Feministing is a favourite website of mine that I visit daily, but in all my time I have never felt a need to post. Now I’ve got a few questions for the community of Feministing.
When I came home today from a long day of school and work, I found this hanging on the door of my dorm. I was weirdly inwardly outraged. It was a quiet bubbling that the longer I looked at it the more it incited my anger.
This an advertisement for a school skiing trip thats put on by an outside company, but they are using school facilities. It had to have been approved by the dorm superiors for it to be allowed to be hung up EVERYWHERE.
Obviously this is advertising a coed event, but the women are in ski gear and bikinis, but the man isn’t wearing a speedo. Our us women folk not allowed to be happily dressed in our ski outfits, must we be the porn parody of ourselves. Also he is flanked by these women as if he is a god. It is a seemingly superior stance.
I’m never usually crazy over analytical about things, but this just got me.
Should I be upset or am I embracing the straw feminist role? If I am right is there something I could do without everyone writing me off as a crazy “over hormonal, over sensitive woman”, or as the pretty girls who don’t want to even be associated with feminism say that I’m “Just Jealous”.
By the way my university is the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
2 Comments
No, I agree. The event should be about skiing, not naked girls. The organizers are basically excluding girls who want to ski and not prance around in a bikini
I would say 100% yes it is an offensive poster and your analysis is exactly right on target. Your reaction is completely justified.
If you’re looking for something to do about it, could you maybe get advice by talking to someone at your university’s Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, or the Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice Student Association?