About a week or so ago, I posted a picture of the cover of the game of Battleship. It was clearly the original cover version, as it had the dad and the son playing Battleship at the table while the mom and the daughter happily did dishes in the background. Naturally, that image resulted in a couple of very unfortunate comments (Scott and Mark) about women and kitchens and sandwiches. And since I really have a soft spot for both of those guys, this is for them. Enjoy!
Where do I sign up to get a job that studies the completely obvious? I know that such jobs exist. In fact, I'm positive of it after reading in Psychology Today that a one Nicolas Guéguen did a study "...on the likelihood of a female hitchhiker being picked up, by either a male or female driver, as a function of her breast size." Sooooo...let me get this straight. He wanted to know if a hitchhiking woman had larger breasts, would it increase the chances that she would be offered a ride? Really? There needs to be a study for this? Can't we all just agree on some things without the study?
The author of the article at Psychology Today is a one Gad Saad (pronounce that however you'd like). Mr. Saad muses about Mr. Guéguen that he "...could not help but notice that he possesses a talent for conducting naturalistic experiments about issues that many people have wondered about and yet few (if any) have tested." Really? Do you really think that many people have wondered whether or not chicks with large hoots get preferential treatment? Or do you think that many people already know that chicks with large hoots get preferential treatment? Can't we just agree that some things don't need to be proven, that they're just intrinsically known and we're all good with that?
The guy, Mr. Guéguen actually did a little test where "...an average looking female confederate" with either A cup, B cup or C cup sized breasticles "...stood at the side of a road and actually hitch hiked (i.e., put out her thumb as cars whizzed by)". Someone counted how many guys and how many girls drove by and also counted how many guys and how many girls stopped to pick this chick up. (They make of point of telling us that the "female confederate" did not actually get in any of the cars. I wish that would have made a point of telling us why she is called the "female confederate" instead.)
Now, this may shock you to learn that more men stopped to pick up the chick with bigger breasts. This is summarized in Mr. Saad's article as "If a woman has large breasts, men are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior." You think?! Are you freaking kidding me? How about next time, instead of sending some chick out on the side of the road and having her thumb rides, what say you just ask guys what they would do? "Excuse me, sir? If you saw this woman hitchhiking (show picture of voluptuous female, preferably Pam Anderson because, well, who doesn't like Pam Anderson?), would you give her a ride?" Then give the man a tissue to wipe the drool coming out of his mouth. Repeat as needed. (I realize that "as needed" makes it sound as if it is necessary to ask someone else to see if this is, in fact, an actual phenomenon. You and I both know that it's not. You and I both think that this study was about as stupid as it can get in the first place. Then again, some guy managed to figure out how to study how women's breasts cause different reactions in society. OK, that guy might be a genius, but this study certainly is not.)
And just in case you were wondering, here is the picture that Psychology Today included along with their article. You know, just in case you were unfamiliar with the concept of a fairly attractive, large breasted woman. Behold!
Am I one to judge? Of course I am. But this is a case where there needs to be some sort of judgment. Technically, I suppose I don't need to be the one doing it, but what fun is that really? Not much. Let's begin.
Over there in Berlin at theIAAF World Championships in Athletics competition (it's Track and Field, not to be confused with Field and Stream), there's a bit of controversy. Well, maybe just a question. I don't know if it qualifies as a controversy just yet, but it's ramping up to get there. It makes you stop and think, though. It at least makes you wonder. But whether you stop and think or you just wonder, both can be expressed in this situation with the extremely apt expression "WTF?" That's because in the women's 800m race, the winner...well...see, some folks wonder....it's just because.....and the.....you can't really....oh, for cryin' out loud, here! This is the person who won the race. Behold!
Aaahhh. Now do you see what all the hubbub is about? I'm sure you do. That is a picture of a one Caster Semenya of "....a remote, rural part of Limpopo province in South Africa", according to our friends over there at The Telegraph. Caster is 18 years old and has apparently improved her performance in the 800m race by incredible amounts over just a few months (7-ish, to be more vaguely precise). Usually with such a wide margin of time being shaved off of your previous time there is usually talk of doing so by artificial means, aka 'roiding up. Steroids. And while Semenya is muscle-y, that's not what they're concerned about. They're concerned about whether she's running with the appropriate opponents. That is to say, she might be a man.
Again, who am I to judge? Well, I'm me. And I'm gonna. Judge that is. Upon first glance, all I could hear was the Aerosmith song "Dude Looks Like a Lady" running through my head. Well, that and the thought that she's a guy. Simply put, that's a man. But I looked at some footage of how she ran and I also looked at a whole bunch of pictures and in some of them, I'll totally admit that there was a slight hint of a female. I couldn't say what it was. I could say what it wasn't. It wasn't the unshaven legs. It wasn't the rippling muscles. It wasn't the short hair. But there was something. (Ironically though, if there is "something", that won't bode well.) Maybe it's that there isn't a whole lot of room in that outfit to, um, tuck...if you know what I mean. (And while I don't have one, I'd imagine that if you did have that thing all tucked up there, you'd chafe quite a bit if you were running 800m with it like that. You might even rub it down to a little nub, like the eraser on a pencil, if you had really picked up some speed.)
Some of the things that caused others to question Semenya's gender shortly after her arrival in Berlin were her "...muscular development, her narrow figure, deep voice, a dusting of facial hair and her masculine looks." I'm going to take issue with the deep voice part. There's nothing wrong with chicks with deeper than usual voices. Nothing! They're still chicks. They just sound like dudes...mostly on the phone. And they get called "sir" a lot....again, mostly on the phone....so I've heard. So just because someone has a deep voice, that doesn't mean that you need to be calling them "sir" because they're really a man. Then again, it does help if they don't look like a man as well as have the deep voice. That's all. But as far as the rest of it goes, the "dusting of facial hair" is definitely cause for concern, if not alarm. Just because you're female and athletic doesn't mean that you have to sport a "dusting of facial hair". You an be a female athlete and still be able to be identified as a female. Look at these two from Jamaica that were also at the World Championships. No one is questioning whether they're female or not. Behold!
So now what's in store is that they're going to do a gender verification test which, according to IAAF spokesman Nick Davies "...is an extremely complex procedure." Wait. What? Extremely complex? How many pairs of pants does she have to drop?
According to a one Dr. Richard Auchus, a specialist in disorders of sexual differentiation, "We can get quite philosophical here -- what does it mean to be male or female?" How non-philosophical do you want to get, Doc? Because it's really pretty basic as to what it means either way. Why must it always be so complicated?
There's going to be a series of tests to determine if Semenya is female. (Rumor has it they will include attempting to parallel park, seeing if she stops and asks for directions, has any interest in football and can work the remote control.) These tests would seem to include "...a physical medical evaluation and reports from a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender." That seems like a lot. But apparently, just dropping the ol' pants isn't good enough if someone happens to have been born with ambiguous genitalia (which is not a bad name for a band).
But even without the ol' AG (ambiguous genitalia), it's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened before, where a person of one sex can somewhat pass for a member of the opposite sex and therefore does the most logical thing which is to compete in athletics as a member of that opposite sex. Of course. Take the case of a one Samukeliso Sithole. According to the BBC he "...won seven gold medals in women's competitions in 2004." And then it was discovered that she was a he, a fact that he tried to weasel out of by claiming he was a hermaphrodite. That didn't fly and he "...was charged with impersonation and causing psychological damage to fellow athletes." (Wow. If they had that sort of charge here in the US, half of the sports players out there would be charged.) Once they figured out which prison to send him to (they chose a men's prison) off he went, where he later claimed "...to have periods and feared becoming pregnant. Sithole said the male organs became enlarged after a traditional healer took revenge after not being paid for treatment last year." Nice going, Sithole!
Seriously, what kind of a guy wants to win something so badly that he'll pretend to be a chick and go run against a bunch of women? That's really pathetic, yes? It's also nothing new! This goes back at least to 1932 with the case of a one Stella Walsh, later nicknamed Stella the Fella (you can see where this one is going). According to an article over at The Mirror , she won "...Olympic gold for Poland in the 100 metres at the 1932 Los Angles Games", then in 1936 won a silver in the same event and went on to set "...100 national and world records, including 51 Polish records, 18 world records, and eight European records." That was all fine and good until 1980 when, as a bystander to an armed robbery in Cleveland, Ohio, she was shot dead and her subsequent autopsy revealed that she had male genitalia. Holy canoli! I'm still wrapping my head around this one. Mainly because I've been looking at photos of "Stella" and wondering if there were any questions at the time that this was going on. I look at these photos and I think "You could have at least tried to alter your appearance. Maybe shave or something." She's pretty manly. Behold!
See?! What did I tell ya? But get this! At the Berlin Games in 1936 high jumper Hermann Ratjen "was forced by Hitler and the Nazis in Germany to pretend to be a woman and call himself Dora". I guess that if Hitler is asking/telling you to be a woman, you be a woman. ("Would you like me to put on a sundress, Fuhrer?") They did this because the Nazis "...wanted to ensure that Germany won much more medals than they had done the previous Games." That didn't go over so well when Hermann came in fourth in the women's high jump. And that is why Hermann Ratjen did not go down in history as one of Germany's most famous athletes. He was found out in 1938 when on a train where he was recognized by a couple of women. Even though he was wearing a dress (still going with the Pretend-like-I'm-a-woman-for-Hitler ruse), it was something about his beard stubble that gave him away. Go figure!
But again, I have to ask, was anyone questioning this at the time it was happening? Or, in this case, were folks just going along with it because of the Hitler factor? I'd be OK with that, you know. Not saying anything as to not upset Hitler? Not a problem. Seems reasonable.
The "extensive gender tests" on Semenya are expected to take a while, so we won't know right away whether she's all woman or all man or some sort of hermaphroditic sprinter (another really good name for a band. Hermaphroditic Sprinter.). But until something or someone says otherwise, she's a chick and she won the 800m race and that's how it should be for the time being. While this likely won't be the most pleasant public relations incident that she'll ever be involved in, at least when it's done, it's done and she won't have to go through it again. In the meantime, just a slight touch of femininity can go a long way. Just something to think about.
Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer and George see George's Dad without his shirt and the man had breasts? (According to Kramer "These were real hooters.") Kramer concludes that "...Frank can't be too comfortable with those things clanging around. He should wear something for support." Now, he might have been referring to a bra, but he called it "The Bro." (It was basically a sports bra. But the suspension of disbelief element of television is really what makes stuff like that work.)
Now, I am in no way claiming that I am an expert on men's breasts. (Women's breasts? I don't know if I'd go as far as to say "expert", but I know my way around.) But even with my lack of knowledge about the breasts of men (otherwise known, in some areas and by people whom I do not associate with, as 'moobs'), I really can't imagine that men would be interested in a bra. A lot of women aren't even all that keen on it (but you gotta keep the girls in place otherwise it's just downright painful) and it's commonplace for them! But men? A bra? A man bra? You see where this is going, right?
Where else but in freaky, anime-crazed Japan would the Man Bra be a hit? Nowhere else. Just there. In Japan (which is, thankfully, far, far away). According to a news report on this subject, "If you thought bra wearing was the preserve of men, get ready to think again because men all over Japan are hitching up their 'moobs', finding out their cup sizes and getting in touch with their feminine side." Feminine side? Or fetish side? I know not everything translates literally into English, but I see this as being a little bit more of a 'fetish' thing and a little bit less of a man's 'feminine side' thing. One of the customers in the news report states, "I like this tight feeling. It feels good." See? What did I tell you? Fetish.
I don't know about you, but that ad above gives the whole thing sort of a drag-queen-y air about it, you know what I mean? That guy is either a) looking for a man bra as an accessory to one of his costumes for his nightly gay burlesque show he puts on in Vegas, or b) he's incredibly turned on by the thought of another man wearing the man bra (which is why he's taken off his shirt (and probably his pants) while in the store with the mannequins perusing the selection). He also does not strike me as the type of guy that would have 'moobs'. He seems like his pectoral areas would be rather taut and firm, but it's hard to tell because he's hugging himself in order to keep him from fornicating with one of the displays.
A woman named Akiko is the individual responsible for this atrocity. She's been selling the man bras (or Men's Premium Brassiere) from her online store The Wish Room. Her motivation and reasoning for designing and trying to sell such a product? "I think more and more men are becoming interested in bras. We've been getting feedback such as "Wow, we've been waiting for this for such a long time. So I think there was a substantial customer base that was waiting to see this kind of product."
OK, look, men have always been interested in bras. They just haven't been interested in wearing them! They've been interested in how to get them off of women, but that seems to be where the interest stops. (The interest in the bra, that is. Once they get the bra off, there's still plenty of interest, it's just not in the bra anymore. No, no, at that point, there are far more interesting things of which to pay attention to. Far more interesting. Spec-tacular even. :::sigh::: Oh, whoops. Sorry. I digress. Or happily remember. Your choice.) I don't think that their interest in the female undergarments is because they want one for themselves. Unless, of course, they're in Japan.
Akiko has high hopes for her man bra. She seems to think that "As well as smoothing the male silhouette and starting a new trend, Akiko is hoping that her man bra will achieve what so many women's magazines have been trying for so long: By giving men a better understanding of how it feels to be female so that they end up becoming gentler and more caring." Yeah, that seems smart to set your hopes and expectations pretty low like that so that you're not disappointed when it doesn't happen, because it never will. You think you're going to get men to become "gentler and more caring" because they're wearing a little silk? I'm thinking that if it does cause the men to become "gentler and more caring" they're going to be doing so with other men if the man bra has anything to do with it!
Akiko's man bras cost about 30 USD and they come in black, white or pink (for those men out there looking to tap into their ultra-feminine side). The news report says that "they'll keep your 'moobs' under wraps even in the most unforgiving of outfits." What kind of a man's outfit would be unforgiving? Are they also learning how to do the Hustle in German discotheques and they need to wear those super tight, shiny shirts? (You know, like how Tiger Woods makes his shirts look now that he's all buff.) If so, 'moobs' are the least of their problems.
Look, I'm all for a man who can be caring and gentle. Sure, that sounds grand. But I'm here to tell you, I like my men to be men. I like men in general to be men. I don't want a bunch of overly sensitive, excruciatingly caring men running (or skipping) around. They're men! They're supposed to do man things! Like move heavy objects when we need them moved! Like fix things and get all dirty and then do commercials for Irish Spring soap! Men! You know what men become when they stop acting like men? That's right. They become women! And the last thing that a bunch of women need is more women, let alone men who act like women. We want manly men who are nice and protective and don't wear our lingerie or anything that resembles our lingerie. (Another one of the last things that a bunch of women want to do is to have to share the sink and the Woolite with a guy while he rinses out his 'delicates'. Ugh! I can't even think about it without feeling slightly nauseous.)
Below is the video of the news story so you can see this nuttiness for yourself. I'm sure that the man bra is very supportive, but I just don't think that I can support the man bra. I think I'd prefer it if men were braless and just stopped eating pork rinds and drinking beer to get rid of their 'moobs', rather than embracing them with pink lingerie.
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