objectification

I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of the media. Television in particular. But not just television. Commercials.

I recently saw two commercials in a row that deeply disturbed me. True, I was watching reruns of CSI on a channel that is geared towards older men, but still. Businesses and television stations alike need to learn when to draw the line.

Commercial One: It's advertising a summer sale at a local matress store. Rather than images of beds and lots of graphics and emphasis on prices and things like that, every time the commercial mentions the summer's "HOT" deal, the commercial flashes to a woman with huge breasts getting out of a pool, dripping wet, in a red one-piece. I was just happy she wasn't naked.

Today, as I was walking across the parking lot to the mall, a man who was cruising for a parking spot looked out of the window of his car and followed me with his eyes. I noticed and grinned at him. When the car had passed us I turned and said to my mother, "This is one of those things I sometimes miss when I'm in Germany. No one ever stares at me". She asked, "Why only sometimes?" and I told her, "There are times when it crossed the border from somewhat cute to downright offensive".

I don't know if it is really a cultural difference and if yes, what the reasons for it are, but while I turn heads almost everywhere I go when I am in Italy, hardly anyone gives me second glance in Germany. It was literally the first thing I noticed when we moved to Italy: we were standing in line to cross the Swiss-Italian border at Como-Chiasso and a car full of (male) Italian soccer fans in their 20s kept passing us. Every time they came level with us, they hooted and honked and winked at me. During the half hour we stood in that line, I went from feeling surprised and incredulous to feeling flattered to feeling mildly annoyed.

Sometimes I feel guilty for looking at girls sexually.

Not for the usual reasons that come with being from a very religious family, but because I have to wonder if fantasizing about the cute cashier at the bookstore or the girl in my English class or even a woman in the mall (while I simultaneously wish I had her shoes) is just the same as a guy downloading porn from the internet without even bothering to learn the actress' name.

Is it different because I'm a woman, a lesbian, or because I consider myself a "feminist"? Or because the women I'm attracted to tend to be heavier and "more ethnic" than Hugh Hefner's girlfriends?