While you may think that this is my lame attempt at a Democratic smear campaign against the newly-elected Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, you'd be way off the mark. I was not inspired by politics in the sense that you might expect. I was, however, shocked by the glaring double-standard represented in the photo above.
Had this been a female political candidate pictured above, not only would it be front page news, it would be reason enough to sway the vote...and NOT in her favor. Scott Brown poses nude back in the day and he's called a "beef-cake" or "America's Sexiest Man". Any female trying to be taken seriously in the political realm would have been labeled as someone having poor judgement or worse. Every detail of the woman's life and choices would have have been scrutinized by pundits far and wide. She'd have to explain her reasoning for doing the photo shoot. She'd be made to dissect every detail leading up to the photo. All her other decisions would be called into question because of the photo. It makes me angry that we still live in a world where Hillary Clinton gets talked about for showing a tiny bit of cleavage on the floor of the Senate. Scott Brown, on the other hand, doesn't really have his judgement questioned at all for posing nude. For all the Republicans out there... let me give you an example you can relate to. Sarah Palin... While I am not a fan, I do feel like she was overly scrutinized by the media in a very sexist way. She was a beauty queen...made top news. She was photoshopped into a bikini, then had to explain that it wasn't her. She was referred to as a "m.i.l.f.". The talk about what she was wearing was endless. This is the type of sexist ignorance that this country still thrives on and it's truly sad.
The Bottom Line:
The world we live in makes unrealistic demands of it's women. We want to hold women to a higher standard but don't want to empower them to be anything other than centerfolds. This country lauds it's progressive culture but is responsible for holding women back. The men in this country who are responsible for the culture of "the boys" should try holding themselves to this other-worldly standard for once. After all...it's mostly men who are making a mess of this country...last time I checked.
