So this is Women's Lib?

[This is from Friday, February 3 -- delayed post]

If you have been watching Fox News anytime over the past 24 hours you could not have missed its obsessive coverage (or should I say lack of coverage) of the third annual Lingerie Bowl.
Now, I won't even bother to ask the obvious question, "What is so newsworthy about the flippin' panty parade?" -- because that has been made perfectly clear to me by every male colleague in my office. A titillating story is a titillating story, apparently.

What does interest me is how well the "Bowl" illustrates what I think is the most fundamental flaw in feminist thinking. By defining feminism's success on its ability to enable women to somehow become like men, very bright women often fail to acknowledge what would otherwise be a very logical boundary between what is mobilizing and what is mortifying. Rather than defining success in terms that seek to create opportunities for women to become more fulfilled as women, modern feminism (unlike the original feminists of the 1920s) more often rely on women to outplay men at their own game using the same terms, particulary when it comes to sex.

The outcome isn't just the masculinization of feminine sexuality, but it also has the added adverse effect of emasculating men who have undoubtedly become increasingly passive toward sexually dominant women who leave little to be discovered or desired. It also perpetuates a growing disinterest in "traditional" sex in favor of exotic, and often demeaning forms of kinky or violent sex that takes the person almost wholly outside of the act and leaves pleasure as the only object. Take this tasteful column from ESPN's "Page 2" about last year's Bowl which describes this man's boredom with the lack of stimulation offered by the 7-on-7 tackle game of half nude women:

"As it turned out, the Lingerie Bowl was about as titillating as tossing a football through a tire hanging from a backyard tree. Suprisingly, the football was almost decent, in a Pop Warner/XFL-ish sort of way. On the other hand, the sex appeal was sorely lacking. Blame it on the player outfits, which simply weren't skimpy enough. I was counting on thongs. Tassels. A smattering of pasties. In short, everything a reasonable person might expect in return for a cover charge. Yet both teams were decked out in short-shorts and what appeared to be Kevlar-plated push-up bras -- not bad, but nothing compared to Janet Jackson's Super Bowl halftime number."

Naomi Wolf called it years ago and expands on this phenomenon in the Porn Myth (linked in a January Post below). But I still wonder where women went wrong. If a tulip were to aspire to become the most tuliplike it could be, why would it define its goals as aquiring all of the attributes of a tree or a shrub? Likewise, why would women who desire to become as wholly woman as they can be aspire to develop characteristics of men? I find the same thing puzzling in the fight for gay marriage because I can never understand why homosexual men and women have any interest in borrowing what is an inherently heterosexual benchmark as their gauge of success, (doesn't that seem illogical?) but then again that is another story.....