One of the lessons of the world my mom had to teach me when I was young was why men were allowed to walk around with their shirts off and women weren't (the question stemmed from seeing men jogging or doing yard work without their shirts on.) I couldn't have been more than five at the time, but I remember my mom's reply, "We just can't. It's against the law."
I'm not proposing that women be allowed to walk around without their shirts off, but the whole idea of what is acceptable for women to wear and how what women wear directly effects how people perceive them is such an interesting topic to me.
On VH1's show Tough Love, one of the contestants gives up her job as a go-go dancer in order to please a man she is interested in. Later in the season, she admits that her career goal is becoming a Playmate and is afraid of telling her mother.
Some would argue that women being able to dress scantily and pose nude is empowerment. The key to this argument is choice, which I am all for in all aspects because, honestly, who likes being told what to do? But this idea is still hard for me to accept for myself. If it is indeed empowerment (which I don't think anyone will ever agree), it implies that I can get what I want only through my ability to be physically appeasing.
And I'm not saying that men don't get ahead because of their attractive qualities, because studies have shown that more attractive people in general are favored more. But, if a man chooses to pose nude he isn't judged the same way a woman is, and it is not assumed that he poses nude because he has no brains to accomplish anything else.
So, I am not judging women who aspire to goals like the woman from Tough Love, nor am I saying that women should have to cover up. But, I just wish people would drop the whole empowerment spiel, and stop choosing how to judge a person based on their sex.
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