but you couldn't, like, see a gay person kissing.
it was alright that i had been catcalled at 12 years old. it was alright that i had been followed and groped at 15. it was okay men were leery and treacherous. it was okay when a man asked me my age and when i said 18, he said, that age is my favorite.
don't you like feeling sexy? i love action movies, but i often have an internal tally of how often a camera will begin at someone's hips and travel to her face only as if by accident. weirdly, you can't show too-much asscrack in the same movie, even if it was the style in the nineties. sort of only apply a tasteful sprinkling of asscrack.
i am wearing a body type that is very easily sexualized. it's a compliment, you'll miss it. it is not his fault, i am told - and then usually with this assurance, someone will compare me to an object. i am, by the way, not using "i become an object" metaphorically. well, you wouldn't wear a precious watch in a dangerous city - i am the watch, in this situation. can you blame a thief for taking a jewel if it was just left out in the open? i think my personhood is the jewel, but sometimes also it is pain. a dog sees a steak. i like this one because it does refer to men as dogs, even if it does literally compare me to a piece of meat (which is, you know, somehow worse than being a dog. at least call me a bitch, babe).
it's inappropriate to show two men kissing, but it's totally normal to hear that "best" age for childbirth is 15. (it's not, by the way. try 20's & 30's. do your fucking reading). and on tv - let's cut from a murder mystery where a woman is shown brutally bloodied, carved into pieces (only pg-13) into a tampon commercial where she runs around, happy and fluttering, refusing to use the word period, white pants abounding. periods: gross, icky. violence, though, is just a gendered currency.
so it's like - you say "can we please treat women like they're people and stop cutting their heads off in advertisements" and then it's like. no actually we needed that woman's bellybutton to sell drain fluid don't like it don't look. and you say "can you please not make every latin person a drug dealer holy shit" and they're like. unfortunately if we don't make the latin person a drug dealer we literally will go rabid. and you say "okay can we at least agree you super don't need to use racist epithets why is this even a conversation we're still having" and they're like. actually my child is a make-a-wish kid and his only wish was that i get to use words that make your skin crawl and if you don't let me use the words it's because you love cancer don't you.
so it's kind of a lost cause. because when something is complicated even a little bit, you find yourself trying to explain that the solution isn't make women cover up, it's that the idea "sexualization of nonconsenting parties is wrong" can also hold hands with the idea "not every expression of fondness is sexual in nature, nor is nonhegemonic sexual expression somehow more inflammatory or inappropriate than its counterpart"- and both of those ideas can also hold hands with "the male gaze is rarely censored despite the massive amounts of societal harm it imposes." but like, that's a big thought. let's just slap "pg-13" on the movie because they actually use the word lesbian. and let's cross our fingers and hope no kid figures out they're lgbt+ before college - otherwise they have access to literally no resources, since even google will censor the results in case they're pornographic. now, if you wanted to know how to hide a body...
when i was a kid i used to keep my eyes on my toes while walking past bra stores, feeling uncomfortable. it was gross to look at ladies, i knew that much. the way the women were posed was... not for me. not even for the people shopping. it was weird. i don't think anyone actually there-for-the-product was like yeah this is inspiring.
and i remember in high school my friends and i were still talking about how uncomfortable we felt in victoria's secret, shuffling our way out into the new england chill. little yellow leaves around our feet. a guy held the door open for us. a few seconds later, he jogged up after us. we were so startled we turned to look. "sorry," he said. "i just wanted to ask how old you all are." we were young then, so we lied and told him we were older. we'd talk about this later - we all thought maybe one of us had dropped our wallet or something. he smiled dolefully. "i just wanted to say you all are fucking beautiful. you have amazing tits on you."
sometimes i wonder. what if one fraction of the effort they put into making sure no gay thing ever occurs onscreen just went into controlling and educating their own fucking population. now wouldn't that be something.
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