Although fur is a serious issue that unfortunately the fashionistas like Madonna, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss flit in and out of. One year fur be bad, this year fur oh so hot (supposedly). So organisations like PETA understandably go with the times to keep the kids interested, go naked for fur (preferably if you're blonde, big titted and tiny waisted) and get Pink to do anti-KFC adverts.
Suicide Girls (SG) is the one I'm confused by, 'alternative' women who DIY their photo sets. The women themselves are the artistic director, they're the ones in control. The SG website gets 5 million unique visits per month and holds over 1,000 'suicide girls' DIY photo sets and blogs. There's no doubt that it's something people (men/women) are interested in because it reflects the body modification and alternative/sub- culture in the way mainstream doesn't.
The SG team state "The site mixes the smarts, enthusiasm and DIY attitude of the best music and alternative culture sites with an unapologetic, grassroots approach to sexuality.
In the same way Playboy Magazine became a beacon and guide to the swinging bachelor of the 1960s, SuicideGirls is at the forefront of a generation of young women and men whose ideals about sexuality do not conform with what mainstream media is reporting."
I'd like to talk about the bodies used in the PETA adverts, Suicide Girls & Girls Gone Wild.
Feminism was the future that never happened. It's written about in great length in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy.
She interrogates how 'feminism' differs from women's bodies at present in opposition to the future the 'old-school' feminists envisaged. It wasn't in the hands of 60s feminists as to how their daughters turn out and how they define feminism for themselves. It also would have helped if feminism hadn't turned in on itself by the time it reached the 70s, and therefore was a failure to itself.
(From what I've seen) The challenge is that even gender studies doesn't know what's going on. No-one's defined feminism now. Feminism = 60s radical 'personal becomes the political', 80s and 90s postfeminism, 'femininity challenges feminist values' - 00s, who they F knows.
What I do know about now is that girls feel they do what they want because their feminist mothers made it possible for them to have choice.
But...Women/Girls remain instilled in the value that to be beautiful, according to the criteria of others, is to feel true self-worth - it's turning us women/girls into pathological self-haters, living with the increasing growth of eating disorders and self-harm, that doesn't sound like the feminism I signed up for.
My increasing concern is that e.g. Christina Aguilera hanging her ass out of a pair of chaps is not necessarily an act of feminism. But she, and her young audience, may be confused enough to think it is. It is the girls doing this for themselves, to themelves, Christina wears those chaps because she feels "Drrrty" just like the song says.
Does Christina feel Drrty because it's her feminist based Godamn given right to express her sexuality and how she feels? Or does Christina feel Drrty because sex, wearing a push-up bra, arching her back and sucking in her stomach sells.
Is sexiness a result of sincere feminist self-deterministic values or is it a reversion back to girls exploiting their bodies for male eyes only?
I wonder if any of the women or girls involved are enjoying or understanding any of what's happening here, it's certain to say the heterosexual men of the world certainly are enjoying this (a generalisation I know) - which is not to say that I blame them, this so called 'raunchy liberation' is to be available to all, who it benefits is the powerful quandary.
Is it ok for the Sugababes to sing "I've got such a pretty kitty boy, I know you want to pet it", with their audience averaging between age 7 to 16?
Presenter of popular TV show "Girls Gone Wild", Mia Leist, has never gone naked for her show, but it's not like she lacks material to work with, girls are stripping off by the hundreds to 1. feature on the show (a supposed (generalisation again!) rites of passage for middle-class American educated young women) 2. get a GGW cap. Girls that participate claim it's fun, liberating, but often don't mention the flack they'd get if they didn't participate, names like "frigid" "fascist lesbian" "boring" "conservative", peer relations have alot to do with it too. Leist says "It's a business, in a perfect world maybe we'd stop and change things. But we know the formula, we know how it works."
What has feminism done if women are in controlling positions of their bodies, but publications like Playboy, shows like Girls Gone Wild, companies like CAKE or sites like SuicideGirls continue because they've got the formula, they know how it works. It's interesting to know that two CEO's on the Playboy publication are female, one the daughter of Hugh Hefner, one an ex-human rights activist who is also an African-American.
Women, of any age: Have we gone forwards or backwards? Are we experiencing the feminist future that never happened?
