Women Are Not Just Bodies

Ripping off the gag tape

I don’t have any terrible #metoo stories. Like most women, I’ve been cat-called on the street. I’ve been told by men that I should smile for them. I’ve had my rear end pinched and touched on buses. A man once creepily smiled at me across a subway car as he touched his erect penis in his pants. But for me that’s about it. I’m lucky.

While I have not been victim to harassment or assault in a major way, as a woman I have felt that my body is not my own. When I was growing up, there was a brief period of feminist awareness in the 1970s — an awakening of sorts, and as a country, we took one step forward. But it was short-lived — Madison Avenue took over the feminist revolution and ran with it. It was as if the contents of what had been happening — equality for women — was secondary to how women should appear. “Sex sells” became even more acceptable, and women’s bodies were central. The feminist cause was co-opted, and women were visually used, thought of as bodies for the use of others. While of course advertising is not the cause of sexual harassment and abuse, I believe it is complicit.

What’s happening now is making this reality crystal clear. When I first read the graphic descriptions of what some of these men were doing to women, the specificty alarmed me, and I wondered if we needed to hear such detail…