13 February 2012

Let's talk body equality - Again

Girls and boys enjoy public spectacle when they romp around topless. One day it's inappropriate; girls learn it's shameful to show their bare torsos, boys that it's shameful to see girls' bare torsos. I'm still talking about boys and girls here, not teens or adults. Scott Metzger's cartoon below illustrates today's reality, that it's unacceptable for women to be topless in public spaces:

© Scott Metzger (http://www.metzgercartoons.com)
Cartoon used with permission from Scott Metzger.
I have suggested previously that today's reality is partly the result of the sexualization of women's breasts, as well as the erasure of women's sexuality (the explicit desire for a man's body). Let's not forget the double standard given to women's and men's bodies: A woman loses her looks with the addition of weight and time, while a man loses nothing. This is not a situation unique to the USA.

Yes, feminism has a lot to do with some of the choices women make today. There are sexually active women, and women who aren't afraid to tell their partners what they want. Sure, both men and women can be common whores; but women choose it more often as validation that they are wanted.

Once girls begin to cover up, they are told many implicit things without understanding fully the impact it has on them for their entire lives. They are told:

(1) You have something shameful.
(2) Your breasts are an important definition of who you are.
(3) Your sexuality can only be measured by what's hidden.
(4) You are a sex object.

What are some of the results? Many teens and women want plastic surgery to enhance their looks; they have no appreciation for themselves as bodies. Women also continue wearing makeup (even the natural look) to cover up their so-called flaws; I have said previously that this can be partly understood in the context of relationships between themselves and their primary female influences (bonding creates a psychological hold on people; it takes first acknowledging it to face it). More, many women need to (1) negatively criticize other women's bodies to justify their lack of self-esteem about their own bodies (because they're not satisfied with them), or (2) constantly compare themselves with other women to reinforce their perpetuating self-views that they have something to be ashamed of.

I mean, I could go on and on about the self-destructive things women do! But that's not really my point.

As I've suggested previously, men's and women's bodies are both sexually exciting to members of the same or opposite sexes. And, yes, as I've said, more men today are getting plastic surgery or, in one case that I had the direct experience to discover, a heterosexual man wore heavy foundation as part of his daily routine (because he said, he was used to being in front of strobe lights).

So don't misunderstand; there's a LOT of scholarship on men's bodies, masculinity, etc. The difference is that men grow up being more confident about their bodies because they are given the freedom to enjoy their bodies. And I'm specifically referring to the inequality between men's and women's torsos.

Because, yes, men and women are equal ONLY in relation to fecundity (the tools that give and receive fluids), which is understood in the context of fertility, which is why the gay movement is an open contest to this claim - because they remind heterosexuals that fecundity is more about sexuality than birth. And fertility is the reason why women or men who can't procreate - though it falls largely on women - may feel debased, unworthy or that something's wrong with them; fecundity, thus, is simply the interaction between bodies designed to fulfill a sexual experience. (I say this because I knew a woman once who told me that she had some kind of vaginal dysfunction that made it impossible for her to feel penetration; in fact, her boyfriend raped her knowing that, unless he told her, she wouldn't know he was inside her.)

Over the years, however, women and men have started making more jokes about big breasted men. Big breats on men generally result from either too much muscle or too much fat. I have, I think, mentioned Seinfeld and the joke about the man bra. Yet, as Scott Metzger's cartoon illustrates, it remains unacceptable for women to go around topless in public while it's okay for men of any sized breasts to do so.

It really doesn't matter if you want to call men's breasts pecs; they're the same thing (just ask a doctor if you doubt me; or, better, read the medical articles about men's breast cancer[1]). The point is that we women are also sexual creatures, so we also get turned on by men's exposed torsos - just as men get turned on by ours. (Gay men, of course, get turned on by men's chests.) The difference is that we're normalized to want to hide our breasts; in fact, there are criminal law that proscribe our doing so.

But what's really different about women's and men's breasts? I'm talking about the outer structures of men's and women's breasts. We all have curves and nipples, though ours might be softer - but men's breasts get softer (and saggier) the larger they are. More, we're encouraged to get mammograms, while men aren't - and that's why when men get breast cancer, their survival rate is significantly lower (because they don't get to a doctor typically until they're in the advanced stages)[1].

Of course, men's and women's fecundities are different, as they serve different purposes. So why: Continue covering up our torsos? Accept our being oversexualized compared to men? Ignore our own sexualities which includes desiring after a man's body? Refuse to be ashamed of our bodies?

Oh yes, I plan to return to this topic! It's just not often I find an illustration that clearly expresses what I'm thinking! So thanks again, Scott Metzger, for your permission to include your cartoon here!



[1] Many years ago I volunteered for the American Red Cross - Greater Houston Area Chapter. It was doing research for the Protect Your Back Program that I did a lot of readings at the Texas Medical Center libraries; it was there that I chanced on an article on men's breast cancer, then followed up by reading other  case histories (because I was excited to find out about something I couldn't have imagined before then).

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