Sex, Drugs and Babes in Booty Shorts

If that doesn’t get your attention, congratulations. You are less prurient than 99.9 % of the world at large.

Maybe it is just that I am in a cynical mood. I’m sick, I haven’t been sleeping well and I have much more personal issues to roll around in my head than what I am about to write about. But I think it may be more than that. That there is some point that needs to be made and that I, in my infinite hubris, am the one who should make it.

What is this about? Well, a marijuana advocate, radio talk show dude and blogger (amongst other things, he’s a busy guy) who goes by the name “Radical” Russ Belville wrote a blog piece titled Is it NORML to be sexist?

It is a fairly cogent piece that examines the inequity of the ratio of men to women in the marijuana culture at large. It also asks  if the babes in booty shorts that are popping up like mushrooms at related industry events, and the more traditional babes in almost nothing with a staple in their navel in the various related publications, are hurting the quest for legitimacy and legalization that the movement is all about.

I didn’t really find anything offensive in the piece. It was well thought out and as far as I know statistically correct. He tells a little story about some putz (my word of the month) in a leadership position that posted a graphic on his Facebook page that was apparently highly offensive and had something to do with striking a woman, epithets and the word vagina.

I tried to get to the graphic so I could show you all — and because I am NOT less prurient than 99.9% of the public at large –  but, alas, it has either been taken down or hidden behind the veil of a private profile. And I’m not friending the guy to see if it is still there. Facebook is rife enough without deliberately adding putzes.

At any rate, there was a kerfuffle in leadership and the man was asked to either remove the offending image or to dissassociate his personal Facebook activities with his NORML involvement. Reasonable compromise. Much more reasonable than a lot of places I’ve worked would have offered. He didn’t think so, however.

The putz had a free speech hissy fit and swore to get them and their little dog too. Which isn’t all that surprising. Counterculture type movements draw both the best society has to offer and the people society wishes would get abducted by aliens permanently. All political movements are like that, but the ones that are fighting these types of battles have that phenomena in spades.

Russ Belville’s take on this was:

“I’m shocked, though, that it came to all this.  How is it that male tokers who wish to be public leaders of a marijuana movement can’t understand how institutionalized sexism holds us back politically?  Does our outlaw counterculture and male/female imbalance just shelter us from recognizing the sexism that the mainstream’s been addressing and correcting over the past three decades, or does it actively foster an environment of sexism?”

Which are good questions to ask. And obviously means that Mr. Belville is far from some sort of “It’s a guy thing” quasi-sexist philistine that should be taken out back and beat into submission with some Juicy pants. On the contrary, he is reasonably thoughtful and articulate.

I point the above out because I found his article via an article titled No, it’s Not NORML to be Sexist…but Thanks for Asking on another marijuana advocacy blog. Which caused no small amount of confusion on my part.  I read her scathing response and then read his piece…and I had to check twice to make sure she and I had read the same blog article.

There is some sort of basic disconnect happening between the two of them and in my cynical state I’m assuming it is…well…if I tell you what my assumption is I’ll get hate mail and I’m not in the mood so I’ll leave that out.

The opinion less likely to get me hate mail is that this whole thing is more about their understanding of the word objectification. They are both throwing it around like confetti but what they are really talking about is exploitation.

No one can seriously argue that the babes in booty shorts and babes with staples in their navels aren’t being objectified. Of course they are. That’s the whole point. They are used as visual representations of what is sexually appealing.  To get men’s limbics going so they are in a mood to buy things. One of the synonyms for objectify is “embody”.  And that is what these images and girls do…they embody a concept. Namely that whatever the product is, it is sexy.

In their back and forth in the comments section Russ Belville asks who put a gun to their heads and Beth Mann, the author of the second article, responds:

“Who put a gun to these women’s heads? Who MADE them pose for these ads? The world in which we live! Don’t you see that women have little recourse? They HAVE to buy into the male paradigm in order to survive. Our society is tailor-made to please men.”

Which is where it all breaks down for me. I understand what she is trying to say, and she is right that our society still has a long way to go before sexism is eliminated but this? This is buying into victim culture.Which is every bit as dangerous and damaging to the collective psyche of women as the culture’s tendency to objectify. Also it is just the flip side of the coin to the notion that women are evil temptresses that should cover all their bits or suffer the consequences.

On the one hand we have various fundamentalist religious groups that stomp all over female sexuality as evil and bad and to be hidden. On the other hand we have various feminist subsets that see depictions of female sexuality and the women who engage in them as evidence of their victimhood. In short, it is either the Devil or Society to blame.

Oy.

I have spent the majority of my adult life working with and around geeks. You have not encountered sexism until you have been female, reasonably attractive, and surrounded by IT geeks. These men have a tendency to believe that they are too smart to be sexist. Which they will tell you in the same breath that they tell you that because you are female you aren’t as good at logic, higher maths, spatial tasks and other geeky things. No offense, they say, not your fault. You just were born a girl.

This is always good for lots of eye-rolly fun and, when you are in a snarky mood, challenging them to a Rubik’s cube timed solving competition.

Now, if it were true that society could somehow force me into buying into the male paradigm of what I am good for… there would be pictures of me in booty shorts somewhere selling crap. Because I could have pulled off a pair of booty shorts well into my 30s. I also have the American breasts to fill out a bikini top. But there are no such pictures and I did no such thing. Why? Because I have valued my brain above my sex appeal my whole life.

I like being desired. For my body. There is something to be said for the animalistic side of our natures. But anyone who didn’t also appreciate my brain? Wasn’t getting anywhere near the thing that housed it. And they couldn’t pay me enough to pose for pictures of scantily clad me.

At some point we as women need to take responsibility for our own choices. Those women who are wearing the booty shorts and caused all this sturm und drang are being objectified, no doubt. What they aren’t being is exploited. Unless they are exploiting themselves. Because they chose their fate. They could have chosen differently. I certainly did. And my generation had it a little rougher in that department than the current crop.

To blame society is to be guilty of considering women unable to stand up for themselves. It is to relegate them to the roles of children and victims. It makes them people that need others to fight for them. Thanks but no thanks. I can fight my own battles. I have every day for decades. Society will not change until we start taking responsibility for giving into it. Because we are also responsible for how things are. Every choice we make dictates what the future will look like for us.

In short, if we don’t want to drown in a sea of booty shorts? We need to quit putting them on for money.

(ADDED: As for the issue of whether or not it hurts or helps the legalization of marijuana…I’d say it isn’t helpful. And that both the men and women involved in perpetrating it ought to step back from their scrutiny of their balance sheets –because really, it is all about money– and realize that the political ramifications are more important. )