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First off, I'd like to recommend to you the book "Reviving Ophelia" by Mary Pipher, MD. It's a psychology-type book, but it has a bunch of stories about real girls, and stuff that's happened to them. It explores a lot of the issues about girls that I feel really strongly about, such as negative body images and stuff like that.
There was one statement that really stuck out to me while reading the book. One girl noticed, that if she (or any other girl for that matter) was having a bad day, adults always told her to smile, but they never said that to guys. That stuck with me because I've seen it happen. And it does--all the time. Guys are never told they have to put on a happy face and pretend nothing's wrong. Girls, however, are taught to believe that it shouldn't show if they're upset or if something's wrong. They should just make the best of it and ignore the fact that they're troubled. And I got to thinking, why is that? Why does our society try to make girls hide their emotions, but not guys?
I mean, obviously I haven't figured it out yet, but it's still an interesting question.
I just thought of this: its half on-subject, and half off-subject. Why is it that 98% of nudity in movies and on TV is female? I mean, sure, there is the random naked male butt, such as in Cruel Intentions or Orgazmo, but the Orgazmo one is like, purposely gross. So it doesn't count. Besides, the female nudity in that movie greatly outnumbers the male nudity anyway. But yeah, I mean, I don't know if guys know how embarrassing it is to be watching a movie, and then all of a sudden there's some hugely-breasted chick flaunting herself like there's no tomorrow, for no apparent reason. The movie "Road Trip" comes to mind. The part where Tom Green is telling the story, and it goes to a locker room type scene where all the girls are completely topless, and there's random naked chicks walking around. Ugh. To that movie's credit, though, a girl in the tour group speaks out and insists girls just don't walk around naked like that in locker rooms (which is true). However, Green tells her to shut up, because it's his story and he can tell it how he pleases. So there you go again.
Have any of you seen "Tomb Raider"? The shower scene in that movie is so horribly pointless, I can't even express it. The movie goes from some action-packed scene to one of her in the shower, sensually massaging soap all over her body. Then it switches back to some totally different scene that has nothing to do with the shower scene. Now, I'm aware that Tomb Raider is totally a guy's thing. I mean, Lara Croft. C'mon. But why was that scene needed? Probably because there's very little sex in that movie, if at all (I'm not remembering any at the moment). Hollywood knows that sex and violence sells, and since the movie was mostly violence, they figured they needed a bit of a sexy scene in it also. *sigh* The whole movie was really idiotic, but that just made it worse.
Which is not to say, though, that I'm like, "Oh, I want to see a naked guy on TV," because I could care less. It just doesn't make sense to me, that girls have to be embarrassed and degraded in the media, but guys really don't have to experience that.
Hmm. This writing is like live TV coverage. I just had another thought: guys are visual creatures.
Most guys get off visually, right? Think about it--that's why porn exists. If guys get turned on by the sight of a woman's breasts or whatever, theoretically, directors should put that in the movie if they want it to appeal to men. Am I not correct? Women, however, aren't quite as visual, so they don't put scantily clad men in the media. Example: My mail-order CD company frequently features calendars as some of its products. The male oriented ones are all of voluptuous women in either nothing, soap suds, a thong/g-string, or just bottoms with the girl's arms crossed over her front. The female oriented ones all have muscular, tanned men wearing jeans but no shirt, all set on a beach scene. Think about that for a moment. If women were as visual as men, the men on the calendar would be wearing (*gag*) thongs, or nothing, or a loincloth or something to that effect.
*sigh* So I guess that's why most nudity is female, is because they're directing the appeal at men, and that's what appeals to men. *sigh again* So it makes sense to me now. But I still maintain that it really sucks.
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