First and foremost, I am extremely glad someone has finally brought up the television show "Toddlers and Tiaras." When I cam across this show one day, I was extermely bother by its content questioning myself why would parents do something like that to their child. As Caroline mentioned in her post "Toddlers and Tiaras and Cosmopolitan were the best examples of the corruption and manipulation of sexual freedom," I couldn't agree more. How can a parent rationalize such action? And even a bigger question, how does society justifies and normalizes such image?
As "Sex "R" Us" and "Why Black Sexual Politics?," brings up the obvious theme that society has widely accepted (or tolerated)--sex sells. We have grown up in a society where the producers are fond of objectifying people, especially women, to sell their products; we see such hypersexualized images through all the means of media ranging from television shows to advertisements to the music industry and etc. While we as a society have rationalized so massive representation of sexuality, I am really concerned about what implications our over advertised image of sexuality have and how have this idea sex sells influence they way people, especially the youth thinks?
Both articles touched upon answering the questions I am concerned about, but I just wanted to provided an example from my experience at Colgate. In my American School course, we recently discussed the question whether a female's way of dressing imply something about her action; this question is in light of that 20% of female are sexually assaulted at Colgate. So the question arise, are the females asking/leading the guys on when they dress provokingly? Surprisingly most people answered that they way the girls dressed pretty much justified they way guys treat them. This answer is troublesome because there it lies the assumption that women dress up to impress men and that is not always the case, but society have made it seem as if everything a woman does is in relation to men. And this isn't of surprise since the media have constantly and continuously portray women in such hypersexualize light, that it has allowed people to rationalize such behavior towards women.
Here is a video that accompanied our discussion. Comedian, Dave Chapelle touched upon some of the topics Douglas' brings about in her chapter (sex advice in magazines), women dress code, and etc.
In reference to Dave Chapelles video, he says, "a woman's test is material, and a man's test is a woman. And I mean test as in something you desire. So men get nice cars, not because they like nice cars, but because the women like nice cars". Chapelle is a little sexist here. He basically states that women only care about material objects and men only care about getting laid. Though there is some slight truth to both of those statements, I do think that his overwhelming tone of sexism not only deters me from his comedy, but makes me question the comedians own beliefs.
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