition of that excess has yet led to a fully articulated alternative vision. 

Posted by Brendan

Kameron Hurley said...

Yea, the problem with more-or-less opinion pieces like these is that they never tell you where the hell they're getting all these "studies" and how they were conducted. It makes broad, sweeping statements like that front page news, without anybody doing any homework. 

Posted by Kameron Hurley