Womentology

The words I’d like to use to describe my commute to the community college of Shoreline would make the creators of South Park blush (so I’ll keep it clean). The Ballard Bridge is always up in air like hands at a rap concert; there’s construction in the path more commonly then it rains in Seattle, there’s a cornucopia of drivers that insist on chit-chatting while they drive, and most importantly no CD player in my joke of a car. To combat the agony I usually turn the radio on, my favorite station is 950 KJR am which is a local sports station. Recently they started advertising for their fourteenth annual “Bigger Dance” competition. The “Bigger Dance” is basically a bracket spinoff of NCAA’s March madness except for one big difference. When you fill out your bracket its gorgeous celebrity women you’re picking from instead of college basketball teams. This was the first time I’d heard of the “Bigger Dance”, and man was I intrigued. Naturally because as a big hoops fan I fill out countless brackets annually, as well as being a heterosexual male (obviously who this station is aiming at) I wanted to see what celebrity babes were in what matchup, so I went online to check it out. What I found was a mountain awesome, with some personal guilt sprinkled on top. The awesome was checking out the bracket and filling it out, the guilt came in the form of pictures of the contestants.

Each contestant had a little picture of her face next to her name, and when you clicked on that you ended up with a full size picture of that woman in a bathing suit (or almost naked in some shape or form). Which I thought was brilliant, but then it hit me square in the face like a Mike Tyson jab, was KJR belittling women? Was I being sexist by filling a bracket out? In class we talked about women being made into objects, was I simply moving objects around a bracket or human beings?

They sure seemed human, but as I clicked from one woman to the next I discovered something that seemed almost plucked from our class lectures, that their professions (although bringing them fame and fortune) appeared to be earned strictly by good genes instead of a strong work ethic, or brains. Most were actresses, athletes, or models born with superior looks, (or in the athletes cases athleticism as well) none of which was earned, just natural. Am I saying there are no males like this? No of course not, there are just as many males like that if not more, and furthermore if there was a male bracket it would be dominated by actors, models, and athletes as well. It just seems screwy to me that good genes in a girl are more likely to bring her success and fame if it comes in the form of big boobs over say the ability to do calculus. If you disagree I urge you to ask somebody to name the first fifty female celebrities that come to mind and I guarantee you the list will be dominated by actresses (the kind that are just eye candy on screen), models, and athletes. I’d like to point out that the most accomplished (in my mind anyways) of those in the bracket were news reporters, another profession very high on looks.

Am I letting KJR off the hook? Yes I think since most these women make their money by looking good, thus it’s okay to compare and contrast them. I got to hand it to them you put anything into a bracket and that'll get some attention. Am I letting Gunner Phillips off the hook? Hell yeah, its only natural for me to be interested, the day guys stop checking gals out is the day cows fly to Mars. By the way I got Jessica Biel winning the whole thing! Feel free to comment or argue with my blog!

Media, Femininty, Body Image, Masculinity