Sexism in the City

Here are things that bother me - stupid people who can do nothing more original or more socially uplifting than to blatantly use sex to sell products. For several months now, I have been tracking the content of the magazine display at the front of the kiosk at my subway station. With the exception of December when magazines with "50 best gifts in Toronto" and similar were front and centre, most of these magazines are either men's magazines with half-naked women on the front or women's magazines with half-naked women on the front. Everyday, after a long day at school or work, I trudge up the stairs to be greeted by starlet cleavage, stomachs, and thighs. Oh, and of course, the requisite come-hither stare - glazed over eyes and mouths half-open in mid-moan ecstasy.

And why, why, why is it that every young actress and musician today, after garnering acclaim for her actual talents, must then do a cover/centrepiece in Maxim in which she takes off her clothes? Even young women who say they can't stand the way women are objectified in the industry (i.e. Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch) end up in a pair of lacy panties, pouting at the camera and talking about their turn-ons. Is this all we can do when faced with strong female talent and power? Sexualize it, objectify it, trivialize it? Strip women of their legitimate talent and power and only allow them a trashed up, one-dimensional object-of-men's-desire power? Make their bodies more important then their voices, their emotions, their thoughts, and their beings? It seems that posing in these magazines has become a kind of marker of success for young celebrities these days and I just find it so sad.

Anyway, those magazines. It seems like no big thing and many of you may think I'm over-reacting. But every day, in so many little ways, it is grilled into us - you're only as good as your packaging. Every day as I go about my life trying to feel good about myself and to help others do the same, I am cut down in a thousand little ways. What is that saying, "death by a thousand paper cuts"? That's sexism, for you. Fun, fun.