Can we talk about feminism?

Some of them appear to be doing that.

They are exploiting sex--but not necessarily the women who work in these places. The sexual titillation is the marketing gimmick.

There's a reason that 80% of the customers in these places are male.

If the women who work there are doing it out of choice, and they aren't being mistreated, or underpaid, and they like their jobs, they aren't being exploited.

Sure Boomerang.

I am just pointing out that there are two different issues here. One is public nudity, the other is exploiting blatant sexuality to sell products.

I don't want my kids around bikini baristas. This is clearly a manipulative use of sex. I don't mind if adults buy coffee from these sexualized baristas. I might even partake of coffee of whatever other services are being sold. I just don't want my kids exposed to that.

I wouldn't mind my children seeing naked people in the park in a non-sexualized context.

For the sake of the discussion, I think it is important separate these two very different issues.

So are the customers the ones being exploited?

That would be a very interesting way to look at it. I'm going to think on that for a while.

Or is that sex, in general, is being exploited? And if so, what does that really mean?

Sex is used to sell everything though. Have you seen a commercial for Carl Jr's hamburgers? Or beer? Is it the fact that this is a live person and not an image that makes the difference?

I don't know if they are exploited--if they get their money's worth for the coffee, and they enjoy it more because they can get a look at a pretty young scantily clad woman, they shouldn't feel exploited.

But they are being manipulated, or enticed, by a sexual lure, to buy that coffee in one of these bikini places rather than at a Starbucks.

Yes, but mostly to men. They can look at these young women and then continue fantasizing about them, sexually, indefinitely. In that sense, yes, sex, in general, is being exploited--sex, and sexual fantasies, is used to sell the coffee.

This does encourage men to look at other women, beyond the ones in their lives they are involved with, in a sexual way. That alone might upset a lot of girlfriends, wives, etc.

I think a live person makes a difference. If you are a repeat customer, you can chat with her, get to know her.

And some of these places were apparently selling more than coffee...

Some of these places seem to be right on the line between being "an adult establishment" and a regular business establishment. They do seem to differ somewhat in how unclothed the women are, or in exactly what they do have on, and the way they advertise and promote themselves.

I do think they should be careful where they are located, and how visible the female employees are from the street, and maybe they should have a minimal age requirement for the customers served.

Truthfully, I think there would be a huge uproar if they tried to open one of these places anywhere in my small community. The commotion would be about a sleaze factor downgrading the community. It's hard to see how it would enhance a community to have one of these places, and they can help to attract an undesirable element to hang around the area. They already have that problem with some 7/11 stores.

But, where I live, they fought tooth and nail against fast food places, and they were pretty successful in keeping them out of this community. There is one tiny McDonald's that is so well hidden it's hard to find, and that's the only fast food place here. Bikini clad baristas would almost certainly not be welcome. They would come up with some reason to keep them out.

what is sold is coffee and a few minutes if very enjoyable interaction. in an era where women a generally privileged over men females sucking up to male desire for money is a throwback hoot.....it makes men FEEL good to be men for a change.

And women can use that fact to make a great deal of money off of men by selling them a lot of coffee that way.

It's the kind of business that might appeal to many female entrepreneurs.

This is a complicated and confusing issue. Kind of like racism. First of all, being a man, I'm not to sure I'm qualified to judge. It fits in the range of, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. The idiotic attitudes of the 50's where women were to stay in the kitchen was clearly wrong. On the other hand, using sex to sell whatever is common place. If the women get their fair share of the advertising budget, I don't see the harm. We'll never take sex out of the human experience. If one person is taking advantage of another, regardless of sex, because of a position of power or strength it is wrong. Happens all the time. The strong rule the weak. Power to the people.

bikini baristas are a lot like whores, to include in that those who dont approve are not swayed to the positive opinion by the fact that the pay is good for women.

Understandable, but in the libertarian mindset, that would be up to the women, right?

The same case can be made for legalized prostitution and/or drugs.

Interesting question asked on Facebook today

I think this is an issue which feminists in the late 60s/early 70s created for polemical purposes, and may be a factor which lead them into their prudery. One can allege that women are not paid an amount paid to men for the same work, and have a solid statistical basis for that. However, it's a little more difficult to allege that women are being exploited sexually when there are no bases for comparison. There are now male strippers, they've become rather common--but they weren't in the 1960s. Women whose work attire is scanty or revealing equally can be said to be exploited, but you need a rationale. After all, if a woman consents to show cleavage, and likes the money she's getting paid, how is that anyone else's business? So i suspect the objectification issue arises from that situation. Rape is pretty clear cut--ogling might be obvious, but alleging that it is harmful requires the application of a rhetorical position, and one which is not so clear cut.

I'm not saying that there is no objectification of women (or men for that matter--i don't recall that feminists complain about photos of shirtless men in advertising). I saw this at Facebook:



The image is from 1964. One can well ask what relevance women in bathing suits have to the quality of service at a gas station. The obvious purpose is to draw the eye of the potential customer. But i don't know that the ad can be said to suggest that if you go to that chain of gas stations, you will meet attractive women in bathing suits who want nothing more than to have wild, monkey sex with any man they meet.

The main thing which leads me to agree in principle with the concept of objectification is how ubiquitous it is. On the same Facebook page was this ad:



What does a very busty young woman showing a very modest cleavage have to do with a back-to-school sale? I think the intention is to draw the eye, but that leads to another problematic question. As women are the ones most likely to buy back-to-school items, are advertisers correct to use attractive young women to draw the eyes of the moms out there who will buy back-to-school supplies? It would be interesting to have some reliable data on that.

I think using sex to sell, or hinting at sex, is far more common now than it was in 1964. For a long time, there was an ad i would see at Facebook for solar panels, and it showed a woman in a white sweater with an impossibly large bust (to me, it seemed obvious that the image had been photoshopped). After i saw that, i paid more attention, and almost all ads, i'd guess 90% or more, show a smiling, attractive woman, and many of them show a woman with a large bust, some of them showing women in revealing clothing. Just because 60s feminists "created" the issue of the objectification of women for polemical positions doesn't mean they were wrong about it. For me, the important questions would be: why is the same technique used in advertising which rather obviously targets women? What could account for the success of the method--more than 40 years of using attractive women to sell products to other women does argue that it's successful, because ad agencies who don't get it right don't keep their customers. Is it objectification when a shirtless man is the center of the ad? This is a PETA ad, fer chrissake:



So, while militant feminists almost 50 years ago may have got it right about the exploitation of women, i have many, many questions which cannot be answered by such a simple-minded formula.

Of course, as has been pointed out by many others here, not just by me, if a woman is willing to display herself for pay, is it any business of ours? I have a problem with interfering in anyone's choices if one cannot show definite harm being done to the individual concerned.

that is taking " duty to the sisterhood" to the ridiculous. it also smacks of way too much victim culture indoctrination.

in my mind yes, so long as women throwing their sexuality around does not hurt anyone no one has any right to complain, we all need to live our own lives as best we can. we have one of these stands right accross from our local high school , it does great and no one seems to mind. it is owned by a couple, I had a nice chat with the guy at Costco awhile back. he proudly has the name of the joint shrink rapped around his truck.

as a businessman I have complete respect for anyone who can successfully take assets they already have and make money off of them. it does not get more all American than that!

And it doesn't mean that 50 years later they are still particularly concerned about that issue.

When we now have women on the Supreme Court, running corporations, holding major elected and appointed offices, substantially contributing to the household income, working as police and firefighters and electricians and plumbers and going into combat in the military, picking up graduate and professional degrees in substantial numbers, and regarded as serious candidates for the highest offices in the land, the whole issue of women being "objectified" and marginalized as sex objects, and being held back in society because of that, is a non-issue for feminists now.

The whole "objectification" notion is really quite obsolete now, and I'm not sure it ever really applied to women willingly displaying their physical attributes as a way of earning a living, in situations they controlled, and for which they were adequately compensated. It really always referred to the tendency of our male-dominated society/economy to view, and exploit, women as sexual objects while diminishing or demeaning their other abilities as human beings. And, where that had been somewhat true 50 years ago, it is no longer true today, when the position of women in society has substantially changed.

I can't imagine a feminist now being concerned that these bikini baristas pose any threat to the position of women in our society. That these women choose to take jobs as coffee servers, in places that require they be scantily clad to do so, doesn't change the fact that they are simply coffee servers who provide patrons with a slight peep show as a marketing gimmick. If these women don't mind doing that, and don't mind their working conditions, they are just coffee servers in a uniform that's designed to draw, and manipulate, male patrons into buying their coffee at one place rather than another.

This really isn't a feminist issue.

The whole idea of using sex to sell products is a slightly different issue. And I don't think sex is pitched to female consumers in quite the same way it is to males--men's bodies are more likely to attract the attention of gay men rather than interest a woman in a product. The pitch to women is more likely to be romance, or the prospect of romance, generally with a good-looking, but usually fully clothed man. Just look at the Oikos yogurt commercials, with John Stamos, or the Gevalia coffee commercials with "Johan".

The real controversies with these bikini barista places seems to occur where they wear considerably less than a bikini or they sell actual sex or more blatant erotica along with the coffee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_barista

a whole lot of words from you as usual, all easily dismissed by pointing out that a sizeable faction if the feminists are currently pushing to outlaw all porn, and have been successfull both here and overseas in getting certain types of films outlawed. the passing of laws demanding condoms for instance is almost purely at push to get porn production shut down, as the market has been clear that condom porn is not wanted..sure pressure groups claim "SAFETY!" but they have no evidence the making bareback porn has any additional danger.

As is so common you are found to be not telling truth.

I didn't say that anyone was concerned about it. I was responding to comments already made in the thread. Why don't you confine your responses to people like Whackeye, who deserve your interactions. I'm not interested.