Without a standard or a reference by the author to the related article it is hard not to tease kellie with the observational rhetorical question "just who is doing the obsessing here"?

Still, sex IS fairly important. Didn't Maslow have it pretty low down on the hierarchy of needs? Isn't it also sometimes associated with reproduction?

I heard on the radio last night that Larry Flynt wants financial support for the porn industry which is worth I think he said $15 billion a year in the US.

Apparently its being hit by the economic climate - he admits its not in danger of dying out, but still thinks, at least his point seemed to be, hey you guys (and gals) giving out money, don't forget us we're here potentially suffering too, why revenue was down 20 percent last year!

Kellie Bean I can honestly say I have never regared Barbie as a piece of meat - but is that a real earlobe I almost spy in your photo in front of those books?

For some reason Oscar Wilde comes to mind - the way to remove temptation (even obsession perhaps?) is by yeilding to it.

What IS a perv? What IS sexual perversion? Is it variation from the norm? Is it ill health? Imbalance? Injustice?

I have never met a person I haven't partly objectified. I look out from where I see and hear and smell, from the place where my subjective resides, and there they are clearly over there separate from me. They are always objects and the people are always made of meat, albeit meat arranged in various forms, but those forms contain also the possibility and the promise of being more. 

Intelligence is very sexy. 

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 1308 comments) on Thursday, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:27:56 PM

  (0+)

If so, my apologies. 

I thought an intelligent feminist might actually HAVE a considered standard to offer as to when obsession becomes obsession (and harmful to society in the aggregate) rather than enthusiasm or passion or interest.

Young adults in colleage and universities are undergoing rites of passage. They are developing biologically into maturity as they also hopefully seek for intellectual maturity. 

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 1308 comments) on Friday, Jan 9, 2009 at 8:31:35 PM

  (0+)

I read your comments with interest. They were neither rude nor rough. Thanks for engaging the argument.

Kellie

by kellie bean (19 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 8 comments) on Friday, Jan 9, 2009 at 10:44:45 PM

  (0+)

Thank you!  This is what I was unable to get across to my ex-wife in the process of raising our daughter, who - smart and good as she is, and as much as I love her - is now, at 26, about as thorough a Barbie wannabe as possible.  She's probably in for an increasingly difficult time with this as she gets older and it keeps getting harder to live up to the illusion.

 The reason I say your post is incomplete is that although it's not quite as pervasive and may not be as damaging, the Ken stereotype (or G.I. Joe, i.e. Ken with stubble and what looks like a dueling scar) is also out there and can be stifling too.  If a lot of advertising is to be believed, as an American man I am required to be a perpetually 14-year-old, beer-guzzling, pro-sports-addicted idiot.  I started going bald and gray when my daughter was in high school, and it distressed her to no end that I wasn't interested in trying to preserve my scalp's youth by slathering expensive chemicals on my head.

Now I'm having the conversation with our five- and seven-year-old grandsons, over and over, trying to get them to quit thinking in the kind of channelized ways that lead them to shake their heads at half the toys out there and say, "That's for girls!", that causes the one who's seven and in second grade to worry about being fat, no matter how often we tell him he's a healthy kid who happens to have a sturdier body type than average.  It can get entertaining at times. For last year's birthday he received from someone or other some pro wrestler "action figures," and when my wife (not the ex) pointed out that they look just like male exotic dancers he had a fit.  Still, it's seriously unhealthy.

I think that any gender stereotype is ultimately a matched/complementary set of straitjackets, though one may be more choking than the other.  For my grandchildren and the generations beyond them, I'm hoping that we can leave both Barbie and Ken in the same cultural dumpster as racial/ethnic caricatures like the Frito bandito and Little Black Sambo (anyone seen a Sambo's restaurant lately?  No?  Good!) 

by Jim Finley (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 99 comments [42 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Jan 10, 2009 at 9:40:31 PM

  (0+)