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