Lingerie Models and a Case of Reverse Sexism

Yesterday evening as I was chained to my academic duties, my rommate excitedly mentioned to me that the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was airing on national television.

Ok, so what?

You can call me a dissenter and you can certainly call me a cynic but that really makes no difference to me. I've never cared for that superficial kind of beauty and especially at the end of the course, I have a fair amount of ammunition to reason with myself and others as to why Victoria Secret models don't resonate well with my standards of beauty.

Naturally, I was curious to see if any articles had been written specifically in reaction to this year's show. The majority of my search was fruitless, filled with mindless articles about how "Sexy" and "glamorous" the models looked. Ok, yeah. That's the point of this whole ordeal.

But don't be disappointed. I did happen to come across a rather interesting article that doesn't explore sexism in women, but sexism in men instead!

The particular article talked about a book written by lesbian journalist, Norah Vincent. As the title Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man, gives away, Vincent explores what it's like to go undercover as a man for a year.

Experiencing several masculine activities such as joining a bowling league, going to a strip club and attempting to pick up women at bars, Norah finds herself conflicted with her previous feminist teachings.

By the end of the book, Norah finds herself questioning everything and feeling profound sorrow for men. It takes her a long, long time to recover from the ensuing depression.

So a feminist finds herself feeling sympathy for men? Woah. Now I'm surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be. This idea really resonates well with a term I learned in my clinical psychology course: epistemic privilege. This basically means we carry our experiences with us and only we know exactly what those experiences were and what our feelings towards them are. So maybe instead of generalizing men as a whole, it's more important to have a BROADER and more accepting point of view. You know, treat others the way you want to be treated. 

This really stuck out to me because I am so guilty of this. I constantly remind myself of the inequality between males and females and assume that all men out there are just bad. Oh, the cynicism. So what do you all make of this? We can obviously accept there is a degree of sexism towards men, but is it anything worth really exploring and researching? Would we all tune in for a fashion show similar to Victoria's secret, but showcasing men instead?