CONFESSIONS OF A FEMINIST WITH A SWIMSUIT ISSUE, VOL. 1
when biology becomes destiny.
I was a feminist long before I knew what one was.
My mom, who would never have called herself one but who, through her words and her actions and her proud, fierce independence, showed me what it was to be one, made sure of that. My years in college and grad school English departments -- despite a few female colleagues who, forgetting they were supposed to be fighting against the notion of biology as destiny, told me I couldn't really be one (I could only be an ally) because I had a penis -- strengthened my convictions and confirmed my commitment. I surrounded myself with strong, proud, smart female friends. I fell in love with and happily married the strongest, proudest, smartest female I knew. I worked always, in my scholarship and in my teaching, to discuss and confront and consider the effects, the impacts, the consequences of gender biases and stereotypes. I did whatever I could -- refusing to see a film here, condemning an artist's misogynistic lyrics there, challenging sexist statements anywhere -- whenever I could to beat the drum and carry the cause. Nothing -- not dismissive, exclusive female colleagues; not radical gender feminists who give the name and the movement a bad name and a worse public image; certainly not blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the sexist feminazi idiotocracy -- could compromise my principles or even question my resolve.
At least until this past weekend, when Carolyn Murphy dropped by.
There was a time about ten years ago -- my first time around as a Sports Illustrated subscriber, freshly married, living in Baltimore and leading the male meta-feminist grad school life at College Park -- when I wouldn't even look at the Swimsuit Issue. (Almost un-red-blooded-American male, I know, but very non-objectifying feminist male, to be sure.) There were many years in between when I dismissed and derided and generally scoffed at the issue, so certainly certain that I was above and beyond and better than that, self-righteously bothered and mildly annoyed that, in such an allegedly enlightened age, such a sad and sorry thing still existed. Hadn't its sexist time come and gone? Didn't SI have better things to publish and purer gimmicks with which to make a quick buck? Weren't turn-of-the-millenium men beyond this sort of base titillation and prurient interest?
Apparently not.
Because here I am with the stunning Carolyn Murphy on a beach and on my desk and looking right at me -- looking right through me, like she knows what I'm thinking and can sense that I'm weakening -- the straps of her red bikini top falling softly off her shoulders, sitting cross-legged and sultry-eyed, perfectly tanned and perfectly toned, golden hair blowing gently in the warm and salty sea breeze. My enlightened-intellectual guilt and shame rising and receding again like the tide behind her. My once-firm feminist resolve melting like cocoa butter on the beach beneath her, pooling and puddling into a weak-kneed, woozy-headed swoon, lost in langorous thoughts of slopes and curves and come-hither glances, slowly succumbing to the subtle glories and sensual wonders of the professionally photographed, glossily published, sensationally fantasied female form.
In 1644 -- a full 320 years before the first SI Swimsuit Issue -- the great poet John Milton wrote: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. He was arguing against a Parliamentary order to create official state censors, but he may as well have been writing about a philosophical order to avoid annual swimsuit issues. Resisting temptation, after all, is not much of which to be proud if you've never actually met with temptation. And you can only truly be proud of avoiding the swimsuit issue if you've first seen and considered and maybe gently drooled over it before standing tall and tossing it aside and declaring yourself a principled feminist male of the first order. All well and true enough, I think, but tempered too by the reminder that Milton was blind and I am not.
Being not blind, not a fool, and not gay, these things are not easily done. These temptations. once met, are not easily overcome. In the end -- and it didn't take all that long, really -- Carolyn and her cover were much too much for me. I am a feminist, yes. But I am also a heterosexual male. And so, no matter how much my mind may protest, undeniably weak and biologically susceptible to the pleasures and promises of beautiful babes in bikinis. Exercising and breathing and sallying out to see my swimsuit adversary, with sand and surf and dust and heat and lust and longing full in my face and a few other body parts, I simply could not resist. I succumbed. I sinned.
And so I fell.
My mom, who would never have called herself one but who, through her words and her actions and her proud, fierce independence, showed me what it was to be one, made sure of that. My years in college and grad school English departments -- despite a few female colleagues who, forgetting they were supposed to be fighting against the notion of biology as destiny, told me I couldn't really be one (I could only be an ally) because I had a penis -- strengthened my convictions and confirmed my commitment. I surrounded myself with strong, proud, smart female friends. I fell in love with and happily married the strongest, proudest, smartest female I knew. I worked always, in my scholarship and in my teaching, to discuss and confront and consider the effects, the impacts, the consequences of gender biases and stereotypes. I did whatever I could -- refusing to see a film here, condemning an artist's misogynistic lyrics there, challenging sexist statements anywhere -- whenever I could to beat the drum and carry the cause. Nothing -- not dismissive, exclusive female colleagues; not radical gender feminists who give the name and the movement a bad name and a worse public image; certainly not blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the sexist feminazi idiotocracy -- could compromise my principles or even question my resolve.
At least until this past weekend, when Carolyn Murphy dropped by.
There was a time about ten years ago -- my first time around as a Sports Illustrated subscriber, freshly married, living in Baltimore and leading the male meta-feminist grad school life at College Park -- when I wouldn't even look at the Swimsuit Issue. (Almost un-red-blooded-American male, I know, but very non-objectifying feminist male, to be sure.) There were many years in between when I dismissed and derided and generally scoffed at the issue, so certainly certain that I was above and beyond and better than that, self-righteously bothered and mildly annoyed that, in such an allegedly enlightened age, such a sad and sorry thing still existed. Hadn't its sexist time come and gone? Didn't SI have better things to publish and purer gimmicks with which to make a quick buck? Weren't turn-of-the-millenium men beyond this sort of base titillation and prurient interest?
Apparently not.
Because here I am with the stunning Carolyn Murphy on a beach and on my desk and looking right at me -- looking right through me, like she knows what I'm thinking and can sense that I'm weakening -- the straps of her red bikini top falling softly off her shoulders, sitting cross-legged and sultry-eyed, perfectly tanned and perfectly toned, golden hair blowing gently in the warm and salty sea breeze. My enlightened-intellectual guilt and shame rising and receding again like the tide behind her. My once-firm feminist resolve melting like cocoa butter on the beach beneath her, pooling and puddling into a weak-kneed, woozy-headed swoon, lost in langorous thoughts of slopes and curves and come-hither glances, slowly succumbing to the subtle glories and sensual wonders of the professionally photographed, glossily published, sensationally fantasied female form.
In 1644 -- a full 320 years before the first SI Swimsuit Issue -- the great poet John Milton wrote: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. He was arguing against a Parliamentary order to create official state censors, but he may as well have been writing about a philosophical order to avoid annual swimsuit issues. Resisting temptation, after all, is not much of which to be proud if you've never actually met with temptation. And you can only truly be proud of avoiding the swimsuit issue if you've first seen and considered and maybe gently drooled over it before standing tall and tossing it aside and declaring yourself a principled feminist male of the first order. All well and true enough, I think, but tempered too by the reminder that Milton was blind and I am not.
Being not blind, not a fool, and not gay, these things are not easily done. These temptations. once met, are not easily overcome. In the end -- and it didn't take all that long, really -- Carolyn and her cover were much too much for me. I am a feminist, yes. But I am also a heterosexual male. And so, no matter how much my mind may protest, undeniably weak and biologically susceptible to the pleasures and promises of beautiful babes in bikinis. Exercising and breathing and sallying out to see my swimsuit adversary, with sand and surf and dust and heat and lust and longing full in my face and a few other body parts, I simply could not resist. I succumbed. I sinned.
And so I fell.
Posted: Tue - February 22, 2005 at 11:23 AM
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Published On: Jan 24, 2008 11:58 AM
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Published On: Jan 24, 2008 11:58 AM