The 'Feminist' Reaction

As a rule, I am not one to worry much about excessively sexualized depictions of women. I tend to just accept it. Hell, I even enjoy dressing up once in a while, with the specific purpose of looking more attractive to my boyfriend. In short, I am a very, very bad feminist.

Therefore, I am quite amazed at my reaction when my boyfriend turns on his motorbike racing. What am I reacting to? The girls. Seriously. What do they do? A lot behind the scenes I hope, because all you ever see on screen is some lovely looking young ladies wearing as little as possible, whatever the weather, standing around with stiff, frozen smiles on their faces. This is what I don't care for. There is no way, in my wildest imaginations, I can come up with any reason, however far-fetched, for those outfits. They seem to be designed for the sole purpose of giving men something to look at. For some reason, that makes me uncomfortable.

Similar arguments could be made in media such as film and games, I suppose. Impractical 'armour' for female characters is, after all, not an uncommon issue. BUT in the darkest, wildest corner of my imagination that could be down to self-expression, or allow them to move freely, or something like that.  A female game/film character has to take some initiative to do what they do, so it is not such a leap to imagine they may have been the ones making bad choices in the wardrobe department, too.

So, to try to put my finger on exactly what makes me uncomfortable, hopefully without becoming an absolute hypocrite, I believe it might be this: the apparent lack of choice. When the sexy outfit looks like a uniform, and the wearer looks out of place or uncomfortable in the situation, something feels wrong and my feminist side wakes up for a minute to voice its disapproval before it goes back to sleep and I put on an outrageously impractical outfit for the task I'm about to undertake.

No, I always wear this when I paint. It makes me feel like a pin up-artist.