Now, wait just a freakin’ minute here…
I’m on the Facebook when I see this article [new link about it here] about a campaign for gender equality by Swiss organization Terre Des Femmes. It’s called: Don’t measure a woman’s worth by her clothes.
Take a really good look there at the units of measure for a woman’s worth. From “prude” to “whore,” a woman’s worth is apparently taken in units relating to how much sex she has, or wants to have, or wants to look like she’s having, or whatnot.
At first glance, you might think this is a great idea. I mean, really. Just because a woman wears her neckline really low doesn’t make her a slut! Seriously. Dude. Even sluts sometimes where ’em up to the neck. And it’s not just the sluts and whores who like really high heels. Good girls wear them, too. Am I right?
How about we start a campaign against measuring a woman’s worth in units of sexual propensity? How about we stop talking about women who have a lot of sex as whores and sluts and start talking about them as people? How about we stop disparaging women who don’t have a lot of sex as prudish, or teases, and start talking about them as people?
Their tape measure is wrong. All wrong. A woman’s worth has nothing to do with those standards, regardless of the clothes she wears. This campaign does nothing to combat the idea that women who like sex are sluts and women who don’t are prudes. It escalates it, by telling us that prude, tease, slut, and whore are on the “woman” measuring tape!
Idiots.
Do they not see that? Any young girl looking at these pictures is well aware that they are being judged as women, as humans, by how sexual they are. They can wear their hemlines as high as they like, knowing full well they may be judged by it…not on how smart they are, how kind they are, or how giving, but by how much sex they’re likely to be having.
Units of worth for women are not related to sex. Words like smart, talented, and kind would do. And for this stupid campaign, on the low end, they could have used words like brainless and trashy.
If they wanted to say that women showing their bodies to the world has nothing to do with their value as humans, they missed the mark. Instead, they’ve just shown us that they think of women in terms of how sexual they are. And that’s okay with them, so long as we don’t use their clothing as the yardstick.