dimwits, sluts and the media

I strive hard not to be an elitist. Why so much striving, sony pony? Because turns out, I am an elitist and I finally admitted as much to myself last night. When I meet people (as I did last night) who are very obviously slow, dull or lack a basic curiousity about the world around them, it is work for me to be nice to them. So I end up avoiding conversation with them altogether, and being pretty rude about it. But I figure it's better than letting that sigh of impatience, and sharp retort that I will only feel bad about let loose. It must be said, that I find all kinds of people obnoxious, and I don't really like it when people claim to hate stupid people, and now I have become one of them.

But the real, real reason for my rambling today is because I have a bone to pick with women who eye a seductively dressed lady on the metro with disgust. They say things like, "Slut isn't a costume" on halloween. Or "my god, she looks so trashy, she must be working" It bothers me on several levels for multiple reasons.

• There are enough messages in the world telling women we are not good enough, strong enough, smart enough; telling us we cannot dress that way, look that way, act that way, speak that way. Must we add to the clamour, add to the long list of things we cannot do or should not do?
• Why is it trashy exactly? Why is showing off cleavage an inherently bad thing? What exactly is your problem?
  
• Saying "I would never dress that way" is not a reason for someone else to not dress that way.
  
• If you are disgusted because you are concerned for "their safety", then by all means, direct your anger towards a society that makes it a liability to dress a certain way. A woman in a feminist theory class once said while discussing street harrassment that "dressing slutty makes it easier for men to dehumanize women". I don't understand why we accept the lie that men will see us as less than human by our wardrobe. I am tired and bored of the deeply flawed assertion that men cannot really control their eyes, voice, hands in the presence of sexy women. So stupid, and so clearly false. When men behave like jack-asses it is because they are jack-asses, not because they are men.
  
• There is no evidence at all that dressing provocatively makes you more vulnerable to sexual assaults. An entirely fabricated myth that too many women and men have come to simply accept as fact. Women who wear short skirts, low blouses are not any more or less assaulted than women who do not.
• Finally, and most certainly not the least, women need to stand up for each other more! support each other! Yes, even those girls who aren't your best friends and sisters and dress all slutty! Who cares what we wear? We live in a world that often shows such utter contempt for all things woman, so why not show a little love intead?
  

And that's all I have to say about that...but I have some media news that is dying to break free...The media is silly for lots of reasons. I have recently come to the decision that I will not actively pursue the knowledge of current events. In recent years, I had become a fervent newspaper reader, following rumsfield, cheney, brown, meirs and roberts and all their many adventures. I have decided to stop this nonsense. Mostly because I realized that it does not make me any more knowledgeable than the guy who watches Fox all night, or the occasional metro-washington-express reader. Why spend hours pouring over a newspaper for information that I can gain by just listening to conversations around the water cooler? Reading the newspaper just gets me irriated at the world, and I can't stand the talking heads on television who just irritate me period.