Ogling

Hmm - I had just wanted to add, by the way - that every time a man looked/looks - at least at me - I was/am very far from assuming it is appreciative or ogling. I mean, some ogles are like a slap in the face, they are so obvious, and some appreciative looks are like a warm ray of sunshine, they are so pleasant - but (a) I am famed amongst my women friends for not seeing ANY look (really - I am and always was constantly being taken aside by women friends and castigated for not realizing that a fella was trying to get my attention in a flirtatious/asking out kind of way, while I blithely ignored every overture - because I didn't SEE it, not because I was being rejecting!) and (b) I will often assume a long look is to do with a fella thinking I am ugly, or my clothes look bad, or I have spinach in my teeth and such or that he is in deep thought and not seeing ANYONE (a thing I do meself a lot). I have always thought this way - even when I was at the height of whatever good looks I had. I would guess that lots of women are like me?

As for the women being critical of each other - I have known a few times when someone has worn something extremely unflattering (like sort of falling out of stuff that was way too tight) that women I know were a bit critical - and twice that I can think of, when a new woman has come into one of my groups, who has been over the top aggressive in her pursuit of other people's fellas, there has been real dislike - oddly enough often on the part of the fellas, too, who have not enjoyed being pursued so aggressively! However, I have not experienced nasty appraisal and such from female friends - nor male, come to that.

Generally, in my experience since early puberty, the female relationships I have had - in several different groups - have been extremely stable, supportive, nurturing and deep - and enduring. We argue, of course, over stuff like politics and such - and sometimes over the same stuff I argue about in friendships with fellas, too - (not about sex, though!). Of course, in any large group, there are people you like less, and in one of my big groups, there is a woman I cannot stand (nor can most others, male and female) - as usual, in such a case, I, and others, just get on with it and act in a civilised manner.

A couple of the women (I am thinking of my closest friend, who is extremely warm and accepting on the surface to all) can be hyper-critical of others behind the scenes - probably, I think, because they are SO diplomatic and SO non-reactive in public - while most of us are more upfront - (in my case, WAY upfront - but I am learning to be calmer and not so direct) - and they need to get rid of their feelings somewhere. I know that friend's husband gets irritated with her, and says for godsake to deal with it directly, but her position actually makes that politically unwise - and she only moans to a couple of us - I consider that listening to the moans is a friendly service, and she knows I will never blab.

Have I lived in some sort of unusual space here?

I would think that the experience of the men has been more - "Jesus! Those women are a formidable team! Treat one badly, and you are for it!" - than the experience you describe Craven - and that we might be more inclined to keep any divisions pretty quiet.

I guess my interaction with other women, since my teens, has been informed by feminist principles of solidarity - even before I knew what that was - and I think that it has been likewise - more or less consciously for the female friends I have chosen. I am unsure if this has made a difference with how we treat each other?

I might add that, when it comes down to it, generally, me male friends can gossip and such with at least equal enthusiasm, and do so, with great enjoyment.

Oh - and a lot of my female friends, in one of my groups, are "shrinks" too - and no way is there the childish stuff you describe amongst your "shrink" friends, Craven, (she protested defensively! Waaaaaah!)

I note, though, that the "shrink" community (male and female), at least here, is as silly and petty and divided as any professional community tends to be - and we sure ought to know better. I keep pretty much out of tintensive involvement with the community as a whole because of this - and I straddle various loyalties when I am involved - so I just sit back and laugh at it in a nasty superior way!

Craven, you said: "Thing is, that made me wonder, she was joking (we joke a lot) but do women think the ogling is that seedy? Mentally filing away the images for masturbation? I didn't think about it then because she was just trying to diss me but is that an element? "

Er, given that my definitions for appreciative looks and ogling are mutually exclusive, I DO find ogling unpleasant - and sometimes seedy - but that particular thought had never occurred to me - and I would NEVER communicate in that way to a male friend!

As for the looks being welcome from a handsome man and not from an ugly one - hmmmm - I think many men would find an aggressively sexual look from a woman they found attractive more welcome than from one they found unattractive, no?

I will attempt to speak only for myself here - because, as I mentioned above, my definition of ogle includes an unpleasant, aggressive, or sexually over-explicit element - I would find "ogles" unpleasant from Adonis himself!

As for appreciative looks? I suppose they are more welcomed from men I find somehow attractive - which for me has to do with things other than good looks/ugliness. I could tell you what some of those things are, but there is no need.

My views can be summed up: all ogles bad - no matter from whom. All appreciative looks inoffensive, or pleasant - more pleasant from fella I find attractive - attraction has little to do with conventional "good" looks.

As for the women who seek looks/ogles and love 'em, no matter what - or the women who seek them out just in order to be disdainful of 'em - I think these are, generally, women for whom this stuff has, for some reason, become their main source of self-esteem - and I think it sad. Same with the fella who seems to find sexual conquest his only source of self-esteem. Sad - and mirror images.

And I broke my promise! WaaaaH!

More welcome yes, but I ahve yet to hear a generalized complaint about unwelcome appreciation simply on the basis of looks.

imho ...

1. staged or not - that kind of thing happens.

2. I don't think she looks american, actually. <smiles>

(just bookmarking)

<waves to sozobe>

It also happened to be the one point where I agreed with your argument ... handy, that. Which is where my annoyance came from.

I mean - yeh - I probably cant explain the "why" exactly ... but if you react to an argument someone suggests, by pointing out a number of things about it that you feel, that each pose question marks about it, kinda - in part even expressing some unsuspected resentment about it, apparently - and then someone picks up only on the part that agrees with what she's saying, praising that part as "pretty much exactly what it is about" - theres something ... yeh, I mean, thats just too easy. Or something.

(Not) to belabour the point, but its like when someone argues that - random topic - the Clash of Civilisations means Muslims and Westerners cant ever live together, muslim fudamentalist terrorism is evidence of that, and therefore we should restrict Muslim immigration - and you debate all these points, argueing that, yes, Muslim fundamentalism is a grave danger but the other arguments all have something wrong with them, and that someone then goes: yes, exactly! See, he says it too: muslim fundamentalism is a great danger! Very good point, that!

(Well, you know - <ahem> - its not quite like that ... at all. But you get the point. Kinda.)

Also, though - I must admit - I was in a truly bitchy mood when I posted my reply - truly very bitchy indeed.

Still (or again) am, actually, kinda ... well, see the two fat paragraphs above <grins>.

I recognize that point, I mean, I've seen women do that. Especially in situations they were likely to feel insecure in, I've often heard some women become bitchy (ok: opinionated about other women, about how they looked, what they wore, how they moved or acted. And I've wondered about that, cause you hardly seem to get that with men.

Ive wondered if there was an element of group control in it. I guess you can put it benevolently and call it group protection, of the kind, say, that might keep dlowans 14-year old out of trouble: keeping other women from being all too - explicit? One ex-girlfriend told me about how there were, like, these conflicting pressures that made choosing what to wear a complicated issue when she went out. Cause the guys all wanted you to wear mini-skirts and low-cut tops - but if you overdid any of that, you were sure to get dirty looks from all the women around. She didnt like either of these pressures - the "hungry" guys made her feel un-relaxed if she wasnt in that mood - but at other times it was the other women's scrutiny that kept her from wearing what she would have liked to, simply cause she didnt want those negative vibes.

Thats what made me wonder about the group control/protection thing. Like, the pressure not to 'overdo' it - it can be interpreted as a way to protect each other from evoking mens expectations that would just get too much, in the long run - or as a way to protect oneselves - from having to 'go that far' too. Like, they didnt want any of the other girls to up the ante all too much? (Perhaps this is especially true in (mainstream) Holland, where "just act normal, thats crazy enough" still is a cliche).

These are all gross generalisations, of course - in just as many cases none of this has applied at all - just that i observed it often enough to wonder about whether there is any kind of generalised meaning behind it all? 'F course, the same kind of pressure among women exists about "underdoing" it - dont know what that does to the theory.

Hi Anastasia!

nimh, well, yeah, I think something in a general way, you made a very important point that is central to what I think (or one aspect of what I think, anyway) and... I agreed with it. I get what you're saying about pouncing, I guess, but I hope that I have shown more nuance and open-mindedness than the participants in the kind discussion you use as an example.

Interesting, I was gonna follow up on the women checking each other out thing before I saw that Craven and others had gone in that direction. (For a variety of reasons I have far less time at the computer than usual lately, and so I seem to be thinking about points raised here a lot and then trying to recover them when I am here at the computer, with mixed success.)

There is a book called "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" that I have never read but which has a premise I really relate to -- a survey of a woman's life seen through the prism of her clothes. I LOVE clothes. I love fashion. There are any number of reasons why I pay attention to what I wear, (more so in the past than now), but one of the reactions I most liked was the kind of checking out I gave the woman in the white shorts -- an appreciative, "huh, how'd she do that?" from women. I LOVED starting trends. A fond memory is when a girl whose fashion sense I admired told me I looked like I had stepped out of the pages of Vogue that day. (A zillion tiny braids [long hair], turquoise cropped shirt with white buttons, blue full short skirt, blue and white striped leggings, turquoise Converse high-tops. Hey, it was 1988. )

At any rate, being checked out by women doesn't bother me at all.

One other miscellaneous thought, the kind I had while away and wanted to be sure to get down, is that the graph I have charted of how often I have experienced ogling since I was a teenager shows a steadily downward-sloping line, and since I have also said I am much less eye-catching than I used to be (decidedly average, these days), the obvious inference is that my looks correllate with the ogling frequency. However, I have found that the much more important variable is environment. On the largest scale, which country -- then which state -- then which city -- then which part of the city -- and finally, and MOST importantly, whether public transportation is involved. I drove my car all the time in L.A., (duh), and still had some problems, but my students who took the city bus to class every day had absolute horror stories. And that did not differentiate according to looks. The most average reported just as many problems as the most beautiful. And the least beautiful -- those who would often be called ugly -- reported the worst problems of all. (This also may point to differing definitions of ogling, as I have gone into a few times, and dlowan too.) (Nice to have you back in the conversation, dlowan!)

So, while I've gotten less eye-catching, I also almost never take public transportation or put myself in analagous situations, and I think that is the more important variable.

The important variables you cite are also the variables in me gettin' robbed. Mayhap public transportation is just a more scary realm.

In Brazil it works like this:

Rich people never take buses, the rest do. Buses are uncomfortable and more dangerous than, say, the subway.

But this brings up another issue: the empowerment of automobiles.

I have known men who'd never ogle on foot but put them in a car and.....

I believe most of us are meaner in a car than we are sans shell, as it were!

Read this and thought of our discussion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/fashion/06SHOR.html

I thought the men came off rather well!

Comments later.

(Also, nimh, have been thinking about your last long post -- no conclusions yet, but interesting points/questions.)

Funny article. As I read it, and looked at the pix, all I could really think was, it's 1975 again.

Hot pants and platforms. Boy shorts and high heels. It's the same old, same old. Nothing really horrid happened last time round. Nothing really horrid happening this time round. Unless the comment of the style being passe is horrid.

I lived in Brazil, compare hot pants to "dental floss" bikinis that are even illegal on some US beaches and I wonder what the urproar was about.

It is legal to wander 'round Ontario topless, and we've got a legal nude beach about half an hour from here. The hotpants/boy shorts/dental floss bikini seem kind of minor when there is a woman flautist who panhandles topless about 2 blocks from our office. And after the initial surprise, that seems pretty normal. She doesn't get heckled (at least not that I've heard, and you'd hear about it), and does about as well as most buskers in the area.

Wanna know what's hard not to ogle at?

In Brazil, for a while people were using stickers as swim wear. You know a sticker on one nipple, one on the other....

And when they went swimming, they'd sometimes have to re apply the sticker.

It was an odd funny sight.

I must move to Canada, I like cold weather.

ok, i'll say that being entertained by sticker application doesn't really fall into the ogling definition, by my definition.

i'd just flash back to a moment in the mid-1970's, when i decided that i'd like to design and sew my own bikini. which i did. out of a lovely lined terrycloth. the bottom of which filled up with water, and sank, the first time i wore it swimming. Anyone watching me retrieve that deserved a look and a giggle, and I wouldn't have said they were ogling.

LOL the absolute funniest thing about the women with the stickers was that they would act absolutely horrified that the stickers would wash off. And Cross their arms over their chest, run back to their towels and reapply the sticker (at this point they didn't seem to mind the bare breasts) then they'd run into the water again and repeat.

What was funny was the odd modesty/no modesty dance.

were the dental floss bikinis waxed, or fluffy?

Hellifino, ask the flossers. :-)

Your odd modesty/no modesty dance reminds me of what people do when they say something mean, pretending it was by accident including some sort of "whoops" pantomine, often covering their mouths with a shocked eyebrow thing.

If you indicate that you haven't heard, they will repeat the whole "accidental" comment more loudly - including the pantomine! That cracks me up.

Oops - I appear to have digressed...

Er - they cover their mouths with their hands, not with an eyebrow...