...I'm a woman of no wealth and slightly questionable taste. Hi, I'm Kate. I'm almost 32 (erk!) but in my head I'm actually only about 17. I love my cat, my family and my friends, have a passion for vintage fashion and know all the words to all the songs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I like full moon nights, sunsets, walks in the park and reading. I write a little (ok, a lot) and have a thing for rock, heavy metal and cheesy pop songs. And sometimes cheesy rock/metal songs, because there are days when a girl just needs a bit of Manowar in her life. (Sometimes). My favourite swear sentence in the whole wide world is "fuck-a-duck". Oh, I also have boobs.
Aaaaaand with that last sentence I immediately eradicate everything that makes me a unique and quirky individual Human Bean and reduce myself to nothing more than an Object, like a table or a lamp, for other people to pass judgement on as they see fit. At least I'm pretty sure it's the boobs. I mean I thought it was the serial killer thing, or the weird way I dance when I walk sometimes, but closer inspection of Society-in-General and a brief poll among my friends both with and without boobs pretty much put that theory to bed. The ones without boobs didn't have the same experiences I've had, but the ones with boobs all spoke of similar things. So yeah; it's boobs and the possession thereof which apparently renders Kate-the-Individual-Person a non-entity and makes Kate-the-Sexualised-Object appear in her place. Pretty neat trick if you ask me...
Except it isn't a trick, it's a fact of life. Apparently being female immediately makes it perfectly acceptable for the rest of the world to reduce me from a complex bunch of cells with diverse and wide-ranging interests into a cardboard cut-out. And I've had enough of it, especially since today I noticed the effect it has on my god-daughter (almost 13) and her friends. I bumped into them in town and as we were talking a group of lads of about 14/15 walked past and made some comments about the girls which made me want to race after them and smack them. Hard. The girls, however, merely shrugged and informed me that "boys always speak to girls like that". I genuinely didn't know whether to scream or cry at that. If I'm honest I still don't, but it brought home to me, not for the first time, how all-encompassing and pervasive the entrenched misogyny and 'porn culture' is in our society.
"Don't go out dressed like that, son; all the girls will think you're asking for it!" said no mother to her male offspring ever. And yet because I am in the possession of boobs, apparently whatever I wear is cause for comment on my perceived sexuality or lack thereof. But here's the thing: I wear what I want because I like wearing it, not because of what anyone else wants. Some days I dress like a total slob - jeans, crappy t-shirt, hoody - because frankly I can't be arsed with anything else; and some days I wear short skirts and low-cut tops because dammit, that's just how I roll. But no matter what I choose to clothe myself in doesn't give anyone - anyone; my mother, my friends, random strangers in the street - the right to pass either comment or judgement on me. If I'm covering up on a 'slob' day it doesn't give you the right to tell me I should 'make more of my assets', and if I'm flashing a bit of flesh it doesn't mean you should assume I'm a slag and address me accordingly. We've had our disagreements over the years, my boobs and I, but we've come to some sort of mutual acceptance now so if I'm wearing something that might give a sneak peek of them, believe me when I say its entirely for my benefit and no one else's. No one has the right to tell me, or anyone else for that matter, that what we're wearing is in some way related to any form of sexualistion; either to judge us or attempt to oppress us.
Growing up female, I was very aware of all the things I should and shouldn't do to try and prevent myself becoming a rape statistic. Don't walk alone after dark, especially not down alleyways or through car parks. Don't let your drink out of your sight. Keep your keys in your hand, or a can of deodorant in your bag. I don't remember all the edicts meted out to the boys telling them not to rape girls but still, you can't be everywhere, so maybe I missed them while I was busy keeping an eye on my drink and clinging to my keys.
Don't get me wrong, I have to hold my hands up and confess to my own sins. There have been times when I have, to all intents and purposes, objectified members of the opposite sex; in the grand scheme of things, however, my harping on about how gorgeous George Clooney is remains a mere drop in the ocean compared to the barrage of sexual objectification women are subjected to day in and day out. Men are nowhere near held to the same level of objectification as women; yes, the Dreamboys and the Chippendales and their ilk could be argued to be seen as mere 'sexual objects', but compare them to to the numbers of women prancing around in their underwear in advertisements and 'lad mags' and what have you and the comparison becomes laughable. Just recently the Sun has even started trying to posit its Neanderthal Page 3 thing as a weapon in the fight against breast cancer! Now while I think it's vitally important that men as well as women are aware of the signs of breast cancer - after all, they often get quite up close and personal with our boobs - the idea that Page 3 is suddenly some ultra-feminist "ra ra ra, aren't we brilliant" statement is frankly laughable. How is posting a picture of some nubile young thing in her underwear in any way related? It's yet another excuse for them keeping such a prehistoric thing going, plus it only reinforces the idea that women are merely objects for men to lust over. I suppose the next time some random idiot attempts to grab my tits on a night out I should thank him; after all, he could be the one who saves my life by discovering I have cancer...yeah, right. My boobs, my rules; the only way anyone gets to go groping them is on my say-so. Besides, if I wanted someone to take a look and make sure there wasn't anything scary going on with them I'd ask my GP, not "random Sun reader in the pub".
I've always been in two minds about the whole "porn" thing, actually. On the one hand, it's about bloody time women were entitled to take charge of their own sexuality. ("What, you mean we can actually decide when we have orgasms and who we have them with?! Halle-bloody-lujah!!!") Why shouldn't we; our bodies, our rules after all, and if the likes of Jenna Jameson can amass a small personal fortune by making the most of what she's got then bloody good luck to her. On the other hand...well, Jenna Jameson herself admits she can't actually watch any of her own work, in spite of the fact she's a one-woman industry and was at one stage the highest paid female porn star in the world, and that's before you even mention the rape and abuse she suffered in her younger days. Female empowerment? Um, not really; sure, these women are getting paid loads to be in this porn film/lapdance in this club/pose for this magazine, but actually the people (mainly men) who see it are not going to be interested in them as individual people - they're just another pretty girl we can drool over and get our rocks off to. And that then feeds right back into the way male entitlement sees women as cardboard cut-out sex objects they can project their own desires onto, so "normal" women then become just as fetishised and objectified as the porn stars and glamour models which leads to the whole "slut-shaming, slut-dropping, I'm-going-to-grope-you-in-a-club, everyday sexism women have to endure.
Now I've seen my fair share of pornos in my time and, frankly, I find them laughable. All the women look incredibly bored throughout the entire thing; I'm sure they're actually calculating how best to spend their wages when they get off the set rather than on what they're actually supposed to be doing. It's just wall to wall plastic-looking women plastered in make-up, looking ridiculously bored and twirling their hair round their fingers, pouting a lot and making vague "ooh" noises. Fuck-a-duck, is that really it? If so then I also think porn is demeaning for men, too; if all it takes to get you off, boys, is some bored-looking woman trying not to grimace in pain while her back arches ever higher off the bed/floor/kitchen counter and groaning in the right places while some bloke bangs away at her, or an equally bored-looking girl for that matter, then I feel really sorry for you; you're missing out on a whole world of sexual experiences and you don't even realise. Frankly I'd much rather get my rocks off reading Anais Nin than watching Jenna Jameson make out with the "man who's come to fix her washing machine". Not to mention the fact it gives both boys and girls incredibly unrealistic expectations when it comes to sex; as we now live in a world where even primary school kids are aware of pornography, since they all seem to have their own laptops/tablets/i-Phones etc these days, we shouldn't be surprised at all the reports coming out which bang on about how children are being exposed to this stuff at ever-earlier ages. Or the ones which highlight how many young girls are having sex because "everyone else is and that's just what you do", even if they don't actually want to. Besides, it's not rape if it's the boy in your maths class and everyone else has slept with him, right? Um, wrong...but thanks to the prevalence and fetishisation of ever-increasingly-violent porn, apparently this is the new normal.
I fully appreciate that we of the 'fairer sex' are bloody gorgeous, but why the hell does it have to be our raison d'etre, and why can we not just be 'sexy' (or not) because WE want to (or not)? What if Eva Herzigova wasn't advertising Wonderbras to say "hello boys" (objectification/sexualisation) but "hello, Girls, you look rather fabby in this bra and now I feel awesome"? I wore my Wonderbra not because I was desperate for male attention but because I hated my small boobs (sorry, Girls) and wearing said Wonderbra made me feel better about myself. It's got nothing to do with anyone else, much like what I choose to wear on top of said Wonderbra has nothing to do with anyone else; I'm getting heartily sick and tired of turning on my TV or opening a magazine or walking into a shop and being confronted with scantily-clad stick insects with fake breasts advertising stuff. No wonder sexual assaults and rape figures are going up; no wonder teenage boys don't think there's anything wrong with making sexualised comments about teenage girls, and that teenage girls just shrug it off as normal; the "pornification" of our culture is endemic and it's getting beyond a joke. I want my god-daughter to be proud of her body rather than go through the whole body-loathing thing I did as a teenager/young adult, but I want her to be proud of it because SHE thinks it's awesome, not because some spoddy oik in a hoody passes some sort of benevolent judgement on her. I want her and her friends to celebrate the fact they can wear mini-skirts when they're older if they so choose, but I don't want them to have to constantly justify themselves to men when and if they do. Most importantly, while I know that not every man in the world thinks like this and are actually aware of the whole "my body, my rules" thing, I want boys to be taught that girls are Human Beans like them, with a whole myriad of complex thoughts and feelings and opinions on stuff, and that they should be treated as such rather than as some object of sexual gratification. My body, my rules. Even though I have boobs...
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