scarletwoman

scarletwoman's Journal

February 20, 2014

I could not give a shit less about the SI Swimsuit Edition or the Kate Upton photo shoot.

That being said, it's the act of bringing those things into DU that pisses me off, since it's clearly meant to rile people up and nothing more.

The thing is, our mainstream American culture is vapid, shallow, superficial, and soulless. Using scantily clad women for marketing purposes is merely one aspect of all the many factors illustrative of the fact that our culture is vapid, shallow, superficial, and soulless. And, frankly, it's far from the most disturbing manifestation, imho.

I don't in the least begrudge these women their chosen method of participating in the capitalistic marketplace - if they can make money at it, they are welcome to go for it as far as I'm concerned. As long as we participate in this capitalistic system by working for someone other than ourselves, we are all selling ourselves to one degree or another.

I'm 64 years old - way past the point where anyone would pay me for posing nearly naked for a magazine cover. But when I was young I was definitely hot, and I thoroughly enjoyed flaunting my power to attract the attention of men - and women, too, for that matter.

Humans are going to groove on looking at their sexy looking fellow humans of either sex, no matter what. I don't see any shame in that. We're biologically wired for that.

The only shame I see in the most recent spate of DU "gender wars" is in some DUers deliberately posting stuff that they know is going to cause an uproar. The SI Swimsuit Edition and the Kate Upton zero-grav photo shoot are NOT political issues. They're just part and parcel of the cultural vapidity and capitalist system we're all swimming (so to speak) in. So, if someone wanted to critique these things from those perspectives, I'd be all for it. But that's not at all what the mindset was behind posting them.

sw - yes, I AM a woman.

Profile Information

Gender: Female
Hometown: Minnesota
Current location: up north
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 31,893

About scarletwoman

I'm an old white woman, born in November, 1949. My parents lived through the Depression and WWII (my dad's a veteran). I've witnessed a lot of history firsthand, plus I carry the stories handed down to me by my parents, aunts and uncles from their generation, and my grandparents from their generation. Basically, my memory is a depository for most of the 20th century of U.S. history, plus the 2 decades (so far) of the 21st century. //////Important quote: Milos Forman (film director, b. 1932, d. 2018) - "I hear the word "socialist" being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Barack Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, "Obamacare is socialism!" They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism." (He lived in Czechoslovakia under Communism before emigrating to the U.S.A.)