![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/80\/2014\/06\/rs_1024x759-140622175100-1024.CR7-2-jmd-062214_copy.jpg\" "\\"...Ronaldo,")
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Amanda Hess\u2019 article for Slate, \u201cWhy it\u2019s great to objectify World Cup players,\u201d<\/a> is wonderful. In it, she argues that the hyperbolic and often hilarious \u201csexual gaze\u201d at soccer players from Jezebel-esque journalists is calling out and offering a counter-balance to the over-sexualization of female athletes.<\/p>\n \u201cThese days, clicking through\u00a0a slideshow\u00a0of the world\u2019s hottest female soccer players makes you look like a bit of a creep. But admiring the abdominals of male footballers? That just means you have a pulse.\u201d Because \u201ceven when\u00a0Sports Illustrated<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t putting actual swimsuit models on its cover, it\u00a0treats female athletes like they\u2019re models, often photographing them in sensual poses and dressing them in revealing clothing instead of snapping them in the action poses typical of male athletes.\u201d But this \u201cnew\u201d ogling is\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026a radical re-imagining of a spectacle that\u2019s been controlled by straight male viewers for far too long. When female and gay gazes are applied to the soccer pitch, the results are fun, goofy, and even campy.\u00a0After every match,\u00a0Jezebel\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0BuzzFeed<\/em>\u00a0compete to pun faster and harder on\u00a0sweating\u00a0and\u00a0stretching. And\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s Simon Doonan has\u00a0elevated\u00a0the ogling into an art form. \u00a0\u201cBrazilian David Luiz\u00a0is the preeminent pre-Raphaelite beauty of the global soccer scene,\u201d Doonan wrote. And \u201cCan\u2019t you just see Cristiano Ronaldo gobbling down Portuguese grapes whilst flitting across the stage in a revival of\u00a0L\u2019Apr\u00e8s-Midi d\u2019un Faune<\/em>?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As with most fiery feminism, she\u2019s right about the problem, wrong about the solution, and funny enough about both that I\u2019m not too concerned with either.<\/p>\n The objectification of women by men is undoubtedly wrong \u2014 it\u2019s a particularly vicious insult to the female athlete doing far more amazing things with her body than \u201clooking hot.\u201d Hess argues that the new objectification of male athletes is something qualitatively different than this darker objectification, but forgets, I think, the origin of modern male ogling, at least in its progression through popular media. It did not start with an evil tone, with a leering devaluation of the person \u2014 it was engaged in an irony, hyperbole, and a polite campy humor similar to the stuff Hess admires in the female fans of the World Cup.<\/p>\n Pin-up girls came with ironic nursery rhymes printed next to them. They decorated detective stories with hilariously overblown captions \u2014 \u201ca goddess shining amongst brutes, but will she escape in time?\u201d The first mainstream displays of soft pornography were stuffed with the same \u201cpre-Raphaelite,\u201d sentimental neo-classicism and hyperbolic romanticism that Simon Doonan drips with in Hess\u2019 previous quote \u2014 allusions to Venus, limericks about the goddesses, personified seasons, orientalism, the works.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not arguing that this almost-but-not-quite-tongue-in-cheek objectification will end in the same violent, pornographic objectification of women that the male millions currently consume. It\u2019s unlikely, for the simple reason that men and women are not aroused by visual sexual stimuli in the same way. In general, and according to a 2013 study<\/a> published in the International Journal of Impotence Research<\/em>,\u00a0women are more aroused by mood and images that play a part in an erotic story \u2014\u00a0<\/em>men by \u201cdirectly exposing sexual intercourse and genitalia.\u201d (Not that you need a study to figure that out. There\u2019s a reason 50 Shades of Grey was a female phenomenon. And beyond all the lonely, auto-erotic silliness, I think men are all pretty well aware \u2014 as much as we\u2019d like to deny it \u2014 that women just ain\u2019t visually slavering after our bodies the way we are after their own.)<\/p>\n So it\u2019s somewhat easier for the \u201cmood\u201d of the objectification Hess promotes to remain \u201cfun, goofy, and even campy.\u201d The female brain doesn\u2019t seem to have the same tendency towards a total explicitness. My worry is that, when you spin this new objectification into a fun, positive corrective\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0the objectification of women, you open up a brand new theme park of self-justification for every one to play in.<\/p>\n As Hess points out, the phenomenon of objectifying soccer players has already been used to justify the continued objectification of female athletes: \u201cBuzzFeed<\/em>\u2019s Dorsey Shaw has\u00a0slyly suggested<\/a>\u00a0that his site\u2019s coverage of soccer players\u2019 butts is powerful enough to justify his\u00a0own editorial obsession<\/a>\u00a0with the posteriors of female beach volleyball players.\u201d But what, in the case of the female gaze, can (in general) remain relatively and humorously detached from the actual heat of passion (that sublime and powerful psychological \u201cbeing taken over\u201d by the visual object) in the male gaze (at least before the decadence of pornography addiction sets in) becomes something serious, something overwhelming \u2014 something far more dangerous.<\/p>\n The demise of modern feminism is that it allows men to objectify women in ways the mothers of the movement could never have imagined \u2014 while calling themselves feminists. We can post shots of models with books over their genitals with captions that say \u201cintelligence is sexy,\u201d and thereby pat ourselves on the back for respecting women for more than their bodies<\/a>. We can watch unknown, unnamed, depersonalized women having sex in circumstances and conditions we will never know \u2014 so long as its feminist<\/em> porn<\/a>. We can perpetuate the institution of sex-slavery \u2014 we need only, with the \u201cfeminists,\u201d call it sex-work<\/a>. So too, we will use the feminist embrace of the objectification of male athletes to continue and worsen our own objectification of women \u2014 the only difference is that we\u2019ll get to feel like feminists while we do it.<\/p>\n This is why I cannot agree that the only \u201changover to this revelry\u201d is that \u201cthis obsession over thighs and abs can create the illusion that women and gay men aren\u2019t actually keeping their eye on the ball, and help fuel the stereotype that they don\u2019t constitute \u201cauthentic\u201d sports fans.\u201d The real, long-term, deep-stomached, throw-up-the-Advil hangover is the cementing of the idea that the sexes are grappling in a war for individual happiness, in which women give a \u201cwe\u2019ll show them\u201d to male sin, slipping on their own self-justified brand of objectification, while men use this same sin as a license for their own joyless, humorless, descent into addiction.<\/p>\n But this is always the outcome of any \u201cwar between the sexes\u201d \u2014 everyone loses. We are so busy trying to balance the amount of hurt we cause each other, we have forgotten that we need each other. If there is going to be an palatable theory of gender, a workable feminism that doesn\u2019t shoot itself in the foot, surely it must be based on the idea that, if the human person comes in two, it is not because we are in competition, but because we are to help each other rise to the fullness of humanity? Our response to the sin of the other should not be to strike, meeting objectification with objectification (as exciting and powerful as it feels), but rather, to help, to hold accountable, and to work-with \u2014 as if men and women are engaged in a mutual project of existence. Of course, this might require an exit from popular media and a return to the family and the neighborhood, wherein we are responsible for each other with a felt and present responsibility \u2014 but this is a small price to pay for a little happiness free of resentment.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amanda Hess\u2019 article for Slate, \u201cWhy it\u2019s great to objectify World Cup players,\u201d is wonderful. In it, she argues that the hyperbolic and often hilarious \u201csexual gaze\u201d at soccer players from Jezebel-esque journalists is calling out and offering a counter-balance to the over-sexualization of female athletes. \u201cThese days, clicking through\u00a0a slideshow\u00a0of the world\u2019s hottest female […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,71,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender-theory-that-doesnt-suck","category-modesty","category-sex-2"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/80\/2014\/06\/goat-738x1024.png\" "\\"Welcome")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/80\/2014\/06\/this-will-end-in-tears-hitchhikers.jpg\" "\\"I")
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