I’m often someone told to "lighten up" when I respond to something I find offensive, but in thie Allison Stokke brouhaha, I guess I’m just a, crass, jerk-off, dude, or as I prefer, DOOD! Or at least, I’m someone who knows when to pick his fights, and this one just seems ridiculous to me.
Attractive women are objectified. Celebrities get more attention than other people. Stokke’s prowess at her sport is gaining her celebrity. Thus she will be objectified. She can comment on it (and I applaud her for doing so); she can certainly cash in on it if she so chooses; she can stop competing, although that would be a shame. But what she can’t do, in any remotely satisfying way, is fight it. One responder to the IBTP post expressed abject disgust at the real world, common sense advice from Stokke’s coach:
"‘If you are good at something and are an attractive female, you will draw attention whether you want it or not,’ he said. ‘She has great potential. If she continues improving at college and beyond, there will be a lot more publicity. She’s 18 now, going off to college. She’s just going to have to deal with it.’”
But, in fact, it’s not Ms. Stokke that’s doing most of the fighting here. Reading the feedback to the IBTP post, I find myself most annoyed by how much indignation is being expressed on Ms. Stokke’s behalf, how much anger at men who, gosh, masturbate to pictures of attractive "women" as IBTP referred to Stokke, although, isn’t she, by most definitions, actually still a "girl."
A tangent, to be sure, but my point is that aren’t the furious posters and responders also using this girl/young woman, giving her more unwanted attention, making her a WOMAN poster-child representative of all oppressed women instead of just letting her be a high school girl working her way though ugly, unfair, misogynistic world of fame?
I feel very conflicted about this, obviously. But, in the end, I just know that a lot of those self-righteous responders – not unlike a certain homophobic but secretly gay televangelist – went and image-googled Stokke and lingered over, admired, maybe even got-off on, what they found (In a five minute serach, I found a bunch and an interview video on utube). There’s an inherent hypocrisy/self-denial in play here that right-thinking, feminist-friendly men and women are supposed to just ignore, and that’s, I guess, what makes me a dood – I start by admitting my complicity.
Of course, I guess, that’s because I’m complicit and women aren’t? But still.
