I have my homepage on my internet browser set to popurls.com. Basically it is just a website generator for news and random snippets of weird stuff. There is one section everyday that features the most popular pictures from Flickr. Being interested in photography, I usually look through these pictures. Today there were the usual pictures of flowers and sunsets, etc and then a random picture of a pretty girl. The photography wasn't exactly breathtaking so I wondered why the picture was popular. I clicked on the link and went through the comments.
Turns out the picture is the girlfriend of the guy who took the picture and the comments are congratulating the guy on having such a hot date. Gross. I think my favorite comment is "dang tig ol bitties!". Because, you know, if you switch the letters b and t, you just sound so much cooler.
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The picture is probably also popular because she's a TV personality/model/actress.
This isn't to take away from your main point, though: the comments were indeed sexist and lame. The public likes to claim ownership of female celebrities (and really, celebrities in general...it just goes to more disgusting/inappropriate lengths when it's a "hot" female celebrity).
I would like to apologize and rescind my use of the word "lame". It was thoughtless and I realized it far too long after the fact.
Not that this excuses anything, but the woman in the picture is Olivia Munn, co-host of Attack of the Show on G4. Her audience is basically entirely male, and her presence as a "hot chick" has been used for entertainment many times on the show (there have been many instances but the simulated sex on a chair with the male co-host comes to mind). This flickr page is not an isolated case and probably if she were a random woman, I'd like to believe that the same comments would not have been posted. However, Munn has a large fanbase of nerd-boys that have a more noticeable presence on the internet and no problem with displaying their... erm... fandom.
hah. Woops. thanks for pointing that out. Shows how much I know about celebrities. I still think the comments are disgusting though
I was looking at my web logs a couple weeks ago and found that someone had hotlinked to an image hosted on my site. The link was to a messageboard post and I scrolled through it to see what context they had used it in (it was a photo of a size 14 plus-size model). Basically, a member posted a headshot of a girl he says he met on an online dating site who told him that she wears a size 14. He wanted to know what that looked like (i.e., how fat she was) because he was supposed to meet her the next day for lunch. The thread was six pages long and most of the comments read something like this: "She's a fat pig, but maybe you can get her to suck your cock." He continued to post images she had sent him, including a body shot he specifically requested of her. She looked perfectly average to me.
I felt so bad for her, but there was no way I could find her on the dating site to warn her of what a prick she was about to meet for lunch.