Femme Fatale

Okay, I'm being dramatic. Although I'm always interested in gender, I recently saw the film Women Art Revolution and was not particularily impressed. The information presented was not new to me, but I guess it's a good thing that the history's getting out there.

I tried to get my boyfriend to come see it with me. He refused, like expected. One of my favorite past times is arguing feminist points with him. The furthest we've gotten is "egalitarianism between genders is good". In my mind this is the exact definition of feminism, but I'm not sure I'll ever get him to say he's a feminist. That damn f-word is too loaded.

In my free time I like to explore existing (and contemporary) examples of sexism in our culture that even the most intelligent "good guys" might overlook (i.e. my bf). My strongest discovery is within women's magazines-"How to Please Your Man" type articles. These imply that (1) heterosexuality is the norm, and (2) the universal expectation is that sex is geared towards men.


Now men of the world, I would like you to test me. Please, prove me wrong. But here's my case study. Just this instant I visited Men's Health's website. I look through the categories. "Oh awesome, Sex and Women". (I click the link, and the page loads) What is the featured article today? "Deal with Her Habits-How to Tolerate the Most Annoying Things She Does) I mean, I could analyze how terribly chauvenistic the content is, but I don't want to go there. What I do want to emphasize to all you non-believers, is that the magazine's current content does not include articles centered around "pleasing her".

This is kind of trivial. I mean, Maxim is a bit better despite all the photos of near-naked ladies. So I can't generalize. But are Maxim's headlines all related to pleasing your lady? No, big boobies are the headline. I am only trying to present hard evidence of the media's expectations of men.

What can we do about this? Well, we can start to realize that the more often both individuals are sexually satisfied, the more likely the sex is going to happen. Simple logic, really. Then maybe we can move out of the bedroom and into the public eye. Or you can boycott the magazines. Just sayin'.