Oops, I'm Naked
I don’t want to pick on Britney because we’ve already talked about her and to castigate her is, to use her native Louisiana lingo, like shootin’ fish in a barrel. But I do think something needs to be discussed regarding her recent interview with Matt Lauer on NBC, and her subsequent decision to pose nude a la Demi Moore for Harpers Bazaar.
During the interview on NBC Britney said, “I’m very, very blessed. But my safety, my privacy, and my respect are three things that I feel like are trying to be taken away from me right now.”
Hmmm. So, if you feel your respect and privacy are being taken away from you, why the magazine cover? Here’s a tip: if you don’t want the attention and the lack of privacy that follows then don’t do things to gain attention, such as posing nude for a magazine with a readership of 700,000.
Read the whole thing at Modestly Yours
More on a related topic:
In sum, women have shown themselves capable in careers formerly closed to them, but seem no longer to enjoy the pleasures of being a woman. They know how to imitate men but are confused about how to remain women while doing so. Having started from the rejection of femininity, women's identity necessarily becomes a search without a guide. To see confusion in action, all you have to do is watch the television show Desperate Housewives.
On that show you see that women have not really been liberated by the gender-neutral society. Men and women are not the same, as the gender-neutral society of feminism claims. Nor are men and women merely different. They are both same and different. Formerly society recognized the differences between the sexes, and with laws and customs accentuated those differences. Now society does the opposite: it recognizes the similarities and accentuates them. There is no society without social pressure in one direction or another. Whereas before women were held back from the careers they could have attained, now they are pushed further than they may want to go. In this new situation women do need an identity; they need a feminism to replace the tradition we once lived by. But they need a new feminism, one that does justice to the differences as well as the similarities between the sexes.
[...]
A second suggestion following the acceptance of sex differences is to respect the manliness of men. Manliness is the character of men that makes them insist on being men, on distinguishing themselves from women and also from unmanly men. Manly men reproach unmanly men, but merely look down on women, who are excused from manliness. After all, they are women. To accept differences between the sexes is to tolerate this apparently irrational prejudice of men. “A man needs to feel he is important.” I came across this statement in a professor's book made by an uneducated woman about her husband; in her embarrassment for him, she generalized the fault to all men. But it is true of most men and it may not be a fault. Human beings need to feel important so that they believe that what they do for good or ill matters in the grand scheme of things. Manly men who stand up for a country, a cause, or a principle help all of us to feel important. Women want to feel important as well, but usually in a different way; they want to be important to someone-to their children, to their man. Men, poor dears, have a more abstract sense of importance than women that is also more egoistic. Women may be vain, but men are conceited.
Read more of A New Feminism, the 154th Commencement address delivered at Hillsdale College on May 13, 2006, by Harvey Mansfield, a professor of government at Harvard University
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