Making Women Public Property

A woman's experience of the world is intensely public. Our very forms of dress are designed so that at no time are our personal body parts kept private in the way that a man's body is kept to himself. At all times our breasts, hips, legs and faces are up for male scrutiny since men are allowed to stare at us in a way that women are not permitted to stare at men and men are not permitted to do to one another.

A male-to-male stare is most likely to produce an aggressive response in reaction to the invasion of privacy and to the (correctly) assumed perception of judgement. It is instinctively understood that this is a violation and a power play, one which women are not able to defend themselves against. At the end of a 'normal' day, it's not uncommon for me, and others like me, to feel emotionally violated and yet we're told to view this unwanted attention as a compliment. We're supposed to enjoy it; be flattered by it; and grateful to the man who has passed his judgement on us.

Television, movies and magazines perpetuate the smokescreen. On view at any time of night or day, are dozens of images of female flesh, almost invariably young and scantily clad; if not young, then cosmetically doctored or virtually enhanced. Our men pass judgement on these objects as well, while we sit and squirm, feeling inadequate and often, emotionally betrayed. (And woe betide the woman who breaks her silence on this issue!)

Is it any wonder that so many women shy away from physical intimacy, hiding their bodies and making excuses for their lack of interest? The fact is, as Naomi Wolff points out in her book, 'The Beauty Myth', if men were subject to the kinds of imagery and judgement that women experience umpteen times a day, they would come to our beds with failing hearts. It would be our partners, not us, who turn off the lights, get undressed in the dark and duck for cover under the sheets before they can be seen as the unique piece of humanity they are...because they wouldn't look anything like sixteen to twenty year old boys, half starved of nutrition, pumped up with obsessive exercise, altered by cosmetic surgery and even then, airbrushed into society's definition of perfection.

Seen in this light, our position is truly ridiculous - and the men who, by their participation in this destructive situation, even if only by their complacent acceptance of the 'norm', are also ridiculous.

The Porn Myth - Naomi Wolf