Sex.

Sex.

PETA.

Somehow in my travels, I found myself on meat.org, being exposed to various propagandaz about how eating meat is wrong and advocates murder, and how we are not entitled to om nom nom nom on animals. Which I think is pretty silly, seeing as biologically speaking, humans were designed to be omnivorous. Not that I endorse cruel conditions or cute little calves having their throats slit while still alive or anything.

ANYWAY, one of the separate pages within the site I came across was this one, where you can watch a sexy PETA ad banned from the Superbowl! Yeah!

Seriously PETA, fuck you.

It's really fucking hard to take your message seriously when you say it's not okay to exploit animals, but okay to exploit women. It makes me sick that you'd cry yourselves to sleep over ANIMALS BEIN PEOPLE TOO UHUHUHUH and not care about blatant inequality and stifling oppression within your own species.

Also, I don't believe you when you say vegetarians have better sex. Go jerk off with some tofu heated up in the microwave, assfucks.

Stretch marks.

Stretch marks. They're a totally normal and natural component of the human body, yet the beauty industry decided they are an unforgivable trauma and must be eradicated at all costs. Especially when they appear on one's breasts, the apparent pinnacle of your femininity. It's pretty stupid, really. I think most girls grow up without seeing real tits, and all they have to compare themselves with are breasts whose true form has been concealed with silicon, makeup, clever lighting, professional photography, and digital 'enhancement'. We're told that's beautiful, and we think it's normal to look like that. I can rationalize that the beauty industry trains women to hate their bodies, but it still affects me in very powerful ways. Because it's hard to block out something that pounds at you every day.


My question is, why are stretch marks "officially" ugly in Western culture? They are not inherently ugly. There are some African societies that consider stretch marks beautiful! So why do we let the beauty industry think for us, and coerce us into using creams, lotions, serums, laser surgery, body makeup, and other middling crap to disguise our individual bodies?

I think stretch marks should be considered gorgeous. In fact, they shouldn't be called stretch marks at all. They should be called "wisdom marks" or "woman marks". They're the marks you got when you were maturing from a young girl to an independent woman, as your wonderful body curved up and formed itself. The lines accompanying your life experience, all the sorrows and joys. The legacy from the beautiful act of nurturing a child inside you. If the industry somehow adopted and marketed this point of view, who would want a pure-skinned woman? She'd be seen as naive, unshaped, incomplete and unmarked (and not in the good way).

And you know what stretch marks are? They're little rips in the dermis. Maybe you're too filled with awesome for it all to be contained in your body.

Sluts.

One of the most common and rudimentary questions a developing feminist will often ask, is why society gives a big thumbs up in regards to men to having casual sex, while presenting a totally different attitude towards women doing the same thing. People will call this dude awesome, while immediately jumping on the opportunity to cry "slut! slut!" at the woman. And, I mean, it's not even exclusively in circumstances of promiscuity, it's also when a female is apparently too quick to fuck her boyfriend.

I think I'm beginning to understand how we're conditioned to think this way.

It's derived from the culture of women being expected to fulfill a role as the "looked at", so the men can be the "lookers". It is actually scary how much this is normalized in modern society. Women are illustrated as spineless, passive beauties in the media, compliant dolls who love and thrive on derogatory male attention.

Paris Hilton once described herself as "sexy, but not sexual". I believe this is an accurate description of the way women are fabricated in our collective false consciousness. Yes, we must give the illusion of being sexually available and willing, but never actually be sexually available and willing. What we have under our clothes, then, is something mysterious and exciting. We're exotic and intriguing. Enough so that men believe we have a wonderful gift to please them with, and that we exist solely to be pleasure-givers.

We do not experience sexual pleasure ourselves, though. We perform for the male, rather than have sex with him. And so the world forgets that women desire sexual gratification as well. This is why women are called sluts. Society does not think of "slutty" women as having received pleasure too easily, but as having given it over too easily. Because, women are sexy but not sexual. Society sees the idea that women might want to experience their own sexual pleasure as ridiculous.

How I feel is this. Women who have sex casually or whatever for their own gratification, and to connect sexually with another human being (or beings, if that's your thing) are not sluts. They're enjoying it, and they're living. That's cool. However, I am sure there are women who actively seek to comply with the "submissive, sexy female" ideal. Those who really impair feminism. If they go about with the sole intention of pleasing the man visually and sexually only, and dismissing their own desires in favour of being a giggling pleasurer, then maybe they are sluts.

And, I think, for society to be able to move forward, there needs to be a huge change in how it approaches both female and human sexuality. The main thing is that the image of women in the media needs to experience a 180. Make us assertive, imperfect, and horny. Make us ache to be gratified. And no, I don't mean being gratified by having some gross, muscular, monotonal douchebag jerk off on her face. Maybe then, we won't be sluts, but we'll be awesome pimps when we fuck guys too.

Hopefully one day the word "slut" will only be used in reference to those who cheat on their partners, or maintain two simultaneous, allegedly monogamous relatonships.

Hahaha.

I don't know if this was blatant sexism and sex stereotyping, or just store owners being lazy, but a few days ago I visited that newsagent near Hungry Jacks at Central. I think it's called Newslink or some shit? Anyway, I went in to grab a copy of MAD or something to kill some time before Cowie got out. While perusing the shelves I noticed that the magazines had not been categorized by theme, as they usually are, like music, cartoons or fashion. Instead, the wide selection had been strangely bisected into only two classifications: men's interest and women's interest.

This is what Men's Interest consisted of: automobiles, computers, TIME, music, and many identical Miss Photoshop Fake Tits 2009.

This is what Women's Interest consisted of: CLEO, Cosmopolitan, an ENORMOUS array of bridal/parenting magazines, and tacky gossip/reality read mags.

It seemed too ridiculous to be offensive, as if they purposely set out to satirize what it meant to be masculine or feminine. But still, I didn't like it. If there's one thing that gives me the damn shits in the media pertaining to gender, it's the normalized, subtle stereotypes carried out which create an almost subconscious bias that women are less worth our respect than men. And I hate that we're raising a new generation to think that way too.

The huge shelf of publications seemed to reinforce a rippling bunch of stereotypes.

• Men are active, with varied interests and different talents.
• Women are passive, mostly one-dimensional.
• Women are incapable of intelligent/creative thoughts or actions. They're pretty good at filling their lives with obsession over looking good and young, though. And that's all they're expected to do.
• Men are good with technology and current events. Women are also good with current events, but only if the events are about stupid "celebs" and their diet secrets.
• Men like looking at scantily clad women.
• Women like looking at scantily clad women. (Seriously, what is with both men and women's magazines featuring the exact same image of a woman? Shouldn't the latter have a reverse equivalent? I guess it's because women are expected to look sexual but never act sexual. You know, or people hissing "slut" everywhere.)
• Women are obsessed with hooking in some poor soul for a lifetime of commitment, marriage, and babies.

These are just a few, and I'm sorry this newsagent apparently could not afford a less annoying and more convenient way of sorting magazines. I'm wondering if anyone else has witnessed the same thing. But nonetheless, I dream of a time and place in which everyone will love and respect each other, and categorizing by gender will be just as taboo as categorizing by race would be.

By the way, MAD was in neither section. It was tucked up the back with all the other kid's stuff.