Women as sex objects…
Just in time to detour the national debate from Arizona, the media is touting the virtues of the newly crowned Miss America Teresa Scanlan, a seventeen-year-old who looks and acts twenty-five. From second-hand sources (I found her name with a quick google), I have learned that she is an accomplished pianist, is focused on getting a law degree, wants to be a Supreme Court judge, and looks ravishing in an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikini.
It’s the last part that bothers me. While I’m one of the first to decry the plight of women in other cultures who are treated as sex objects (we’re probably more familiar with Middle Eastern cultures, but Latin America, India, China, and Southeast Asia should be considered in our class of misogynist strongholds), is the whole Miss America, Miss Universe, and other beauty pageant nonsense not the same thing? Yeah, I know, the bikini bit was to show how fit the women are, wink, wink. It’s a fitness show. Bull! What it does is give many men and not a few women some place to aim their testosterone beyond guns and politics, just what we need to heal from Arizona. Yeah! God bless America!
We have to carefully distinguish between “Ms. X is beautiful and sexy” and “Ms. X is a sex object” in our day-to-day lives and in our writing. The first has become common language to describe a lady that is attractive, well-dressed, vivacious, and so forth. Unfortunately, society and especially Madison Avenue often don’t resolve this dichotomy. Society made Ms. Anna Nicole Smith into a sex object but she probably only wished to be beautiful and sexy and respected as a person. She was a tragic victim of a voracious media. My contention is that people don’t watch beauty pageants to see the talent and brains of women in them—the pageant makes them into sex objects. Society, dominated by type-A alpha males for the most part, drives this phenomenon.
As writers, we often hover around or directly use stereotypes. The reader will find examples of plenty of female sex objects in genre fiction, especially romance and fantasy novels where the author’s hook into readers often depends on stereotypes. In my novel The Midas Bomb, I had a devilish time with Lydia Karpov. Part of the evolution of her character was her striving to be seen, even with all her evilness, as someone good enough to compete in her macho world. Both Fawzi and Voldya recognized her intelligence and abilities far more than her Venezuelan lover Enrique, who treated her more as a sex object.
I have always been a sucker for smart women. They dominate my fiction for that reason. Jay Sandoval and Kalidas Metropolis in Full Medical and now Evil Agenda, Asako O’Brian and Caitlin Murphy in Soldiers of God, and Dao-Ming Chen and Lydia in The Midas Bomb are all, I hope, three-dimensional, individual, lively and smart female characters that reflect my belief that the old boys’ club that thinks they rule the world are idiots if they ignore the abilities and intuitive genius of half the human race. While the Catholic Church has female saints, it had better get on the ball and pay attention to the “divine feminine” or it will go the way of the dinosaurs. And I don’t mean more emphasis on Mary—I mean allowing women to be priests and male priests to share life with women.
So, while we have to thank the media attention given the Miss America Pageant as a distraction from the events in Arizona, let me relate my push to recognize smart women to today’s holiday. Yes, we are celebrating Martin Luther King Day, but I would also celebrate the woman behind the man, Mrs. Coretta Scott King. I would venture to say that Mr. King wouldn’t be what he became without Mrs. King. Moreover, she came into her own after her husband was assassinated, working tirelessly for civil rights and women’s rights. Her life was characterized by beauty and grace and an able mind. I wonder how many Miss Americas will be so successful in their endeavors as Mrs. King was.
Coretta Scott King was a person that rose above race and stereotype. The black Southern Baptist prototypical woman standing by her man grew into a leader who must serve as a shining example to every black woman. Mr. Bill Cosby has taken a lot of heat from his fellow blacks because he stresses the importance of family and the irresponsibility of some black fathers. In effect, what he is saying is that too many black men treat women as sex objects, especially black women. I suppose that I’m on an old rope bridge waiting to fall into a raging river here, but I agree with Mr. Cosby. Mrs. King, in her work for women’s rights, particularly black women, probably would have too. Mr. Cosby is bold to preach his gospel—Mrs. King was more than bold considering the milieu she worked in.
Men of all races and cultures have to learn that women have qualities that far exceed any Madison Avenue generated sexual object. Too many of us need a change in our perceptions, independent of cultural mores and customs. Men and women are just two versions of a human being. It is the human being that creates and imagines, not man or woman. A man can be assertive—so can a woman; we shouldn’t call it “bitchy.” A man can be oblivious—so can a woman; we shouldn’t call it “ditzy.” And on and on. Let’s eliminate the gender specific words and focus on the common humanity we share.
The folklore of the Bible tells the story of how Eve came from Adam’s rib. Isn’t it time that we go beyond misogynist superstitions and promote women to be our equal partners in the work we must perform to better the human race and our planet? Isn’t it time we get beyond pathetic and sexist beauty pageants to recognize that brains and talent have nothing to do with how good a woman looks in a bikini? Isn’t it time for women themselves to embrace the example set by Mrs. King and other intelligent and beautiful women who have stretched their wings and soared? Their beauty goes beyond the bikini. Their beauty is human.
