This morning, I woke up and opening my eyes to the thin amount of light in my room caused shooting pain to go down my temples. Every cell of my body was crying that I needed more sleep, dammit, and they were not getting up for sex much less for working at the thrift store. Naturally, I appeased the demands of my oppressed body and called in sick to work.
A few hours of sleep later, and a couple tylenol with codeine, and I’m in a state where I can comfortably look at a computer screen while sitting (though not much else). My friend jumps up to send me this conversation(typos kept in because, fuck it, that’s why):
J says:
question – is meghan mccain stupid or just naive?
Antigone: says: *at this point, I have no idea what he’s talking about*
My vote’s on naive
I mean, she’s young, and she was raised by the McCain’s
I think she’ll grow out of it
J says:
she posted a picture on twitter essentially of her tits and an andy warhol book and didn’t expect people to focus on her push-up bra?
Antigone says:
I’m going with naive
I just saw the news headline
I feel bad for the girl, sorta. Got to be rough to head to head with that stupid sort of sexism
J says:
she seems like the type to wear the low-cut dress with the wonderbrea and then gets upset when people keep looking at them
Antigone says:
J, that’s a legitimate thing to get upset about
it’s not “looking”
It’s “staring”
“Ogling”
I don’t like it when people do that shit to me- and it’s nearly impossible to HIDE these things anyway
I wouldn’t want every stupid decision I’ve made from my teen years up to be recorded for posterity in major news publications
J says:
she is in the public light, she has made strides to stay IN, and she knows what not to do if she’s doing both
Antigone says:
Not to mention, I think the picture’s pretty innocuous
People are getting up in arms over the fact she has boobs, for christ’s sake
Was it unexpected? Well, it wouldn’t have been to me
but, that doesn’t make the reaction appropriate
I mean, seriously
J says:
she’s a smart woman, should have known better
rules apply to me if i was posting something and my dick was out
Antigone says:
Her tits weren’t out
Just her clevage
We flash clevage EVERYWHERE
J says:
lol
Antigone says:
Although, I suppose the appropriate analogy would be “her pussy wasn’t out”
Tits =/= dick
Plus, she’s not exactly a child
J says:
she’s a smart woman, should have known better
Antigone says:
I mean, she’s in her 20′s
J says:
semantics aside, she’s made fun of people doing similar things
Antigone says:
well, she’s conservative
I think hypocrisy is sort of their bread and butter
Besides, Ann Coulter does it all the time
I think that’s half of her appeal, actually
“Look! I kinda have tits!”
J says:
lol
Antigone says:
I just don’t see the big damn deal
She’s a girl in her 20s, she did a twitter, she has tits
J says:
i don’t really see a big deal, I do have to pose the question of dumb or naive
Antigone says:
I guess she wasn’t remembering that we live in a society where people can freak out when they’re reminded that women have tits
So, I’m going to have to keep my answer at “naive”
J says:
that sounds about right
For those of you unaware, Meghan McCain posted a photo on her Twitter account, and it shows that she has cleavage. Now, like I mentioned in the text conversation, I don’t understand why anyone would care. But, this does show an interesting trend- my friend J is not what anybody (himself included) would call a feminist. He’s still stuck on the “stupid or naive” duality, and, I guess I bought into too for the purposes of this conversation.
Yet, no one ever talks about the people who were harassing her, and whether or not they’re “assholes, or bullies”. Ms. McCain has breasts, she wears fashionable clothes that show her breasts, she is “supposed to” show her breasts, and now she’s getting punished for having breasts. This is part of the whole continuum of “can’t win” for women. She says “she’s learned from this experience” and the article talks about “Why you should be careful what you put on the internet”. And, that’s true- if you post pictures on the internet, the reaction is probably people harassing you about them. BUT, and this is the big one, that is NOT an appropriate reaction from the people harassing you.
I’ve long felt that is completely ridiculous that we decide who’s “serious” or “worthy” or anything based on their dress. Ms. McCain spouts bullshit, why can’t we decide whether or not she’s serious from what she actually says as opposed to a t-shirt that really isn’t that big of deal? If I say something completely nude, why should that change the meaning of my words? If I’m in a three-piece suit vs. fishnet stockings and a tube top or just a smile what I say is still the same words and still the same meaning, and I still deserve the same respect as a person. No one deserves harassment, even if what they wear (or say) is frivolous.
Ms. McCain does not have political opinions that I generally support. That still does not mean that she shouldn’t be defended against this sort of behavior. It’s not pity I feel for her- it’s anger at her perpetrators. I hope she takes from this experience that feminism still is important, rather than she doesn’t have a right to post pictures on the internet.
And, people, next time you decide to comment on people’s looks, think about what a person wears really says about them.
Thank you for that. I hadn’t heard about this until now, but seriously. Those people are just being assholes.
So what, the woman has breasts. Most of us above the age of 13 or so have them and most everybody else has seen them attached to somebody before, so I really fail to see what the issue is here. And it is ridiculous that the mere fact of having breasts and being in a picture can cause this sort of reaction.
I used to be a sub in high schools and I once got called to see the principal in a school I was working at because mine were too big. They’re big anyway, but at the time I had a 6 month old and was breastfeeding and they were huge. I was wearing a turtleneck sweater because it was winter and I live in the midwest and it was cold (so not even showing cleavage) and I guess it was inappropriate to be a teacher and also have a chest, because she thought it was distracting for the teenage boys. Who are hormonal and would be distracted by just about anything. But it was my swollen, leaky, full of milk breasts that were the problem. When I asked her what, exactly, I was supposed to do with them for the 7 hours a day I was at work, should I maybe take them off and leave them home or something, she didn’t have an answer for me. Just that I was inappropriate and needed to be more careful in the future.
So yeah, I get that she’ll get this reaction for posting a picture on the internet wherein she is a woman who has breasts and isn’t ashamed of them, because people are assholes. But those people need to grow the fuck up and get over the fact that half the population has them. It isn’t up to her to police her body, and nobody should be harassed because they posted a cheesy picture.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that we happen to be in the middle of the cleavage equivalent of the miniskirt era: most women are showing at least a little, and quite a few are showing a lot, and those who don’t at all are being looked at kinda funny.
KS-
I actually had the same problem at school- I developed early, and would be sent back home for wearing inappropriate clothes when I was in SWEATERS for crying out loud.
My sister went through that in high school and junior high, but I didn’t develop until my twenties (in fact, they didn’t get even remotely big until after I had my first child, this happened when I was breastfeeding the second). So I remembered her complaining about it then and that I sympathized, but I really had no fucking clue until that principal called me into her office.
And that was one of the most surreal, infuriating moments in my entire life. Because, as I remember it, she started the conversation by saying that she wished she could fill out a sweater like I could, and then started on about how inappropriate it was for me to wear professional looking and yet still warm and somewhat stylish clothing to work because of the giant boobies. Because those poor, overprivileged 17 year old boys (I was doing a long term position in the “good” public school attended by all the rich kids at the time) shouldn’t be expected to deal with the fact that sometimes women have boobs.
Burkas. We should all wear burkas.
O wait. No we shouldn’t. Because then Malkin will say we’re rooting for the terrists.
Man, it’s hard to remember all this.