Okay so, I fucking love Star Trek, I’m watching through the original series rn cuz it’s awesome and was ahead of it’s time for the 60’s, but I always kinda just roll my eyes at all the male gaze-y stuff because hey it was the 60’s and Star Trek has progressed since then and their most recent series, Discovery, has almost no male gaze-y shit and it’s so awesome and all the female characters wear awesome practical uniforms that are just as practical and unsexual as the male uniforms, unlike in the original series, pictured and discussed above, where all the female characters wear little mini dresses with their asses just about hanging out and pantyhose, while the male characters wear practical and unsexual uniforms. And that’s exactly what it was, male gaze-y shit, and I’m honestly disturbed that thousands of people in the notes are hailing objectifying women and exploiting their bodies to be able to get a message across for the male writers. There’s literally hundreds of other ways they could have distracted the Network besides objectifying and exploiting the show’s actresses, but that’s what they went with and look there’s thousands of people on Tumblr hailing and praising that choice as so progressive and positive, that was made by the *male* writers and producers, not the actresses. They could have used vulgar language, they could have had the male uniforms be speedo bottoms with their asses hanging out and visible dick outlines, but they went with sexually objectifying women.
And really, there was so much misogyny against the women in the show behind the scenes, do you think those male writers/producers/executives really gave a fuck about the women on the show who they were exploiting just to be able to say what they want? Take the accounts of Grace Lee Whitney, who played Kirk’s Yeoman but only for the first few episodes. She was sexually assaulted by one of the executives while she was on the show, developed disordered eating and took diet pills and amphetamines out of pressure from the executives to stay skinny and sexy for her roll (according to her autobiography The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy) and the reason she was kicked off the show was a combination of because having two women on the show with with the same hair color was too much (never mind the cast having like a dozen dudes all with brunette hair) and also wanting Kirk to be a playboy with a new love interest every episode. But yes please let’s talk about how great and progressive it was that they objectified and exploited the actresses on the show for their own gains.
I mean can we talk about how fucked up it is that everyone in the notes is quick to throw women under the bus by praising sexually objectifying women and exploiting women’s bodies so long as it’s “for a good cause?” The misogyny is real. I see so much of this in “progressive” spaces, throwing women under the bus and being cool with misogyny so long as it can help progress other causes.
Don’t get me wrong, I won’t hold problematic things about the show from the 60’s against the show because again, their modern uniforms are practical and unisex and not male gaze-y, and the show in the 60’s regardless of problematic aspects was still way ahead of it’s time. But let’s praise the original series for the parts of it that really were progressive.
Still, this is my biggest problem with mainstream Tumblr feminism is how it loves to hail and praise sexually objectifying women as progressive and positive. There’s a reason the 60’s original series sexually objectified women but the modern series coming out right now, Discovery, doesn’t, and that’s because sexually objectifying women actually isn’t progressive. The current series, discovery, even manages to portray women with *real* sexual agency who actively express desire and want instead of just being an object to be desired and wanted and manages to do it without objectifying them.
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