Yesterday I traveled to Chicago to visit with an old friend. The venue for our visit the the International New Motorcycle Show. I have been to this annual event several times in the past decade or so. It’s always filled with crowds of people, glittering chrome, and jewel like machinery.
It is also the scene of another “attraction”, namely comely young women inappropriately dressed and selling themselves as objects. Now I will admit there was a time when I looked at and reacted to the exposed skin and obvious flaunting. Once I was married I went through a phase where I worked hard not to look, and felt guilty when I failed. However, yesterday I had a new experience, one that I think is important in my growing up.
I found the displays of women in provocative ways to be rather sad and pathetic. That society has told women of a certain physical class they are nothing but objects of desires is extremely destructive. The men who are attracted to these displays aren’t seeing the scantily clad women as a person, they are only seeing that person as the physical personification of their internal fantasy tape. Once that tape reaches it’s conclusion the person ceases to exist.
It is sad not only for the women who have fallen victim to a society that wants its baser needs met through the subjugation of physically pretty young women; it is sad for the men who allow themselves to be swept along in the tide of poorly expressed emotions aimed at these women.
We need, as a whole society, to examine the self image and worth values we transmit to our children, male and female. We need to raise our expectations for self image and personal value out of the gutter. If we do not, we are doomed to continue the cycle of violence and degradation against people that we all decry, but are all morbidly attracted to as well.