Ogling

Two things. I was ogled recently and I felt completely objectified! Like I was a piece of meat! But I got a phone number and that helped. he eh

And two: The Onion ran a tiny joke about this waay back when we were all discussing it.

It was a picture of a beautiful woman and the caption was something like "Too hot to be riding the bus" or some such. I forgot to post it here but mebbe someone else saw it.

I saw it! Things were heated at the time, or something... I renember getting properties and everything and then saying "nahhh..." Actually I think it was the opposite... it had finally died down and I didn't want to reawaken the beast.

I saw it, tho.

Oh, I missed you there, Thomas. Yes, you're right! (Not sure about "quite a lot" but certainly an extra level of "ohhh...")

Oogling
Ogling is excessively vilified. Here are several reasons.

First, ogling (or at any rate, the kind of ogling typically resented, which I presume is what we are talking about) is something that happens between people who don't know each other very well. Accordingly, it is the type of activity that is more useful to those who from snobbishness are unwilling to start relationships with those outside their own social circle. Elitists who just start relationships (say) at exclusive social gatherings don't have much use for ogling, and these elitists criticize what they are too selfish to have a use for.

Second, females are scared by quick sexual come-ons, true, but the reasons such come-ons are scary is that they are uncommon in society at large. If they were common, females wouldn't be as scared by such come-ons. In fact, females as a whole would probably rightfully be less scared, since men being more open about their sexuality would ennable a female to more know which men exactly might be thinking they could force her into having sex. Mainly, it is the act of rape or abuse that hurts females, not her fear of such. And notwithstanding fear hurts females somewhat and women are scared by quick sexual advances (before the woman can evaluate the man to know fairly well that he is safe), women as a whole would not be more afraid if men were more quickly sexually open. Moral men and women, who realize that the appropriateness of a behavior is determined by the consequence of the behavior on society at large, are therefore more likely to appreciate male sexual straightforwardness, while immoral men and women, who care merely about their personal interests in not scaring females away and in not being frightened (respectively), are more likely to appreciate male straightforwardness.

Of course, much of the resentment about ogling is really resentment toward the sentiment possessed by the ogling male. People who think it is immoral for men to have responsibility-free sexual relationships (Dr. Laura comes to mind) naturally will claim to be repulsed by a male ogling with the aim to indicate to the female that he wants her merely sexually (and doesn't want to care for her or any offspring that might be produced). Actually, though, occasionally a woman is willing (from love, usually) to want to have sex with a man who is not willing to care for her. Therefore, Why shouldn't the man indicate fairly quickly to a female the extent to which he cares or doesn't care for her? Indeed, it is a common trick of males to postpone indicating absence of love from the consideration that if a female after spending much time with a male abandons him only after he refuses to care for her, she will look rather mercenary and as if her sexuality and love can be bought. That is the sort of obnoxious behavior that I presume Paula Abdul was singing about in her song:

...How about some information please

Straight up now tell me
Do you really want to love me forever oh oh oh
Or am I caught in a hit and run
Straight up now tell me
Is it gonna be you and me together oh oh oh
Or are you just having fun?


Of course, ogling being quick and sexual in that way (rather remotely) resembles sexual molestation, and thus like anything resembling sexual molestation, can produce irrational fears in females. But there is nothing noble about excessively pandering to females' irrational fears (though at times females like to be humored thus in play). That's the same sort of nonsensical pandering the Taliban tried to engage in to make their women wear veils and as late as the 1800's made many in the West view (e.g.) female public speaking or females working with men as improper.

I was ogline my neighbors ex-gf yesterday, but she definitely deserves to be ogled.

Schwing!

I've just reread the thread, good thread it was.

Re my own post on page ten, I still agree with myself - except about the level of staging I estimated in that second sentence. On a reread, I think it was more highly staged, as said by others.

I re-posted the original Orkin photo because it is so wonderful.
According to an interview with the young woman, the photo was not really staged and she didn't feel threatened by the experience. Have times changed everything so much?

The photo was not staged? She knew the photographer was there if things got ugly. We can't know that she would not have walked down that street alone, but we do know that she walked down that street knowing that the photographer was there, and that it would appear to everyone else that she was alone. I call that staged.

What a load of bullshit. The "model" and the photographer may have been in collusion in the event, but unless you can provide some pretty convincing evidence to the contrary, it certainly appears that the men in the photo were reacting to what they thought was an unaccompanied woman walking down the street. Their reactions are creepy.

I guess in a way it sorta was:


http://exposurecompensation.com/2006/12/28/american-girl-in-italy-by-ruth-orkin/

See Paola's post on page eleven, Panz. She was from Rome. Diane and I met her in New York. Elegant, observant woman.

I was in Italy three times, 1988, 1993, 1999, for a total of three months. One of my main interests re the country is in italian street life, so I was always looking around me. I never saw such a scene. On the other hand, I may have missed stuff.
I was never there in the height of the summer tourist season. I also never went out alone in the dark, not from fear but because of my strange eyes. I was never in the mezzogiorno, the south, and things may have been different there.

Florence is hardly the south of Italy.

I was talking about where I ever was in the country, almost forty years to almost fifty years after that photo was taken. I don't doubt those scenarios took place in 1951, and I surmise similar took place when my pals were there in the sixties (actually, during the Florence flood and afterwards, another story).

Back in 1971 I met a young American art student in Madrid and followed her to Florence where she was enrolled in school. At least 6 ft tall with long flowing red hair, she caused an uproar with the Italian men wherever we went. I don't remember her feeling threatened though. Perhaps because she was so tall

Maybe a growing consciousness has?

After all, it used to be ok to give hate stares in the south.

"Pretty convincing evidence to the contrary", a blatant political message such as this requires evidence to support it not the other way around. Let's consider the facts.

1) The goal of the photographer was to make a point. This presents an obvious bias. It is in the interest of the photographer to provoke the most outrageous reaction and select the most outrageous snapshot.

2) There is only one side of the story being presented. We are provided with one snapshot taken completely out of context. There is no way to hear about the situation or to question the circumstances.

3) We have no way to know any of the facts in a non-biased way. We have no way to know for sure that the men weren't in on the "joke". We have no way to know what was said or done by the photographer or the men before the shot was taken.

4) The men are being accused of something. No attempt I have seen has allowed them to give their side of the story.

When a blatant political statement is made by a photograph or any other medium it seems a little healthy skepticism or a lot in this case is healthy.

This is a work of art and a political one at that. There is no reason to see this as any reflection on fact. If this were the burden would be on the photographer to provide evidence supporting it.

...unusual situations bring up unusual reactions...being the specific case biased or not biased, we all can recall more or less real life situations...advertisement and publicity don´t come out of a Martian world...

...these days the world gets to be a strange place...if men don´t look it is because there are no real man any more and if they do it is because they permanently sexualize women...go figure...the opposite situation was never an issue for us, and it does happen...

Here you go again with this political bullshit. In 1951, the concept of the objectification of women had not been articulated by feminism, which was, in its modern sense, only nascent. You can rant to your heart's content, there is no good reason to see that photograph as having been politically motivated. If you think that "the men were in on the joke," you simply assume the burden of proof. I don't know what passes for logic at your house, but you're not using any logic in claiming that anyone is obliged to prove that there was not a political intent in the photograph, for a political concept which did not then exist. For you to continue to claim this is a political statement is mere ipse dixit--you also have a burden of proof for that, which you have not taken up.

From History of Objectification, Kassandra Boyer:



So, once more, you can't have had a political statement implicit in the photograph at a time when the concept of objectification as a political concept had not yet been articulated. This is anachronism--you're projecting your values and understanding onto the world of 60 years ago.