It's Not what She's Wearing

   The climbing number of men in various walks of public life being accused of sexual harassment, misconduct and crimes has me a bit mystified. Why is this happening now? Is it because we are now in a place in time where this can be taken seriously? (Bullying was not taken seriously until after the Columbine shootings.) Is it just happening more often now than before?
  I've read a few statements by people famous and not that if women would stop dressing provocatively and act more like ladies men would behave themselves. This attitude has been roundly condemned and is considered to be victim blaming. As someone who has dealt with minor harassment and fifth-degree assault, I can say in my experience that clothes do not matter. I have always dressed conservatively. In some cases, I was harassed by customers at work while wearing a lab coat. As I prefer comfort over style these lab coats tend to be pretty baggy. Nothing even remotely provocative.
  A week or so ago I read an interesting article on Facebook. It was shared by a friend of mine. It's by Heidi Stevens titled "Why do women get all attractive is they don't want to be harassed? Glad you asked." She puts forth a theory that I find very interesting. She says that years of using women to sell various products have conditioned us to forget that women are human. She writes, "We detach women's bodies from women's humanity so seamlessly that we have to work backward to realign them, 'Wait, she's a human first, remember?'"
   I find this fascinating. This seems to be the result of the of the advertising adage "sex sells".
   It's made me look at things a little differently. C and I have been watching various Star Trek shows. In each series, there is one woman who is the eye candy. She's not hard to find, she's the one wearing the more revealing costume. On the original Star Trek, it's Uhura. Her costume is a short mini skirt while the male characters are covered neck to foot. On Next Generation it's Deanna Troi. Her costume stands out because it is tight and has a wide V neck in contrast to the other male and female costumes that come up to the neck are not quite so tight. Finding the eye cancy on Deep Space Nine is a little harder. I think it is Kira Nerys as her costume is much tighter than those of the others. (Those are the only ones I've watched regularly.)
   I've watched commercials for exercise equipment. One thing I've noticed is that the men in the commercials wear t-shirts with baggy shorts or just the baggy shorts. The women tend to wear small sports bras with something that looks like a tight swimsuit bottom. The camera shots of the men tend to show their faces and upper bodies. The camera shots of the women show their legs, backsides and full-length profile.
   I know from personal experience that women are treated differently. When I was working as a pharmacist in southern Minnesota I sometimes had to deal with angry customers. Several times I've had bottles thrown at me. I've been spit at. None of my male colleagues has had this happen to them. I've had customers who have become angry over something I've told them. When a male colleague comes over and says the same thing to them, sometimes even using the same words I have used, the customer settles down and accepts what's going on. Several times during my career I have been propositioned at work by customers, an experience that happens rarely to my male colleagues. It's not too hard a stretch for me to wonder if maybe some of this behaviour happened because the customer didn't see me as a human being. I think other women in retail can relate.
  The idea of seeing a group of people as not human is something I've written about before. The first step toward treating others badly is to strip their humanity from them. People from bullies to dictators have been doing this probably since the dawn of time.
  The writer makes the point that no one has ever blamed someone whose car has been stolen on the fact that they drove an expensive car and kept it looking nice. If you didn't want it stolen, you should be driving something like that. We can understand and accept that it is not all right to take something from somebody no matter how attractive it looks.
  We don't understand, according to the article, that a woman's body is her possession and the boundaries she sets should be respected. (I've paraphrased this a bit.)
   The question that should be asked isn't, why do women make themselves attractive if they don't want to be harassed. The question should be how can we start looking at women as human and respect the boundaries they set on their bodies.