That is Michael Phelps' body

Another good debate discussion thread was at Pharyngula.

Once again, Feministing ladies, this was a great experience - thanks for the live blog chat!

definitely not phelps... he's got less of an "innie"

Hmm... I'm not sure if this debate will be as big a win among independents for the democrats as the first one was.

If you watched CNN's little "popularity meter" the crowd didn't like when Biden got too serious, or sounded at all patronizing or shifted a question about his own policies back to attacking McCain. Talking about his hometown in PA didn't win him many fans either (not surprising to me, I'm from the midwest and conservatives there don't really identify with the coasts, working class or otherwise). He also has a habit of answering some questions with lots of technicalities, without also including enough plain speech so that people who haven't studied politics or law know exactly what he's talking about.

The crowd really liked when Palin addressed things like education (even though she veered way away from a question asked of her) and Biden didn't respond to all of the issues she brought up in specifics.

Overall, I think among independents this debate will help the Democrats more than Republicans, but by a narrow margin. This based on the reactions of the crowd as shown in the popularity meter.

We'll wait a couple days and see whether I'm right though, I guess...

Ah, I see Joe has the appropriate uniform for going into a debate with Sarah. He got spanked pretty bad. :P

Yeah I completely hate that image. I understand that it was meant to convey a positive message but would have been thrilled if someone had done that to Palin or would be screaming about sexism and sexual objectification? If is not appropriate to do that to a woman it is not appropriate to do that to a man.

my tolerance for the crap on this site is no more. this image is the last straw. i'm removing this site from my RSS. absolutely fucking ridiculous.

W.T.F.? Am I missing some smartypants ironic joke? If someone had done this to a woman what would we be saying?

Is this really how we're trying to level the playing field? I'm disappointed.

Yes, the irony is that Palin keeps calling herself "Joe Sixpack" when her opponent's name is Joe. And is a guy. Who comes from a blue collar background. I'm not sure if she's trying to be "one of the guys" to get the vote from those who supposedly just want a president they could have a beer with, or if she's just confused.

No offense, but ewwww! Joe Biden on some Playgirls bod makes me want to upchuck! There is no good looking male politician that society could sexualize! Maybe Palins head on a demons body?

I actually think this is okay. Ann is not someone I consider careless or thoughtless. I have a few observations.

Nearly all of us are attracted to some people. We shouldn't pretend like we aren't. So, I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing that attraction or admiration.

And another thing is when someone becomes attractive to us for their ideals or intelligence. I (most of us?) am attracted to Rachel Maddow because she is brilliant. I think this is something similar with Joe Biden.

This body is positively mythic. It's like, "The way Joe debated, you'd think he was Apollo (or something)." (And a sharp play on the "Joe Six-Pack" catch-phrase.)

I mean, I see where the criticism is coming from, but am I wrong for not taking it so seriously? It's similar to the "Feminist Guilty Pleasure" feature, or the language like "biatch" our editors were using in the liveblog. We are social creatures, and we are human. Must we suppress that humanity to be good feminists?

Confession:

I originally started reading this blog because I was directed here from another to have a laugh at some of the over-reactions in the comments section.

I'm glad I poked around the site enough to see more. I found that there are a lot of insightful, and thought-provoking posts here. There are, in fact, a lot of posts that made me sit back in my chair and wonder how I could have been so ignorant.

That was 2 years ago, and I've been a fairly regular reader ever since. As a white heterosexual male, I had never considered myself a feminist, but I do now.

One thing I never understood though, was the outrage expressed here about the objectification of the female body. I like female breasts. I prefer them to be attached to an intelligent, funny, caring woman, but I also appreciate them as an evolutionary masterpiece in their own right. I think I understand that objectifying women can be used to further misogyny and is a "slippery slope" if you will. However, I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it's not warranted given the history of women's rights, but I don't think I'd care to live any other way.

Literally yesterday, I found myself wondering if I, perhaps, just don't get it. Maybe I'm missing something major. I see so many posts and comments here expressing disgust with disembodied female figures. It was making me wonder if there was some avenue of thought that I really needed to follow to have a more complete understanding.

Thank you for disabusing me of that notion. The disembodied figure of a sexually appealing male with Joe Biden's head on it makes it seem as though you find this theory bankrupt as well, or you just think a gross double standard is perfectly fine.

I'm really not bothered by the picture at all. I certainly don't believe that you think of men as nothing but a set of abs and a sex organ invented for your pleasure. However, it makes me wonder why you don't give others the same benefit of the doubt.

THANK YOU for this post. I'm in the UK right now and I don't have a TV, so watching the debates would have meant finding someone else who'd let me be in their living room at 4:00 in the morning, or something silly like that. Now I feel like I was there.

Oh, and about the Biden photo above? I'm with SodiumSkies on this one.

Here's an interesting thought that just occurred to me:

Isn't all appreciation of the human form necessarily objectification?

How is this not sexist? You've just given feminism a double standard... "Society, don't label women with sexual labels.... but us women, we'll only do it when it's funny and convenient." Hypocrites.

... Okay... It's sorta stupid. It kinda went over my head, but I can appreciate the "WTF" quality.

(Seriously though, I do have a whole theory on sexiness vs. oversexualisation and obligatory sexualization. It's specifically in reference to comics and video games, but if anyone wants a mouthful of food analogies, just ask).

I really can't stand this idea that every single small town in America is exactly the same. I mean, on the one hand, we're all Americans and we're all humans. On the other hand, New York is not Philadelphia is not Los Angeles is not Atlanta. Sure, a polician can come from one to the other and say "I see you have crowded schools. I dealt with them in this other city and I think it could work here." It's another thing to claim a solidarity with me based on the population of my city or the level of Catholics vs. Protestants. I'd be like, "F•¶ck you! You don't know me!"

Small town people! Have some pride and identity! You're not exactly the same as the small down across the country, a few states away, or even in the same state.

patrick,

I will say, as a female, I have often been made to feel like the /only/ thing that matters is my appearance, whether it was boys always calling me "ugly" in grade school because I didn't fit their ideal vision of femininity, or whether it's men on the street frequently commenting on my appearance (usually positively, not always -often inappropriately sexually).

I'm also an art model, and there is some lovely statistic about how in our modern museums the displays are skewed so that the vast majority of displayed nudes are portrayals of females, whereas the vast majority of represented artists (even in the modern art category) are male.

Between lad mags and porn I think there's a lot more portrayal of females sans personality in our culture than there are males. (heck, look at the VP nomination, she's pretty and friendly and McCain hoped that would be enough for voters)

All that being said, I'm not crazy 'bout this picture anyway. It's not like Biden was trying to be sexy. Not to mention, with all the crushes on Obama already, doesn't it look kind of bad for women to indicate that if as a woman you appreciate a male politician it translates into a desire to sleep with them or something?

This, I suppose, could be used to make an argument Joe is /not/ being sexually objectified here, since he's primarily being appreciated for the way he individually did in the debate:

http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/faq-what-is-sexual-objectification/

Come to think of it, those of you calling total double standard here, do you think the people putting Palin's head on a "sexy" body were doing it as a reaction to her policy stances or speaking ability? Hmm?

Ninapendamaishi: I completely disagree. Under that logic, all the women sport athletes who are appreciated primarily for their athleticism... it is therefore okay to place them is sexy poses and clothes in magazines?

I don't think so.

Just because there's a greater appreciation than their sexiness doesn't justify presenting them in a primarily sexual manner. Period.

Call me crazy, I thought that th picture was simply a play on words - Joe Six-pack, he's Joe, has a six-pack (and it's funny because it's not the type of six-pack Palin's referring to). I guess I could see where it could be offensive, but I honestly think it's meant to be a play on words, not a sexual thing.

Ann?

I don't think anyone was lost on the play-on words bit. I think they were bothered by the extra meaning indicated by the prefacing comment (about how the image expressed her feelings about the debate)

Suppose SNL decided to satirically portray Palin as an obviously sexed-up icon (keeping in mind, the satire has emphasis on how people are suggesting McCaine picked a /pretty/ VP candidate). Do you see how that is still on the line of unacceptable? Even though it would be in the name of satire? Or even worse, making the satire on the candidate you like... if SNL decided to sex-up Biden on national TV?

I just think there are better things to devote satire on.

this post is WONDERFUL!

My all time favorite?

9:28 Jessica: The Tao of Palin
Jessica: It's like to Tao of Pooh, except she kills tigger

I think the image you used for this post is beyond sexist. Since it wouldn't be appropriate to objectify in woman in this way, do you think it's appropriate for a man?

"And when I prefaced it with a note that this explained my feelings on the debate, I meant the absurdity of her "folksy" turns of phrase. And really the absurdity of this entire election. Not that I came away from the evenings festivities thinking I wanted to see Joe Biden shirtless."

Oh. Well while some of these people I'm sure are just trolls, I think it was easy to assume what I did about what you menat.

I see how and why some people are pissed about this image. I think some of the reactions were a bit over-the-top, but I think if this site wants to make a clear point about objectification, then it should be a consistent one.

(But the Joe Six-Pack thing wasn't lost on me, so you know.)

I think Patrick expressed the problem with the Biden picture pretty well. It isn't, as others have said, that the wordplay got missed. It's that either our editors understand that there can be a time and place for the admiration of the human form, or they think it's cool to objectify men, but either way it's a "gross double standard," to quote Patrick. Even as the editors are defending the image as "wordplay wordplay wordplay!", and expecting us to give some consideration to that, they (and many of the people who read this blog) would never give any sort of consideration to someone doing the same with a female body. Protests of wordplay or even aesthetic appreciation would be met with sharp criticisms of taste and accusations of objectification--unequivocal derision.

So here's a question: can we use this example, that is, Ann's representation of Biden, as an indication that there can be a place for the admiration of the human body--male or female? And, if the answer to that is yes, can we take that into consideration when we encounter images of the female? Maybe we could afford to be a little more willing to give the benefit of the doubt, or at least discuss an image, its context, and its purpose before we decide it's "not okay."

Also, to be clear, this is less an objectification of Biden than it is of the headless body he's borrowing. Wordplay or not, the image has reduced some poor dude, who may be an athlete or a model or a NASA engineer for all we know, to a thing. It would be less problematic (I think) if Ann had just taken a picture of Biden's face and drawn a body with a six-pack and Trogdor-style beefy arms.

Yes, there is a place for the admiration of the body, but... Oooh, Oooh, I'm just flailing around here! I want to share my aforementioned food-analogy-ridden thesis on sexual imagery! It'd technically be off-topic to this post, though. Is there any place I can put this ramble?

Flippy - put it up as a community post. I want to read! :)

That picture is disturbing . . .

Disturbingly sexy!

Maggie- You probably made the best point in the whole lot. We always talk about disembodied parts and how disturbingly sexist it is. Yet whoever this shirtless guy was, his identity isn't even a factor here. He didn't choose to be part of a joke, as if anyone would have asked him anyway.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more annoyed I am becoming with this image. It's pretty hypocritical and is not the message that we should be portraying as feminists. If it were any female politician's head on some nameless woman's exposed torso, we'd be up in arms. We need to be consistent with the idea of what is sexist behavior if we expect to be taken seriously across the board.

I've come to the conclusion: not cool.

The use of a disembodied male torso is absolutely wrong since it plays into and perpetuates the persistent and pernicious over-sexualization of males in this culture.

Seriously, no matter how many pictures of naked man get displayed on this blog or anywhere else, it will not change the status of women as sex class and in no way levels the playing field. Good Grief.

"If it were any female politician's head on some nameless woman's exposed torso, we'd be up in arms. "

Actually, only speaking for myself here, but I'd kind of like it if someone created a sexy picture of Hillary Clinton.

Because, I think she's a sexy woman for her age.

Beautiful, smart, powerful.

And she always gets called a "man" primarily for exposing these last two characteristics, and maybe also because she's a little older than Palin and supports progressive policies and women's equality. I think plenty of people don't mind being found "sexy" so long as it's done with respect... (now, we can of course argue over exactly where that line lies)

*bangs gavel a la Cenk of the Young Turks, who is also hot*

I have a verdict: Joe Biden is totally hot. Barack is hotter, but both of those things are beside the point. I believe the point made in posting the offending and offensive image (rofl) was to point out that Palin kept talking about "Joe Six Pack" completely ignoring that Joe Biden is 1)named Joe, and 2) is a regular middle class American, regardless of his 30-odd years in the senate. And, so wah wah wah, kwicherbichin.