“Breasts” – a Weapon to Diminish Women in Politics
June 26, 2010
by Optixmom
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Headlights, tah tahs, bosoms, boobies, a nice rack, guzungahs, knockers, titties, mammaries, the twins, etc. You know the terms, you have heard them before.
Talking about a woman’s breasts just as an aside doesn’t normally come up in civilized conversation. I don’t hear the topic of a woman’s knockers coming up in an engineering meeting or a discussion about university curriculum. If the topic does tend to be brought out in the open it is usually part of a callous comment or used to demean a co-worker.
At work or in civilized conversation we can recognize a “boobie comment” as a pathetic attempt to take a women down a few notches on the worth scale. She is just an object, just a pair of torpedoes…nothing else.
In the beginning of June much had been made about Sarah Palin’s breasts. Photos zeroing in on her chest made their way across cyber space where the question was asked, “are they real?” Similar chaos was created when then Senator Hillary Clinton wore a tank shell under her blazer and revealed some cleavage.
The bottom line to this titty tizzy is that when a woman moves into a position of authority or is seen as a threat, the easiest thing to do is demean her looks or question their authenticity. The first target, or targets, are her breasts. For those of us who have witnessed this type of behavior from the media before, when the topic moves to a woman’s chest is is because there is fear coming from the alternate camp. It is a simple equation. Boob Talk = Fear. Those participating in the dialog will vehemently deny that the owner of the targeted mammaries scares them, but those of us here at TNA understand this behavior all too well. It’s fear caught in the headlights.
So now that more women are moving up in the political limelight prepare yourself for the topic to rear its perky head in the future. And when it does happen again (and we know it will) it will just be a testament to how intimidated and terrified the alternate team is of that woman.
A very dear friend of mine wanted to get her teenaged Girl Scout troop involved in a walk that raises money for breast cancer reserch. She was trying to enlist my help in making “Save the Ta-Tas” tee shirts for the girls to wear. She was very taken aback when I refused my help, something I almost never do. I told her breast cancer research was about saving women and keeping them whole, not about “ta-tas” or “second base”. I think that, while as women we may have fond names for our body parts, we need to understand that we have to insist on being more than the some of those body parts everywhere. The path to stamping out breast references in the political and work arenas starts with us. We can’t expect the “dickheads” to stop calling them “boobies” unless we do, too.
Yeah, I think they took a picture of Sarah in her running attire and then in her “civies.” Clearly the white guys in the newsrooms do not understand the physics of sports bras. Put one of those puppies on and you can go from being a 36DD in real life to a medium sized uniboob in one move. Hey Chris Mathews et al, think opposite of codpiece.
Oh, and by the way, there is some there is some study cited in “Enlightened Sexism” that states when society is focused on breasts, women’s social progress stalls. Hmmm….does this resonate or what?
It’s hard to imagine a woman talking about a man’s c*** + b***s in public, or their “disco stick” in anything other than an artists’ music video (an artist I happen to admire greatly btw.) Were men to be perpetually in spandex and female politicians occupying 85% of the seats referring to their opponents joysticks in public, wouldn’t the men just cry themselves to death? You see how they complain and quite frankly wither completely when a comment is directed at them. They mean these words to slay and destroy: to kill, to totally annihilate. They aren’t quite as intelligent but they know enough that to refer to the opponent in a metaphor like “wife” or to discuss her breasts is to remind the male populace that she is a woman and to conjur up images of woman as a servant of him, as the fairy tale derivative of man, a subject of his whim and fancy, and to equate this idea with their female opponent. Too bad fair play and sportsmanship only apply to male opponents.
omg did you read the news you could see the outline of so-and-so’s penis today…i mean, come on? right?
Proof that although our culture pretends to adore the female body and call it a Work of Art and other nonsense, in fact it is either disgusted, amused, or mortally terrified of it. If our culture loved women’s bodies as much as it says, it wouldn’t rely on them as shoe-in ways to degrade and humiliate their owners.
janis, they love the parts for their play, dehumanized without a person owning them.
talking about women’s bodies is warfare.
I really can’t stand going on Huffington Post’s Entertainment section. Sometimes they will have interesting movie reviews. But whoever runs that section tends to obsess over celebrity boobs. They have an item right now about actresses over 50 taking their tops off. They should rename the site Heffpost, they concentrate so much on boobs. I expect more from a “progressive” site run by a woman.
exactly Janis they have to dress it up, make it appears as if it is a function of males, which is a fantasy construct that is largely embedded in the subconscious of human beings.
Allison
Fox News isn’t any better. the whole bottom section of their website is devoted to depersonalized, decapitated, human bodies and limbs in sexually suggestive positions.
You’re right about Fox News, too. I think Fox and Friends recently hosted some Hooter girls. The Left and Right are equally guilty of sexism and objectification.
Its disquesting. Here in the hood its not a woman’s breasts that is the focus but her butt. Women as well as men obsess over our behinds. Rather its butts or boobs we have to really grow up and stop obsessing over body parts. LOL if you talk about a man’s penis they get very upset. Most men have issues regarding their penis that is why if you say it back to them they call you trash. Double standard.
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