An Experiment In Internet Linkage Or My Blogs are Fucking

Today's post is a hyperlink footnote.

APA and the Sexualization of Psychologists

This morning I logged on to my computer at work to find this headline: Sexed-up images in media hurt young girls: study . The above picture was the picture for the article. The caption of the picture was "Playboy Playmates line up on the runway at the Playboy Fashion Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, 2003. Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women, a study in the US has warned."

So let me get this straight -- a new psychological study (why I'm pissed off at the news report language) was issued by the American Psychological Association about media images of grown women playing adolescents harming adolescents and AP chooses to show a picture of Playboy Playmates at a Playboy Fashion Show? Butt none of them look remotely adolescent to me. I guess the media just does pictures to get men to ogle and not read what nonsense is being published, because of course men are such drooling, testosterone laden heathens that throwing up a picture of Playboy Playmates will disconnect our brain and prevent us from any logical thought or critique of what is being said.

Fortunately, my synapses that would otherwise prevent me from maintaining logical thought are still intact because I eroded completely any arousal from a Playboy Playmate by constant guilt ridden masturbation sessions as an adolescent, from which of course I dutifully repented and have been forgiven, thus leaving my intellectual capabilities in tact.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for those poor unfortunate girls who try to take math tests in swimsuits. As set forth in the article, college age women were given a swimsuit to try on and hang out in for ten minutes while they were given a math test. Another group of women were given sweaters to wear. The swimsuit wearing women did worse on the math test. The same test was replicated with guys and we did equally well with swim suits and sweaters, although there was no indication that the test was tried with guys taking a math test in a room full of women in swim suits -- although I can predict the results of that one. The study went on to say (Page 26 of the .pdf) that this test proved that the reason women performed so poorly in math is because they were too worried about how they looked: "Chronic attention to physical appearance leaves fewer cognitive resources available for other mental and physical activities." So here in great psychological language is the prototype of the dumb hot blonde -- it isn't that she is dumb, it is that she has just applied all of her cognitive resources into looking hot.

I just have to ask -- do these people read what they write? Do they understand the underlying implications? If I called someone a dumb blonde, I'd be execrated as a sexist bastard, but they can tell women all over the planet that if you care too much about how you look it makes you dumb. All I need to be a sexist asshole is a PhD in psychology and be female.

Of course, this isn't really a scientific study as the news article (and the new release) suggests, but a report by a cabal of women with an agenda. Like my blog (with the exception of yours truly), not a heterosexual male in sight (or homosexual guy for that matter). Unlike my blog, which would welcome contrasting points of view, the "report" is a one sided recounting of research projects that had, at least peripherally, been favorable to the writer's viewpoints. I'm no psychologist, but I know that the views in the report itself conflict and don't make sense.

Prime Example:

The Report's Premise is summarized as follows: The proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harming girls' self-image and healthy development.

Support:

Page 7: It is evident that the lyrics of some recent popular songs sexualize women or refer to them in highly degrading ways, or both. Several songs are listed -- most are rap songs.

Page 28: Black female stars in the film, music and fashion industry are now as thin as their White Counterparts.

Page 31: Black adolescent girls exposed to sexualized rap videos expressed greater acceptance of teen dating violence than those not exposed.

Page 36: It appears that exposure to sexually enticing rap videos fostered perceptions of diminished positive traits and stronger negative traits in Black women in general.

Recommendation:

Page 46: We recommend that psychologists conduct research to: . . .Examine the presence or absence of the sexualization of girls and women in all media but especially in . . . music videos, music lyrics.

Conclusion You Might Come To After Reading this Nonsense:

Black girls, immersed in the rap culture are going to be highly traumatized about their sexualization and have poorer body images than their white counterparts.

What the "Report" Actually Says:

Page 41: Several research studies have explored how girls of color are particularly effective in resisting mainstream notions of female sexuality, femininity, and beauty.

Other portions without fail show that young black females as a whole have a better body image, are more aggressive in maintaining their feminine rights and have an overall more healthy attitude about sex. My God -- what hath Rap Culture wrought?

Alternate theories, alternate viewpoints and contrasting and conflicting studies were not included or even explored. The obvious conclusion is that creating a strong sense of feminine sexuality is healthy, not harmful for young girls. The dysfunction comes from a myopic and limited view of sexuality. We are all sexualized -- had to be to get here, have to continue to be to continue our seed.

I guess the only solace I can take is that the anti-sex task force of women who typed up this report have to be appalled by the picture AP used to run with the story.

Laura Kipnis' Books

I got one of my Christmas presents to myself in the mail today, Laura Kipnis's new book, The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy and Vulnerability. Any title with female, dirt, sex, envy and vulnerability has to belong in my library. (You can download an interview with Laura Kipnis on Audible.com or just read about it for free here. ) I just skimmed around in the book and found wonderful quotes like this:

I'm talking about gender progress and all the impediments to it, needless to say, since when it comes to the female situation, contradictions speckle the landscape, like ingrown hairs after a bad bikini wax.

I'm looking forward to the weekend when I have more time to read all my new books.

I first found Laura Kipnis browsing in the library and found her polemic, Against Love, the only book I've ever read that spoke out in favor of adultery and against love. Kipnis had about 200 pages filled with paragraphs like this one:

When monogamy becomes labor, when desires is organized contractually, with accounts kept and fidelity extracted like labor from employees, with marriage a domestic factory policed by means of rigid shop-floor discipline designed to keep the wives and husbands and domestic partners of the world choke-chained to the status quo machinery -- is this really what we mean by a "good relationship"?

The thing I like best about Kipnis' books is that even commonly held beliefs are challenged head on with nothing taken for granted. Too much of my life has been spent just accepting things as I have been told them. Nothing should be so sacred as to avoid scrutiny.