[Female sexiness is unidimensional.]
as opposed to...what? male handsomeness? is that multi-dimensional?

[I think we are talking through each other. What I meant was. if a girl wants to be sexy, she has only one choice.]
I’m sorry if i contributed to any vagueness in our discussion. i genuinely want to understand the issue here. what other choices would you give a girl who wants to be sexy? and the burning question here is, why does she want to be sexy, if the definition of sexy upsets her? why not take on a broader and more flexible label, like ’cool’, ’hip’, ’cute’, ’smart’, etc?

[I think wht u mean to say is that a sexy woman is a woman with a great body and this definition should not be tinkered with.]
not exactly. i want to know why the need arose for any tinkering, and what exactly that tinkering is going to entail. a sexy women may seem sexy because of her body, or her eyes, or her smile, or the way she walks, or the way she talks...all physical traits (i didn’t just narrow it down to her body). on the other hand, i may admire any number of women for any number of reasons (great cook, excellent copywriter, terrific musician, etc), but i won’t call her ’sexy’ unless i’m using the word as homegrown slang (the kind of lingo one uses on campus, for example, between friends, and one that would make very little sense to outsiders. i used to get audible gasps from family members when i called something as inhuman as a skit ’sexy’...my buddies would’ve got it immediately). inasfar as that is concerned, fine. but when you’re talking about the use of the word on a general scale and altering its meanings, then we’re in trouble.

the so-called ’political correctness’ has already muddied the waters quite enough. remember how negros became black people, and then people of color? blind people have become optically-challenged, and so on.

[...just want to say that for women there is more than one meaning of sexiness in a man,and this difference is the point of the article.]
for women, of course there’s a difference. women are from Venus, men are from Mars, don’t you know?

seriously, though: if you can get inside their wild and woolly heads, please do enlighten me.

flag objectionable content

[’sexy’ has obvious connotations to sexual attraction. it’s a word used to describe someone who arouses you. i would like to know what other meanings of this word can be. and no, i do not find a ’powerful’ CEO sexy, in and of itself, unless the person is indeed ’physically’ attractive to me. pornstar or housewife, i don’t see anything wrong with ’wearing your sexuality on your sleeve’ as long as you don’t complain of ’unwanted attention’ as a consequence. sure, i greatly respect and admire women like Mother Teresa and Phoolan Devi. but (political correctness be damned) i won’t call them ’sexy’. let’s not start disintegrating the basic tools of communication (words) here.]
Thats exactly my point. Female sexiness is unidimensional.

[that statement is full of oxymorons and rhetoric. here’s an example from real life: i work in an office with quite a few female employees. some of them are really attractive, even though they don’t flaunt their sexuality (no revealing, or tight, or short attire, etc). one particular young lady is almost always dressed in tight, figure-hugging jeans and tshirt. she’s short and her voice is god-awful, and to be honest, her face isn’t very pretty (it’s rather harsh, and makes her look older than she is). her attire manages to outline her curves quite successfully, and thus gives her appearance a lot of boost. you could say she appears sexy. but she always has the CHOICE to dress more discreetly, or even more provocatively (as indeed, most of the other girls do). so where’s the beef?]
I think we are talking through each other. What I meant was. if a girl wants to be sexy, she has only one choice.
[my friend, definitions are like boundries: they’re used to define parameters. sure you can push the boundries a bit, or blur them a little, at times. but the moment they vanish completely, you’re left with chaos on your hands. the world makes little sense as it is, why make it more convoluted than before?]
I think wht u mean to say is that a sexy woman is a woman with a great body and this definition should not be tinkered with. I neither agree nor disagree with this ,just want to say that for women there is more than one meaning of sexiness in a man,and this difference is the point of the article.

flag objectionable content

i’m still waiting for you to reply to my ’points’. hope you’ve caught some sleep by now

meanwhile...

[She says, that being sexy has just one meaning right now;a porn star like wearing ur sexuality on ur sleeve.]
’sexy’ has obvious connotations to sexual attraction. it’s a word used to describe someone who arouses you. i would like to know what other meanings of this word can be. and no, i do not find a ’powerful’ CEO sexy, in and of itself, unless the person is indeed ’physically’ attractive to me. pornstar or housewife, i don’t see anything wrong with ’wearing your sexuality on your sleeve’ as long as you don’t complain of ’unwanted attention’ as a consequence. sure, i greatly respect and admire women like Mother Teresa and Phoolan Devi. but (political correctness be damned) i won’t call them ’sexy’. let’s not start disintegrating the basic tools of communication (words) here.

[A sexy woman has got only one idol to follow. She is free to choose, of course, but there is just one choice.]
that statement is full of oxymorons and rhetoric. here’s an example from real life: i work in an office with quite a few female employees. some of them are really attractive, even though they don’t flaunt their sexuality (no revealing, or tight, or short attire, etc). one particular young lady is almost always dressed in tight, figure-hugging jeans and tshirt. she’s short and her voice is god-awful, and to be honest, her face isn’t very pretty (it’s rather harsh, and makes her look older than she is). her attire manages to outline her curves quite successfully, and thus gives her appearance a lot of boost. you could say she appears sexy. but she always has the CHOICE to dress more discreetly, or even more provocatively (as indeed, most of the other girls do). so where’s the beef?

[a forty something with whitish hair can be sexy in a mills and boon type of way.]
Mills & Boon? and then you say women have lousy options to choose from. i’m sorry, but i never even managed to get through a single one of those crappy books (a few pages, back when i was 14, were enough to warn me that i had mistakenly entered the world of soap-opera), so i wouldn’t know exactly what you’re referring to. all i can say is, i’m extremely interested in meeting women who’re intelligent, sophisticated, and worldly-wise, and i don’t care if they’ve got small boobs or braces or amputated limbs. but again, i wouldn’t dream of calling them ’sexy’. my attraction to them is stricly on an intellectual level, not physical.

my friend, definitions are like boundries: they’re used to define parameters. sure you can push the boundries a bit, or blur them a little, at times. but the moment they vanish completely, you’re left with chaos on your hands. the world makes little sense as it is, why make it more convoluted than before?

flag objectionable content

don’t agree with all the statements in post 1

flag objectionable content

much ado about few things??

flag objectionable content

Hey nexus, Lemme try to summarize the authors thesis.She says, that being sexy has just one meaning right now;a porn star like wearing ur sexuality on ur sleeve.A sexy woman has got only one idol to follow.She is free to choose, of course, but there is just one choice.
On the mens side, for eg, you can have a bicep bulging sexy look, a highranking CEO can be sexy because of his power,and a forty something with whitish hair can be sexy in a mills and boon type of way.
I am feeling sleepy now.. I will reply to your points later.

flag objectionable content

thanx, i will try to find and read the book. but from the interview it seems this lady is going off half-cocked. she isn’t the first or only one to notice the so-called ’raunch culture’ and she doesn’t really have a solution. noting a problem and criticizing it isn’t the same as providing an alternative. ’death of real passion’ is a good slogan to dangle in our faces. but can she define ’real passion’?

there are also some discrepancies in that interview. from what i’ve seen of those Girls Gone Wild videos, the girls are never ’intimidated’. they’re either excited to be cheered on/egged on by the crew & onlookers, or they’re just tickled pink at the opportunity to be on screen. people do a lot of crazy stuff in the presence of a camera, and if they happen to be extroverts, then flashing a part of their body is cause for a good laugh.

also, not everyone is a fighter. most people would rather just toe the line than face the flak. these playmate wanna-be girls that Levy is projecting her ire at, have CHOSEN to stick to the status quo. i’m happy for Levy that she has not (presumably), but she should realize the implicit ’freedom of choice’ being exercised by the women in this ’raunch’ culture.

Levy and the interviewer also fail to understand (possibly due to the fact that they are, after all...women) the male psyche & sexuality. even if the women were to achieve ’equality’ (which curiously, is refrred to here in monetary terms) with men in the salary dept and status-wise, the men would still leer at ’the one in the low-cut blouse’. it won’t be because all of the men are pigs, or disrespectful of wone, or insensitive to women’s needs, or whatever. it will be because this is part of man’s natural blueprint: visual stimulus (tits and ass, for example) turns him on. no matter how hard one of these modern ’metrosexual’ (or whatever hip new label they’re using these days) men denies that or tries to behave differently, that bulge in his pants will always give the game away. it’s a crude but simple fact of life, get over it: the dick has a mind of its own . so, in effect, no matter if a woman is the boss or an intern, when it comes to men’s judgement of her attractiveness, it is a whole other ball game (no pun intended), with entirely different marking criteria. hate it, berate it, call it chauvanism...but that’s the way it has alway been, and unless they come up with some sort of mandatory-for-all-men optical or sensory alteration procedures, that’s how it is going to stay (i doubt if psychological re-conditioning will work).

the funny thing is, even in more conservative societies or places where ’raunch’ culture has not been embraced by women, men behave the same. why funny? because women are not much better off, and the men are not too happy either.

maybe nobody is really happy with the sexual situation, except maybe the Scandinavians. the raunch culture has nothing on their nudist beaches, and frank and open attitude towards sex and the human body. with their minds free of sexual hang-ups, they live rather more mundane lives, which is not to say they’re less creative or artistically inclined (Ingmar Bergman, anyone?). perhaps we should all move there...

flag objectionable content