[This post was submitted by Michael Claymore]
Quick, picture a woman in your mind, right now. So, what did she look like? Was she fat and /or plain? Probably not, despite the fact that in the real world that is what most women look like!
If you’re anything like most men you probably pictured some hot piece of tail out of Penthouse, or your favorite porn star , or maybe just a generic “Girl Gone Wild!”. Either way, you pictured something that is not representative of women, and in doing so you on some level transferred at least some of the feelings that you have towards “good looking women” to the larger group called simply “women”!
And are those feelings just the self-serving ones like lust? No. If you’re one of those men who goes against what he’s been taught all his life and actually examines his feelings, you will probably find other emotions triggered by female beauty – tenderness, affection and protectiveness.
Feminists often whine about the proliferation of beautiful women in our media, yet ironically these images do men more damage than they do women, precisely by giving many of us a false inner image of what “women” are. This leads many of us to respond emotionally not to the prosaic reality of “Actual Woman”, but to a glittering, media-induced mirage best described as “Idealized Woman”! So when bastards like Obama get up there and whine about domestic violence, do most men picture a fat and/or ugly woman? No! They picture a good-looking woman with a black eye, thereby triggering feelings of affection and protectiveness and attaching them to the concept of the abused woman, and in turn increasing the likelihood that they will support whatever nutty D.V policy President Useless has up his frilly sleeve!
There is nothing wrong with appreciating beauty in women, and I should know, I’ve drawn and painted hundreds of gorgeous women over the years. But men have got to make a conscious effort to separate the affection and protectiveness induced by what is at best a tiny minority of women, from a reality which does not support the same feelings.
Perhaps I’m wrong in this. Perhaps I’m projecting the way artistically inclined, beauty-loving males see things. Perhaps I am the exception rather than the rule, but even if so, who do you think ends up generating the media’s images of both men and women? Yes, it’s the artistic men who create those images inside your head, and on that fact alone, it’s time we took a serious look at how false images of women influence the way we feel about the real deal.
Michael Claymore is the manager of Porky Domesticus, your host at Porky’s Place.
