It’s a very loaded word ‘sexy’. And I’ve been thinking about it since reading a post on Yes Means Yes, about striptease aerobics (admittedly a topic I know nothing about). Jacinda, who wrote the post, enjoys the classes, they make her feel sexy, and she’s trying to unpack that.
To be seen as sexy by someone else is something that can happen regardless of gender. And any one can feel sexy as in horny. But it is women’s role that means that being desired (or desireable) is something that you feel. Women’s sexuality or our own desiring, is deliberately muddled with being desired.
Which isn’t to say that I think it’s anti-feminist to go to a pole dancing class. Because my politics are not about individual’s actions, and if people enjoy pole dancing classes they enjoy pole dancing classes. But I think feminists should be extremely critical of institutions that reinforce this dynamic of women as desired rather than desiring. It underpins so much of our ideas about sex and rape.
But that’s not what motivated me to post (for the second time in a week). What I wanted to respond to was her conclusion:
What I do struggle with, though, is the idea of sexiness. When we say these classes make women feel sexy how exactly are we defining that word? Does sexy simply mean men want me or does sexy mean I love my body because it’s healthy and strong and because I can have fun with it doing things like these over-the-top dances.
I find the first option much much less problematic than the second. Because in attempt to re-frame ‘sexy’ she’s actually reinforcing really narrow views of acceptable (let alone sexy) bodies. Because not everyone’s body is healthy and strong, and not everyone can do any particular dance move.
That’s not a better way of understanding the meaning of ‘sexy’, it’s a worse one. Firstly because it’s dishonest, as it hides the actual dynamic of the way women are framed as sex. And secondly because society has already slammed the door on many sorts of bodies being sexy, and this idea sits with the back to the door and tries to keep it shut.
There is no shame in feeling good because you feel desired, and there’s no shame in loving your body for what it can do. But the second is no more a liberatory political position than the first.
Wait, so men can’t be sexy-as-in-desirable in the Patriarchy? Well, I’d better tell all those dudes at the gym, they don’t seem to have gotten the memo.
Men _do_ have pressure to be sexy, just in different ways. Just because you don’t see men starving themselves to fit into a size-zero dress doesn’t mean they don’t do strange things in order to be more attractive to women, and have befuddling concepts of “sexiness” associated with them.
I don’t think that the author of the original striptease post was trying to reframe all women’s sexiness as requiring healthy and strong bodies. I see that quote as aligning with your own quote in which you say: “if people enjoy pole dancing classes they enjoy pole dancing classes.” When I read the original post, I read it as the author saying ‘I like pole dancing classes. It makes me feel healthy and strong. I happen to like that.’
The most important part of the original post for me is that the author is attempting to parse out which feelings are her own– which feelings SHE likes–and which are imposed on her by the male gaze. And I think that is a wonderful first step toward personal sexual liberation.
Also, Ariel Levy’s “Female Chauvinist Pig” provides a great discussion of why so many women these days think that seemingly oppressive acts, such as pole dancing or flashing to a “Girls Gone Wild” camera, seem empowering to them.
A minor quibble. I don’t know of any countries that has *dresses* in size zero.
Size 4 in Canada, 6 in the US, 8 in the UK and 9 in Japan is the smallest available size for someone about 5’5″ (petite sizes may be smaller, if there is any at this particular location).
They equal size 0 in ‘everything else’ (well bottoms, not tops) from skirts to jeans, in the US. I know because I was puzzled by it myself at first (I am that size, and well, new to those size conventions).
I’m not sure why the difference there, just makes it more confusing. Much like shoe sizes.
And I’d echo what you say about the rest. Men do have pressure. Given my size, it was doubly applied to me. I had to eat more and “build those muscles”, I was equally pushed towards it by men and women, boys and girls my age. I remained uninterested (and quite far from that purported ideal), but the pressure was there.
The US has plenty of dresses in size 0. Just Google it. My sister used to be a 2 and she had friends who were 0s.
http://www.vintagedesignerclothing.com/dresses.html#Size%200
How small is size 0 for dresses?
I’ve never seen smaller than 00 in pants
Or is a dress size 0 just the equivalent of say, pants or skirts size 0?
I bought dresses that were custom made, and single size (small in Japan, their size chart says its equivalent to a 9 dress size in Japan), none with numbers, so my experience is limited.
The site you linked has size 0 for other clothes presented as size 0 for dresses. Given the measurements of said dresses, its evident.
Well, googling it, I’m weirded out that there’s such a discrepancy in sizing, because yes, there apparently is smaller than size 0. I don’t know what they call it for clothes that are not dresses.
Maia,
Great post.
Schala,
Ultimately, this will be Maia’s decision, but I think you’re seriously sidetracking this conversation in a way that’s obnoxious and damaging to the post’s intent. I don’t really care what your waist measures, or what size dress you can or can’t wear — and further, that discussion really has nothing to do with social construction of sexiness or women as passive rather than active.
I’m sorry for being off-topic like that. I just had a WTF moment looking it up.
I mostly agree with the OP, though my position is awkward compared to most women.
Not because of my transition, but my dislike for sexy. I just plain don’t like being or feeling sexy. I want to be and look/feel cute. If my (cute) clothes appeal to people, great, but my goal is not to appear sexually desireable.
Edit: I shortened my post above and removed all unneeded personal details.
MVO wrote:
But although that probably wasn’t what she was “trying” to do, I think that what she wrote can definitely be read that way. She contrasted two definitions of “sexy,” and the one she prefers is actually the more exclusive of the two. That’s worth thinking about, even if we credit her for not having intended to go that way.
Silenced is Foo – I think you’ve missed the distinction I was making. Men can be sexy as in being desired and desireable. But ‘feeling sexy’ is something that is almost exclusively for women. You don’t hear men talking about walking down the street and ‘feeling sexy’. Women internalise being desirable to something that they can experience, men do not (Note about this paragraph, it’s all coming off as too simplistic, I’m not talking about individual men and women so much but about masculinity and feminitnty and the roles that people play in society).
MVO – I think where I disagree with you is that I don’t think we can tease out our authentic desires and male gaze in many ways. While I think we can tease out things we do but don’t enjoy, I think a lot of what we enjoy will end up being shaped by ideas about women’s sexuality in this society.
I agree that her intention wasn’t necessarily to imply that ‘feeling sexy’ required being healthy and strong (although I think she did). My point was, as Ampersand says, whatever people intend, if we try and resolve contradictions by slipping out of them rather than living with them, we make things worse.
To me it reminds me of the common practice among young women I know on the left who hate their bodies and have issues with food to reframe those to make them about political or health issues. This is a far more pernicious way of reframing food and body issues, because it adds another layer on top of what was already there, and it then becomes harder individually and collectively to get at their root. And on top of that so much more ideas get brought in.
Mandolin – thanks
Schala – I second Mandolin’s moderation points.
I’d think it be fairly easy to find anecdotal evidence that cross-dressers, who do and have always identified as men, like to feel sexy. Sure, it’s when dressed as women, but more importantly, as being men.
Also, its very criticized, like anything seen to be something for women only, if a man would say he felt sexy the way a woman does. Note the extreme reluctance the average teenage male would have towards make-up, or dresses if someone proposed he wore one. That’s not because he hates them either (he might, but that’s an excuse, since he never tried it). It’s fear of being dragged down the social ladder to its very bottom. Heck even most cross-dressers have to contend with this, and most stay safely indoors where their social status can stay intact.
I’ll keep it at that not to derail.
I’d think it be fairly easy to find anecdotal evidence that cross-dressers, who do and have always identified as men, like to feel sexy. Sure, it’s when dressed as women, but more importantly, as being men.
Given Maia’s parentheses, I believe this would be an example of men choosing to take on a feminine role in desirability being internalized, not an example of the masculine experience including internalizing being desirable.
That simply dressing as a woman is enough to drag someone “down the social ladder to its very bottom”, I think this also serves as an example of misogyny played out on the bodies of men who chose to adopt feminine gender markers, not a reason why those gender markers and the internalization of the underlying messages of them aren’t, in and of themselves, problematic.
Note that while women are sometimes considered culturally and socially lesser in certain areas, a man who willfully dons feminine attire is outright considered having committed high treason, and is considered not as a woman, but as someone not even human. Often considered fair game for brutal treatment, including by the police.
Well still, they are men, identify as men, and recognize most often that wearing clothes is a costume, not an identity (some certainly do consider it so, but they’re not the majority, I’m talking about those that don’t anyway). They may not have internalized it as an experience of their gender, but it is THEM feeling sexy, not some possible woman they thought about.
It wasn’t an experience I had in childhood, to be considered too dainty or pretty to do heavy lifting, but I still have internalized it. I know I can have my brother do it in my place, and I knew long before I transitioned (this is just an example).
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I do consider the messages problematic, I didn’t mean to say “It’s ok because some men also feel that way”, I meant to counter the “only women can feel that way” thing, though, because it’s not true. An estimated 10% of men cross-dress occasionally, most doing so in private unbeknownst to anyone but themselves (even if married). An estimated 0.1% of physical males (not intersex) transition, of that 25% get surgery – the proportion of those who transition is far from reflecting the proportion of those who cross-dress.
I’d say everyone internalizes most messages, if they hear them. And yes, I internalized messages about periods, even if I never could get any. They apply those they see as fitting their situation and circumstances. One of the few messages I applied to myself in the past was: don’t do feminine things, or it will cause you to be beaten up (again). It’s no longer relevant to me, so it’s not applied, but I certainly know about it, and how damaging it can be.
I hope this isn’t off-topic or a derail. My point being everyone will internalize messages and apply those that apparently might benefit their survival* (there is choice there, which messages are important, which are not, and why – all vary by individual, even in the same environment and circumstances).
* Not limited to life or death matters. It includes things you know will make you more favored with some people or others, less likely to get small injuries, get into trouble, get dirty, etc.
The best remedy to internalizing messages is to provide positive ones, that are within reach for most people, not containing any -ism, and to not push our own messages on others. For our own messages, well we can deal with them without pushing them on others and perpetuating the cycle. The media is included in ‘our’. The media needs to back off the sensationalism. This would contribute to remove the enforcement of gender roles.
Deoridhe – Yes – I think that emphasises my argument rather than detracts from it.
And my other argument was that ‘feeling sexy’ is always going to be problematic. Because if you parse it it makes no sense ‘feeling attractive’ – how can you feel inside you how others perceive you to be even if they’re not actually perceiving you at that moment? But it does make perfect sense and is something that many women feel, within a culture that ties up women’s sexuality with being desired. Trying to get away with that problematicness by reframing the feeling, is very unlikely to work, both because the origin is still there. And because I don’t think in this case the fact the frame is narrower than the original is coincidence.
Schala – I think you’re missing my point. The fact that men cross-dress in order to ‘feel sexy’ emphasises the gendered nature of ‘feeling sexy’.
I heard some women frame it as arousing themselves, as well. That wearing sexy lingerie made them feel more aroused (rather than or on top of arousing to others).
Even in women’s-only communities, like a certain well-known Music Festival, women going there might want to dress sexy, even if they’re not lesbian or bisexual (ie they may be married, straight but not looking, or any other reason they might not want to arouse others).
People often dress in certain ways because of how it makes them themselves feel, and not some hypothetical other. Or maybe its one-upmanship with a clique of friends to see who has the best fashion sense.
A parallel would be me and cuteness. I dress because I like looking cute. Not just because I like the attention I get for it (it actually scares me, since I’m fairly self-conscious). Even if I lived alone in the middle of nowhere, I’d probably wear a pretty dress once in a while, just because I can, and it probably would make me feel cuter.
Schala – that is exactly my point. In a society where women’s sexuality is framed around being desired and desireable, many women will experience their sexuality in terms of being desired and desireable.
I think feminists need to collectively challenge that model of women’s sexuality. But on an individual level your sexuality is your sexuality, and I’m certainly not suggesting women shouldn’t find dressing in a certain way arousing. But what I am saying is trying to reframe that experience of sexuality, rather than living with the contradiction is highly problematic.
I agree. I said as much in one of my posts.
I don’t think it would be possible to eliminate all problems with medias, or image or sexuality for as long as we’re able to think and speak freely. Though I think its a worthwhile goal to minimize its impact.
I read on wikibooks that since the 1930s, men value women 40% more than they did on their looks, and women value men 80% more than they did on their looks. That’s the increase though, men still valued women more on their looks back in the 1930s (than women valued men for same).
It says the parity was reached in 1996 for women valuing men versus 1939 for men valuing women, over looks. In short, in 1930, men valued women on looks *less* than women now value men on looks. That’s hard to imagine for me (but then I was born in the 80s).
The purported cause of the increase? The media. People in the 1930s didn’t see examples of ideal beauty all the time just opening a TV. But now we do. Medias has gone too far too fast, without regards to its consequences. Much like we didn’t care about the environment and such just a couple decades back, but now we figured it was a real problem.
I think feminists need to collectively challenge that model of women’s sexuality.
I personally think a large part of this is re-visioning women as desirers more than desirees, which is difficult when “the media” wants to make sales and most women have internalized that if they are a desirer than they have no choice as to whom they desire (see: ‘she’s a slut, so why won’t she sleep with me?’ and other disgusting defenses of rape).
The expectation that desiring means one has no standards actually does exist within messages to men, too, though framed so as to insult his partner’s attractiveness (he wanted sex, and she was all he had, for example). It also disappears the cases of men who are raped by women via vaginal intercourse, since the assumption is “men always want it”. I think the dynamic of “if you desire you have no standards” and “if you are desired, your worth comes from being desirable” both combine to create a truly horrendous situation around sex that fucks us all over, literally and metaphorically.