From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: you just don't understand (was: control of display ...)
Date: 1 Oct 92 03:13:17 GMT
Organization: University of California, Irvine
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

[Moderator's note: excessive included text trimmed.]

In article <1992Sep28.183340.23060@Veritas.COM> rdh@veritas.COM (Robert Hartman) writes:
>In article <MUFFY.92Sep25152358@remarque.berkeley.edu> muffy%remarque.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.berkeley.EDU (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>>In article <19vnthINN7tc@agate.berkeley.edu> rdh@veritas.com (Robert Hartman) writes:
[Re: Janis' comment about "not being allowed" to display all female body
types.]
>It takes effort to recognize when one has internalized one's
>oppression, and it appeared to me that by phrasing it as "we
>aren't allowed" and leaving it at that, that's what might be
>happening.

Again, we are UNABLE TO might be better, but when the money doesn't come 
in for such a project, while Hugh Hefner and Larry Flint rake in
millions, there is indeed a thin line between permission and censure. 

>By what authority aren't "they" allowing it?  What would the
>consequences be for doing it anyway?

A great deal of pressure nowadays comes from the advertising industry.
I've heard of magazines who have lost lucrative ad contracts by
publishing articles about how pretty gray hair can be.  Publishing an
article about the diversity of breasts lost one other mag (read _The
Beauty Myth_ for actual facts) a lucrative ad contract from a plastic
surgery clinic.  Ms. Magazine decided to go adless when they lost a
contract from a cosmetic company (and got chewed on by the company to
boot) because one of the women on their covers wasn't wearing makeup.  A
magazine was forced to run a cover of a model instead of the
distinguished older woman who was also featured in the issue because of
the same reasons.  

In regards to censorship, it does exist regardless of what we all like
to think about our Constitution, and it influences what we see.  When a
group of students put up signs in New York subway trains instructing
illiterate people how to put a condom on an erect penis, the Transit
Authority took them down, calling them "obscene."  Adjacent ads for
Penthouse magazine went untouched; indeed, they were paid for by
Penthouse TO the Transit Authority.  THIS is freedom of speech? 

>> ... but it comes down to the fact that most of the people in our
>>society don't want to look at *all* nude women, just those who
>>conform to the current standard of "beauty" or "attractiveness" -
>>slender, with large firm breasts, etc.  If only one view of women is
>>being shown, it is indeed not an expression of the sexuality of women
>>but of the sexuality of those people who wish to view that one sort
>>of woman.
>
>I understand this completely.  However, if women were to publish an
>alternative to Playboy that they felt better portrayed their beauty in
>their diversity, no one would put them in jail for it.  And who knows,
>such a publication just might succeed!  There is a wide variety in porn
>out there these days.  Too bad it's all such commodified junk.

This is similar to saying, "If a black person gets to be CEO, no one is
going to put them in jail."  The advertisers and the money are simply
not going to go into such a project.  This would simply mean that there
would be, amidst all the trash and grease, one lone little magazine,
purchasable at probably one tiny little alternative bookstore per city,
that would have something else to say -- and that would get drowned out
in the cacophony of garbage.  We're not looking to just take off our
shirts and vent off steam, and saying that's all it is is trivializing.
We're talking about a major social shift that will be necessary before
such things are possible.  Again, I beg you to read _The Beauty Myth_
and _The Mismeasure of Women_.

>Women over 30 ... women over 50 ... this exaggerated attribute
>... that exaggerated attribute ... it's all quite lurid.
>
>If those jerks can publish and sell that junk, I can't see why women
>couldn't be successful at portraying themselves as they see themselves,
>or as they want to be seen.

Are you serious?  If "those jerks" can get all that money for their
magazines -- we're talking a BILLION dollar industry, here -- then you
can't see why women can't be successful at scraping up another billion
dollars and mounting a massive campaign for our bodies?  Where is this
money going to come from?  I am a graduate student in linguistics; I
don't even have a TAship for the spring quarter.  I'm totally without
support.  Women all around the country and the globe earn pittance 
on the male dollar.  Where the hell is all this money supposed to come
from?

The establishment "jerks" can publish and sell that junk precisely
becase current values are set up to allow them to do it easily and
lucratively.  Appreaciate this fact, please!

Regards,
Janis C.


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