The inconsistent, contradictory ramblings of Scarlett the Harlot

I have a confession to make. A big one.

I am a feminist.

There, I said it. Now, some of you may be shocked, scared, surprised, and for this I apologize. I didn't mean to mislead anyone, but I have to throw that out there before I start this entry. I have a love/hate relationship with this:



I'm not going to lie, it's mostly hate. I hate. I loathe. I detest the freaking bunny. It represents everything in this culture I despise. Ariel Levy describes our current culture as "Raunch" and I really have to agree with her. Likewise, I firmly believe no means no and yes means yes and all that, but I think that women in our society are seriously misguided at times. We think that by flashing tits when some drunk bastard screams "show us your boobs" shows that we're sexual creatures. We think that by being on Girls Gone Wild or even posing in Playboy will make us desirable. But it's not desire for us. It's desire for dolls. For play things. For fantasy. And that's sad.

When I was in college I took a Women's Studies class (it was a liberal arts school, you had to fight NOT to take one). We actually studied the Women's Movement and the Sexual Revolution in the sixties and seventies. Later on I'll be reviewing Sex for One, which is a groundbreaking book by an artist and Ph.D. about masturbation, but I digress.

Hugh Hefner, Heff, The Man in the Silk Pajamas hisownself--donated an absolute crapton to the Cause. He gave money to every campaign that brought about equality for women. The ERA, Birth Control, Abortion, you name it, he had a hand in it. He championed women's rights. Hence the "love" part of the love/hate thing. I mean, Heff in the late sixties, early seventies was pretty freaking cool. Not to mention intelligent. The man's so smart it's scary.

But then, if you continue reading interviews he's done, you'll find he wasn't so much championing women as he was championing the sexual revolution. By liberating women to be sexual beings he was opening the door for his magazines. In short, it was good business. I'm not saying he doesn't believe that women are just as good as men. However, consider this quote about Playboy as quoted by Oriana Fallaci, an Italian journalist. This is from an interview in 1967 and is about his choice of the bunny as the Playboy symbol:

The rabbit, the bunny ,in America has a sexual meaning, and I chose it because it's a fresh animal, shy, vivacious, jumping--sexy. First it smells you, then it escapes you, then it comes back, and you feel like caressing it, playing iwth it. A girl resembles a bunny. Joyful, joking. Consider the kind of girl that we made popular: the Playmate of the Month. She is never sophisticated, a girl you cannot really have. She is a young, healthy, simple girl--the girl next door... we are not interested in the mysterious, difficult woman, the femme fatale, who wears elegant underwear, with lace, and she is sad, and somehow mentally filthy. The Playboy girl has no lace, no underwear, she is naked, well-washed with soap and water, and she is happy.

Seriously. In Heff's world, or the Playboy Mansion, all women are soaped up bunny rabbits. Could the man BE any more blatantly bastardlike? And you've got to give him credit, he makes no apologies for himself or his brand. It is what it is, it's completely marketable, and he's created an EMPIRE. As much as I hate his dirty old man ass, I have to admire him too. He's helped to create a culture in which women are expected to be blank, shallow creatures who's one pleasure is to be running around it wet tee shirts, or showing boobs.

Congrats to the man.

I'm irritated for two reasons: 1) I had a long email conversation with a girlfriend of mine who is mad at her boyfriend, more on this later. And 2) because of this pair of underwear I saw hanging in Wal-Mart


What exactly is this underwear telling teenage girls? That they don't need to be financially independent because someone (probably a man, because the words are over her twat) will always be there to buy things for her? Or that she doesn't need to worry with credit because she's got a gold mine between her legs? (Again, words are over her cooter)

I mean seriously.

This is the culture in which we live.

Anyway, my friend, we'll call her Naive, emailed me to say that her boyfriend had a tendency to smack her ass and think it was cool to just "go for it" whenever he felt like it. There was more to the conversation than that, but them's the essentials. I've met the guy, he's a douche anyway, but at the same time, this same girl has a tattoo of the Playboy Bunny on the small of her back. Ironically, a double Tramp Stamp if you will. She's also got the Bunny decorating every available space in her room. When I pointed out to her that perhaps he treated her thusly because of the image of herself she projected she was offended. How dare I intimate that she was "asking for it". Me, a feminist?

Incidentally, I would never. Again, no means no, yes means yes.

HOWEVER, is a person in full cassock and collar confused when a person asks them to hear confession because they assume he's a priest? How about the guy wearing the FDNY tee shirt? Does he get angry when someone asks him if he's a firefighter?

My point is this: there are a thousand nonverbal cues that we send out to people every day without realizing it. These cues tell people how to treat us. It could be everything from the way we hold ourselves to the way we talk to the waiter at TGIFriday's. We rely on the way a person dresses to tell us what they do for a living as well as how we should approach them, and sadly (because we're all human and we're all guilty of this) as a litmus test to see how much money they may or may not have.

The Bunny is a symbol. It's a symbol that identifies playmates. Playmates are girls who willingly get naked for a camera. When girls who are not playmates don the Bunny, they are going to get treated as if they want to be Playmates. And it is a sad fact that Playmates are going to be treated like dolls. Not real people. These are girls who make their living simulating sexual arousal. When you begin to take on aspects of their wardrobe, it's a bit fucked up to be angry when people assume you are like them.

S'all I'm saying.

I'm not making much sense and I apologize. It's early and I'm still pissed about the underwear.

EDIT: since the writing of this blog entry and my sending the information to feministing.com, this has happened. Wicked awesome.