Lingerie Capitalism
Consumerist Misogyny
Is my lingerie-rooted empowerment merely a coping
mechanism to this truly hideous cycle of capitalist,
consumerist misogyny that is blocking any chance
for natural, unadulterated empowerment?
Female Seduction Trap
Lingerie is designed to be seductive. There’s seemingly
nothing wrong with wanting this beauty.
However, in Western culture, the only form of power
available to the female body is beauty power and the
effect that this power has on men.
Patriarchal Structures
Pure empowerment cannot be bought. The empowerment
that one feels from lingerie will always be coded
by capitalist and patriarchal structures.
Empowerment that is liberated must
work beyond these structures.
Must We Crave Male Attention?
Lingerie is simultaneously a tool for outward
seduction and a way to enable inward confidence.
Supposedly, seduction and confidence allow us to exist,
In our culture, females are told that personal
strength can only be granted when we have
gained male attention and approval.
We’re told Happiness Can Be Bought
Teenage girls are led to believe that if they have visual appeal,
they will be desired and finally fulfilled emotionally.
This is the starting point in the belief
that happiness can be bought.
Body-Obsessed
Advertisements advance this idea through choosing models
that appeal to the body-obsessed masses of America.
Models exist in advertising because they allow the
unattainable, unimaginable to become visually tangible,
therefore, able to be desired.
Advertising indoctrinates us as the myth communicated
is that product use makes a woman sexy.
If we buy what the model is wearing,
we will be just like her.
There’s no way to escape the trap that tells females
to purchase, consume, indulge, change because then,
and only then, will we be validated.
Super Lingerie Promotion from Razoomovsky Andrey – Design Lingerie on Vimeo.
Sorry! I Can’t help it.
I Love watching Sexy Sportswomen
Heavenly Bodies
I was recently asked what I thought about men watching women’s sports for the eye candy. Did I think it was bad, the interviewer asked?
My immediate thought was, yes, of course. I don’t want men watching women athletes for the turn-on, I want men to be watching for the strength and grace and prowess of the players; because the women are just as good athletes as their male counterparts.
When I thought further about the question though, my feelings about the issue got more complicated. How sexy are the females of World Cup soccer, a sport where the women are fierce, fast, strong and covered in mud?
Well, if men find that sexy, how much better that is than the media-generated ideal of fragile bunny beauty, a mere willow wisp, toppling over from the weight of her surgically enhanced breasts?
ESPN seems to think that strong women are sexy, or at least their magazine’s 2011 Bodies We Want issue capitalizes on this new direction in women’s sex appeal, with its photo spread of modestly posed nude photos of top ranked athletes, women and men, showing off just how rippling a woman’s abs can be.
The bodies on display are, indeed, beautiful. And if we women are killing themselves trying to live up to some mythical beauty ideal, wouldn’t it be nicer if the ideal were not quite so mythical, and instead something real?
I feel certain that Hope Solo is not photo-enhanced for television while she is playing soccer matches. And though I will never play World Cup soccer, I can aspire to be my strongest self.
The only thing stopping me from my own rippling set of abs is the sit-ups I don’t do (okay, and maybe chocolate cake). The strong, tough, active woman ideal is far more attainable than anything we see in Playboy or Vogue because it is less constricted in its definition and is healthier, both physically and mentally
Sex Sells
Most of us have heard this phrase so many times, we no longer question its veracity, especially when it comes to sports. As the popular thinking goes, if a female athlete wants to succeed in the endorsement game, she should be willing to trade on her body and her looks first, her athletic talent second.
Just take a glance in the rearview mirror. Over the past 15 years, some of the female athletes who have won biggest in the race for sponsors are Danica Patrick, Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova.
Will sex appeal always supersede achievement?
Before we try to answer that, we need to ask ourselves a few more: Does sex really sell now? How do we know for sure? What if I told you it doesn’t?
What if I told you there is research to the contrary? As in, research showing that consumers, when deciding whether to buy a sports-related product, respond more to advertisements that portray female athletes as athletes.
Because that’s exactly what studies have shown. Each time a female athlete is pictured in a sexualized way, it diminishes the perception of her athletic ability.
This perception is true for men, too: When you see a sexualized picture of a male athlete, say David Beckham modeling underwear or Tom Brady wearing Uggs, your subconscious tends to put a little black mark next to his athletic endeavors.
Doubt creeps in where none might have existed before, and you begin to question Beckham’s soccer skills or Brady’s superiority as a quarterback.
Even though this kind of marketing can undercut both genders, the real damage has been done on the women’s side, because nearly all of our popular, mainstream representations of female athletes play up their off-the-field appeal, with performance taking a backseat.
In light of the research conducted by academics in recent years, just think of the negative effects these marketing images have had on how we view women’s sports.
It goes a long way toward explaining why a highly successful female athlete can often feel like Sisyphus, pushing the rock up the hill only to watch it roll back down. The sports world is still mostly operating as if bikinis on soccer players and slinky dresses on tennis stars are where the money is.
Changes are coming, providing a glimpse of how female athletes might be marketed in the future. We will see a wider range of women as endorsers, rather than just a select handful, those traditionally deemed the sexiest and prettiest, within narrow parameters.
