7.6.13

The Tough Job of Raising Boys Who Value Women

One of the reasons I wanted to have boys is that I erroneously believed it would be easier.  They seem to come out on the better side of gender discrimination and they don't generally have the same level of sensitivity to pesky issues like body image.  This, of course, was before I had two sons.

Now I see what I am truly up against.  Mr A and I were watching top 40 music videos the other night (what people who live in rural parts of an island do for fun) and came across this "gem".  Sarcasm.  This video is so gross in it's sexual objectification of women that I literally had to turn it off.  And I acknowledge the irony of positing it here and giving even more widespread voice to something so offensive, but I must let crap speak for itself.  

The women are nothing more than hood ornaments for their car.  Every women in the video is scantily clad and devoid of any personality outside of their availability to provide sexual pleasure for these men.  But don't worry - each dude got his own "image" complete with his own chick as an accessory to that.  And don't be fool enough to expect any real suggestion of interracial attraction.

This, of course, is nothing new.  In fact, at this point, I doubt it's even provocative (I had a hell of a time trying to figure out why I got so upset in the first place).  BUT - this is a trend that is not going away and it is unhealthy for both genders. 

I don't relish the idea of raising boys within a society that views women as objects.  I don't want to have to explicitly teach them how to think about and treat women respectfully, especially when the rest of the world around them tells them something completely opposite.  Or, worse, that to treat women differently from this somehow makes them less of a man (I think I was supposed to glean from this video that Nelly is "the man").  I honestly don't even know where to begin.  I certainly know how to be a feminist, but I don't know how to be a strong man in a modern world.  I want to openly talk about this stuff, but I want to be heard as the voice of reason, not a fringe radical.  

Maybe girls would have been easier, after all...



1 comment:

  1. It's just as much Mr. A's job as your job, if not more his. But, since he is respectful of women, I think he's a great model for your boys to look up to. Perhaps that's all that matters.

    ReplyDelete