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Comment by joelmichael | Hacker News Reader

She makes a good case. I'm no die-hard feminist, but this strikes me as trying to appeal to that most basic element of their mostly male readership at the expense of their female readership.

Wired shouldn't be about that. Even though the whole magazine is kind of campy, and more reminiscent of science fiction than any serious study, this strikes me as more distasteful than funny or sexy. I don't want Wired to become prudish, but they have an opportunity to lead by example here.

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Why oh why, do most women focused magazines (which I see at the checkout counter, etc) have attractive women on them (Cosmo, etc) in various stages of undress?

I think that's a fair question. First of all, feminists typically decry Cosmo just as quickly as they would these Wired covers. So you can't really argue there is an inconsistency there; the fact of the matter is that not all women are feminists, and not all women are Cosmo readers. The two don't usually overlap.

But I'm not going to suggest there is anything wrong with Cosmo. The purpose of Cosmo is to be a woman's magazine that focuses on various traditional interests of women, including attracting men. Their covers reflect that. My problem with Wired doing it is that it doesn't fit what Wired is about. Wired represents the tech community in a sense, so I feel it reflects on me a bit what they do. Historically, it's been a nearly all-male community, yes; but most of us agree we'd like that to change, and getting rid of things like this is not much of a sacrifice. Wired should be about cool tech stuff, and there's no reason that premise should prefer one gender over the other.

> Wired represents the tech community in a sense, so I feel it reflects on me a bit what they do.

Nope. Wired is an attempt to attract eyeballs to advertisements.

If you think that Wired represents you, great. If not, that's great too. Either way, that's your decision, not wired's.

How about: Because they are male focused magazines. Sure, it is women buying them at the checkout -- but only to better live up to what men are demanding from them.

(This answer is slightly more radical than I am.... but that doesn't necessarily make it an uninteresting thought!)

Let's sue Darwin, or god (take your pick).

Or, you know, since one way of defining "humanity" is by our ability to transcend the merely animal, change.

(Edit to add: by answering that way I'm absolutely not agreeing that "sexism is natural" -- just that even if it were, it wouldn't matter.)

I am pretty confident that women who don't read Cosmopolitan can also find mates.

Perhaps I misinterpreted your earlier comment?

I was responding to the idea that the stuff you see on Cosmo/society-at-large is just natural expressions of hard-wired biology -- what I see as a classic sexist cop-out.

I was about to write an answer, but I suddenly find I have troubles even understanding what it is you want. Do you want to change the laws of attraction? Should men (and women) be blamed for wanting attractive mates?

You think attraction has nothing to do with biology at all?

How guilty should I feel for being a man, knowing that my mere existence apparently forces some women to buy Cosmopolitan (the horror!!!)?

You think the "laws" of attraction are somehow writ in stone, unchanging, dictated by biology only and unrelated to culture? Here's a quick counterexample of the western standard of skinny=attractive: http://www.news24.com/World/News/Cow-steroids-fatten-sex-wor...

The problem isn't what we do/don't find attractive: it is the double standard of (de) valuing women solely based upon their (un) attractiveness, while men are judged upon a much wider range of criteria or not judged at all.

The only real thing I have read about attraction so far is that it is probably coined by early experiences (like siblings, parents,...). Also, despite a continued effort by the fashion industry, I never had the impression that anorexia is attractive (hint, think Playboy, not Cosmopolitan). Your link doesn't tell me all that much without photos. In any case, it is obvious that there are all sorts of people (ie men who like fat women, men who like thin women, men who like old women, and so on).

I honestly don't know how to argue with you since I am not sure I agree with your assumption that women are valued solely based upon their attractiveness.

As for biology, there is a difference between men and women - the latter can bear children. Hence the "pairing" market is asymmetric.

Because the advertisers in such magazines are selling that "you too can look like that" if you buy our clothes / make-up / smell / exercise video / diet food or whatever.

Exactly. Those Cosmo covers play off insecurities and get women to spend money on advertised products.

Why not? It's one of the few things in the world that almost everyone can agree is worth looking at.

Females are pretty and I thank god that I live in an age where I can see the especially pretty ones on the cover of a magazine (there was a time, no doubt, that a man [or woman] could go their whole life without ever seeing perfection in the female form). That's not a bad thing.

What's so wrong with that?

Would you feel uncomfortable/angry if your entire post replaced 'female' with 'male'?

not at all. and I'm a heterosexual male.

I think we spend too much time demonizing basic human sexuality, and not enough time accepting and understanding it.

removing all semi naked pictures off magazine covers will not change the fact that people find other people sexually attractive...what it will do is make people feel terrible for having natural feelings.

I say this as a sole male bought up in a feminist household. It took me a long time to realise that looking at the opposite sex was not actually a thought crime.

Magazines like Cosmo target women but obviously don't try to sell based on intellectual content. You won't see covers like theirs on, say, Bitch magazine, which is most definitely "women focused."

Of course, the kinds of magazines that the smart girls I know read are traditionally thought of as male focused. I'm talking about the Economist, the New Yorker, etc. And yes, Wired.

Your covers aren’t all that friendly to women on a regular basis

Is a photo of a woman unfriendly to women? I don't get it.

And the cover/article at hand really wasn't sexist ("oh! look at the boobies!"). It was mostly focused on tissue reconstruction, and (as I recall) the rationales for this that they delved into the most were (1) applicability to regeneration of other tissue; and (2) the importance of breasts to women themselves in Japanese culture (due to the ubiquity of public baths).

While this wasn't exactly reaching out to women, I think that anyone finding it off-putting is really looking for injuries.

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