What Ginger said. Summary: Men criticizing Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, showing normal-looking women instead of emaciated heroin addicts (which, granted, is almost certainly no more than a publicity gimmick, but I'll try to be charitable because the results, if not the intentions, are good). "If I want to see chunky women, I'll go to Taste of Chicago" is a direct quote, and a fairly good representative of the caliber of critique they level. They also seem to feel that advertisement should be fake, and that women are no more objectified than men. I call BULLSHIT. You see average-to-downright-homely guys on commercials for anything from beer to cars (less so for expensive-type cars), or anything else: but how often are the women anything less than stick-thin supermodel types? About as often as we'd see guys who could actually scare dogs with their faces. Hardly parity, I feel. Moreover, advertising may shape our view of the world more than the real world does, especially with a culture raised on TV as much as this one. The unrealistic expecatations it saddles people with is probably a good portion of the reason that people in the western civilized world experience such tremendous senses of unfulfillment. Damn, I need more shit!

Now, it's not like me to froth at the mouth when people show women their proper place: as pleasant-to-look-at, subservient sex objects, of course. Did I forget baby-making and cooking? It's worked for thousands of years, and there's no reason to spoil the fun now.

Ok, but seriously, what bothers me is that no matter how pissed off I get at men and women alike for perpetuating the system, I a) have no idea what to do about it and b) don't really, when it comes down to it, have the foggiest clue of what it's like to be a woman. Sure, I can gather some experience second-hand, but I wouldn't presume to know what it's like to be in battle just from watching Saving Private Ryan or talking to a veteran. It's impossible for me to actually fathom, on an intrinsic level, what it's like to grow up as a girl, constantly bombarded with messages of what to be like to please my man. Or what it's like to be black, to have people assume you're a threat, to be subjected not just to out-in-the-open racist hatred, but the completely subconscious discrimination of mass society. I don't know what it's like to be poor, or handicapped, or homosexual - I'm a goddamn educated, middle-class white straight male, and every single break in life goes my way. And, fuck, we're the vanishing minority, but we still get it all. What's up with that? It pisses me off for all the people less fortunate than me, but on a selfish level it pisses me off for me, because my hatred of the system and my dedication to changing it can never be as genuine as from someone who knows what it's like to suffer, not just in the gravest injuries, but in the million tiny indignities of every day. I don't have shit in the way of authenticity - but fuck it, I'm still mad as hell.