Hypersexualizing women is harmful, not artful

Today women take off their clothes and convince us it’s artistic, that every stroke of their bodies are actually a stroke of genius meant to rouse the creative inclinations of our minds and not at all our sexual desires.

Their bodies have become mediums to communicate and ratify their political objectives. In the curvature of their bosoms, you should find something very inspiring.

It takes only a gander into their cleavage to discover their thoughts on our economic crisis. Any wardrobe malfunction they stage is not a desperate attempt to revive expiring fame but a demonstration of how something as simple as a right breast can detract from America’s imperialistic invasion of Iraq (see Janet Jackson).

And writhing their half-naked bodies all over a car for the cameras is not a blatant attempt to garner attention but an attempt to reclaim, through the handling of a phallic symbol, the power the gender was denied from centuries past (see Shakira).

And exploiting and celebrating masochism in their music videos is not intended to entertain the darker side of our sexual psyches. Rather, it highlights what centuries of male psychological abuse can do to a body, how it can force a woman to embrace her vulnerability (see Rihanna).

Is partial or full nudity gratuitous? Or is there something beyond the spectacle it creates? Does it draw your attention to why your mind processes the female form as such a spectacle in the first place, why women taking off their clothes would ever set off such a loaded gun?

I don’t know if I’ve bought into this wild interpretation.

When I see Lady Gaga make an outfit of only a handful of Cheerios in “Marry the Night,” I don’t see a delusional woman broken by tragedy. I see Lady Gaga flaunting her gym-perfect body.

Am I a prude? Am I missing the next wave of feminism?

I’m very interested in the hypersexualization of women and its connotations, but I think it’s more harmful than empowering. Take Rihanna for example.

Ann Powers, a music critic from NPR, said it best: “What’s upsetting for those of us who admire Rihanna’s talent and boldness — and for me as a feminist — is that she has clearly not taken up the narrative of women’s enlightenment and self-liberation.

“Quite the opposite — the story she wants to tell is the one in which the endangered woman doesn’t get out, or leaves for a while but comes back, or at best does leave, but can’t resolve the mixed feelings she has about her choice.”

Women who insist on sending the report with their bodies might be sending a detrimental message. Or simply fluffing their egos.

Regardless, the fact the female form can cause such uproar at all makes me all the more interested to understand the intentions behind exposing it and sexualizing it to this extreme.

­— ambhendr@indiana.edu