Too Much Booty in the Pants?

The best parts of a woman can’t be captured by camera no matter how sophisticated the lens. She is more than a decorated image with sex appeal.

There’s a certain class and poise in the subtlety of a woman that captures the essence of her beauty without her ever having to exploit herself to gain attention.

At one time, this was called having “class.” It was a time when women were celebrated for their true worth and not just sex appeal. It was a time when a man would fight to protect a woman’s honor. Times have changed.

Sometimes, the past is worth repeating.

-Derek Q. Sanders

The message to young girls and women alike from popular culture is that their bodies are their most valued asset. The lesson they learn from the attention gained from their gross over-sexualization is that this is where their true value lies. Photos are posted that feature body parts that they feel are worth flaunting for the attention they will garner. The message to young boys that grow into misinformed men is that women are to be ranked by their ability to appeal to the sexual appetites of the men that use them like sex utensils. Women primarily serve as instruments to satisfy the sexual desires of men in this sexual revolving door in the dating world. That’s the message we have learned through years of images from fairy tales as children to television and film, and other forms of media from adolescence into adulthood. The messages are clear when seen for what they are. “Sex sells” has been etched into our psyche. We recite the phrase as though the mere act of stating it in the affirmative somehow sanitizes the activity.

What happens to a culture where men have lost the true value of its women? It produces men that do not know the true value of a woman outside of their ability to use women for carnal indulgences. It produces little girls that grow into women who are socialized to participate in their own exploitation to gain the interest of men who see no real value in them. It creates a vicious cycle of dysfunctional relationships between men and women.

Body types, plus, and minus sizes effectively make women prisoners in their own bodies held hostage by impossible beauty standards that they never agreed to, but are still measured by. The gym, diet pills, and impossible-to-maintain regimens are their means of possible escape from these pop culture-influenced ” life sentences.” Those who are able to escape their prison celebrate their new-found freedom by publicizing pictures of themselves in next-to-nothing wear that reveals what should only be privy to the eyes of their husbands.

For decades. popular culture, through various forms of entertainment, has extolled the beauty of women in a purely or maybe better stated, impurely sexual context. How has this affected these women? Many have been socialized to have an inordinate desire to be seen as sexy above all. With this designation comes a sense of validation although being sexy is not as much about validation as it gives entry into a ranking system that categories women based upon the order a man would place them on a sex “to-do list.” Unfortunately, many women see this as normal given that most have grown up in a culture that is saturated with images of women being presented as mere sex objects used to sell merchandise, cars, food, and any number of products that use women as live props to add sexual imagery to boost sales.

Ladies, beauty comes naturally for you, more than many of you seem to realize. We’ve only been taught to appreciate an unnatural aesthetic by the culture. As well, you were taught that ‘men are visual’ as though men are ‘only’ visual. We are not, at least not men worth your while. A man that can only see beauty with the limitations of his eyesight captures but a fraction of a woman’s beauty seeing only that which lies without not within her. Don’t limit yourself to the appeal of such shallow men who are primarily drawn to ‘pretty objects,’ objectifying and dehumanizing you in the process. There is so much more to your being that eludes such a limited paradigm. You have beautiful minds and insight that can’t be seen in the photographs that showcase your ‘ASSets’ and other body parts and often misrepresent who you truly are drawing focus to areas that will gain the attention you want but, can’t deliver the love you need. You deserve to be loved for all that you are not just what you look like.