Lately I have been indulging in a lot of feminist literature, most notably The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court by Matshilo Motsei. ‘Burn the Bitch’ is the underlying theme of this analysis of gender relations which I should mention is not really an attack on the person of Jacob Zuma but using his rape trial as a metaphor for gender stereotyping. Zuma does not need any author or book to attack him he will let his loins do the attacking.My point of departure on this post is, whenever I indulge in such literature I always get to a point whereby feminists accuse the media of perpetuating a certain stereotype about women in magazines, billboards and television. Ask Gender Links’ Colleen Lowe-Morna and you are bound to get a dossier.
True, even the JOKO commercial features an Oluchi look-alike model, almost waify, darker and with an amount of chutzpah one can readily find in Oprah’s buddy Gayle. Magazines never feature an ‘overweight’ model on their cover; unless that model runs her own show and happens to be Oprah. Billboards and television are even worse.
Maybe Oprah is the ultimate feminist. She defies tradition; puts her own ‘overweight’ ass on every cover of her magazine, lets her friend who is a cold-blooded feminist to edit it. Starts her own overly-successful show and anchors it all these years without networks hassling her about her weight. Right there you know that if your perception of the she-species is not politically correct or in line with how femaledom thinks – you are doomed not to contribute to any of Oprah’s empowerment schemes.
But my argument would be that the way women are portrayed in the media is not really how us, heterosexual hot-blooded males would like them to be either. And that hardly makes us feminists because we taking it further.
In a usual woman magazine they will have Nonhle Thema or Zizo Beda in a knee high purple dress, a blue diamond pendant hanging on her chest, diamond[s] (they are Forever) earrings decorating her ears, a D&G handbag partnering her and a pair or really sexy stilettos to boot. Then they will have various pictures of her in skirts, dresses, pants etc. they will squeeze her into everything from DKNY, Gucci, Louis Vittone, True Religion, Dolce and Gabbana etc. but what the feminist fail to see is that half the time the stylists are either women or gay men.
Ja, you heard me right, gay men are the chief stylists in most of these women magazines. These sods are good at seeing beyond the fabric. So, the magazine Fashion Editors pick gay men to style the female models and the end-product is what feminists complain about as a patriarchal portrayal of women. Which makes me ask; does partriarchy include gay men?
I mean those stylists are gay with a capital letter G. No wonder when you see how they style men you get to understand their sexual orientation. What I’m saying is that my perception of Nonhle as a sex symbol is not when she’s dressed up for the J&B Met and spread across a magazine’s centre spread; it’s of Nomhle spread naked on my bed and licking her fingers one by one, inviting me with each blink. That’s partiarchial and true; no hot-blooded man salivates over a fully-dressed woman in a chiffon.
No wonder when these gay sods style males you get to see a lot of flesh, because for them, that’s how they want to see their men – on all fours on their rugs muscles dripping and inviting.
