DISCLAIMER: Some of the details have been modified to protect the anonymity of my friends...also, I don’t want them to sue me...also, on the odd chance that I publish and make millions, I ain’t giving them shit. :-p
My previous post generated a few more conversations, so I guess it’s more than just 4 of you reading this. A friend of mine relayed a story of a photo competition with climbing gear being the reward. You just had to show an imaginative use for your gear with a designated slogan in mind, and the most imaginative image won. She used her rope in a quite...interesting way. Knowing her, I know it was very sexy and very tasteful. She won the contest and got her gear.
Happy Ending? NO! For the small community in which she competed, she is still getting inappropriate advances from some men. You’ll get creepy advances from men in any environment, but when it’s in a realm where you go to relax and feel safe, I’m sure it’s annoying. The women were worse. They criticized her for doing a “racy” photo to enter the competition. “Using your body for personal gain is wrong!” She lost a few climbing friends because of a damn photo.
The statement, “Using your body for personal gain is wrong”, is a pile of hypocritical bulls***. Have you ever played with your hair to entice a traffic cop to just give you a warning? Have you flirted with a salesman, in whom you have NO romantic/sexual interest, in order to get a little discount on a clothing item? Have you worn a skirt just slightly above calf length when going in for a promotion or interview? Have you worn a low-cut blouse at a bar, because you know it would get a stranger to buy you a drink? Then congratulations: you have used your body for personal gain.
Just to be clear, men do it as much as they can as well. We dress in a manner that will draw someone in. We flex a little bit when someone in which we’re interested (sometimes not interested) touches our arm. I haven’t fastened the top buttons on my dress shirts for about 4 years now. We deliberately buy shirts that are tight around our chests but loose around our torsos so that our pecs look great and you don’t notice our guts. Hell, right now, I’m wearing some pants that I bought only after confirming with a saleswoman and my female shopping friend that I would definitely get girls wearing them. They work.
Let’s stop pretending to be high and mighty and admit that we all use the tools we can to get the little things we want. If we don’t do it by looks, we do with silver tongues. I know that I’m buying that hot brunette at the bar because she batting eyes at me, and she knows that she is open to it because she likes the color/style of my shirt...or these bad ass pants. Pretty much everything we do is to attract someone, whether we realize it or not. Does that mean we’re all just whores selling our best attributes to get what we want?...Eh, maybe. But the important thing is to know when a chauvinistic or patriarchal social construct is manipulating our choice to do something we’re doing and when we’re doing it of our own accord. The best is when we use said construct against itself. That takes true independent thought, and independent thought is sexy...not as sexy as these pants, though.
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