What a beautiful mockery of pseudo-feminists and pseudo-progressives:
Sanagavarapu, whose Kickstarter project is called “Feminist Style,” is ultimately interested in a larger effort to subvert the mainstream messages in popular advertising. She points out that most companies rely on objectifying and sexualizing women in order to sell their products, and there’s a big opportunity for feminists to provide alternate options to challenge the status quo. In a video to promote her new effort, Sanagavarapu describes the idea as “leveraging the consumerist aspects of our society to create social change.”
I hope Sanagavarapu makes a ton of money exploiting the pathetic pseudo-politics of the stupid people who say things like “Companies sexualize women” completely seriously.
Clarissa's Blog 
I fear she may not be mocking…
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Let’s hope for the best. . .
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In my experience the vast majority of feminists I’ve encountered really believe in this whole objectification bs. They think women in porn, god forbid consensually violent or masochistic porn, are being horribly ‘objectified’. What exactly that means outside of projecting one’s own shame, sexphobia, and feelings of discomfort at the situation no one ever seems to explain.
I must admit I bought into it too until I came to your blog and really thought about it, and realized I had many issues that caused me to feel intense jealousy when I saw a beautiful model in a bikini, and that’s what made me rant about her being ‘objectified’.
Scarier than most feminists buying into this, is that it seems like most ‘feminist’ initiatives are directed to this segment. I see many posts (yes, usually from insignificant nobodies but still) about banning photo shop usage because of the high standard of beauty for women, about how sexist ads with half-clad women are in them and about boycotting those companies etc. It really poisons real efforts of feminism. Nobody seems to care if a coworker can tell me my driving must be bad with impunity as long as everyone on tv is fully clothed.
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” It really poisons real efforts of feminism. Nobody seems to care if a coworker can tell me my driving must be bad with impunity as long as everyone on tv is fully clothed.”
– This is exactly, exactly what bothers me! There are way too many rants about Victoria Secret – which nobody is forced to buy – and very little discussion of really important things like, for example, a dearth of childcare options in many geographical areas.
I don’t want to hear that “women are sexualized” (whatever that means). I want to discuss that women are underpaid.
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“Activism” as a justification not to deal with one’s neuroses, yes.
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Well, although the term ‘objectification’ is often abused and misused, I think it’s not totally meaningless. The representation of women in the media is often off putting.
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I don’t watch television or read glossy magazines, so I wouldn’t know. But the phrase “women are sexualized” – as if (most) women were not sexual beings without anybody’s special efforts – is still puzzling. The idea of essential female purity that should be protected from any blemish is a deeply patriarchal belief. Feminism fought against it for centuries. And it shocks me that these “feminists” are so completely unaware of this history.
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Women are sexual beings, but their sexuality is often presented as a commodity, something to be sold and consumed, that’s why they are ‘objects’ instead of active subjects.
It’s not uncommon for women to be primarly judged by their beauty or sex appeal, or for little girls to grow up thinking that their beauty is their biggest value. Maybe here in Italy more than in America, I don’t know.
I think that the major mistake of these feminists is going from one extreme to the other: women are presented as sexual commodities –> let’s reject sexuality, instead of reclaming sexual agency.
Also, they too often equate sexual desire to objectification, which is really dangerous,because it implies that there’s no possibility to have a healty sexual life.
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In North America, girls are socialized in very weird ways. My sister has a 4-year-old and she has to battle these unhealthy socialization patterns where girls are taught to be meek, quite, and make pleasing boys their life task. We come from a culture where such things are unheard of and my sister is trying to keep our alternative tradition of female socialization alive.
But imagine what it feels like to discover that a group of tiny tots already knows how to repress their needs and preferences to please some 4-year-old boy. Horrible.
So you are right, socialization of girls is still VERY deficient.
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For Spiderbaby – “their sexuality is presented as a commodity” – I don’t see how that comes about from ads at all. People (men and women alike) enjoy looking at beautiful and sexually suggestive women and retailers take advantage of that to make their product seem more sexy/fun and just plain get people to pay attention to it. How does that means the model’s sexuality is presented as a commodity?
I think Americans don’t understand or value consent, and that is the real danger. For example once I saw a show on the disney channel where a middleschooler and his friend tried to make a whole to watch girls change in the lockerroom and the whole incident was played off as just hilarious.
But porn (and ads are a form of soft porn ) is consensual. These things are worlds apart.
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@Elliebookworm3: I know that women are decorative, but in terms of enjoyment, I’d rather have Captain Beefcake than Miss Boobalicious trying to sell me a jar of mayonnaise. It doesn’t happen much as often, though. Buggers.
I wasn’t strictly speaking about ads, anyway.
Pornography should be a concern exactly when it’s not consensual or when the environment is not safe (that happens too). For the rest, as long as it’s not mistaken for the real thing, I don’t see the problem with it.
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“I know that women are decorative, but in terms of enjoyment, I’d rather have Captain Beefcake than Miss Boobalicious trying to sell me a jar of mayonnaise.”
– Hear, hear! I also don’t understand why there are so few men on the covers of women’s magazines. It would make a lot more sense to try to attract heterosexual women with pictures of beautiful men, I’d think.
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I have acquired some kind of vagina dentata, although I don’t think it sexualises me too much.
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