Fandom and Sexual Desire
Evidently it’s now (or just stopped being?) female sexual desire week – belledamme has photos from a lesbian perspective, and links to various straight women bloggers who are posting their photos of attractive men. But the part that caught my eye was two women who mentioned athletes. Here’s Season of the Bitch on looking
I have a friend who constantly defends her love for Roger Federer by swearing up and down that it’s all about the game. She’s the same friend who reminds me all the time that there’s more to a man than his looks, and that I should be choosing them for their brains–a reminder that I sorely need at times.
However, this discounts a whole part of attraction and desire. I like to remind her that it’s OK to look. It’s especially OK to look at a celebrity who you’re in all likelihood never going to meet.
And here’s Purtek on hockey players.
because on the one hand, we girls aren’t supposed to be able to appreciate the male flesh, but on the other, we’re not supposed to be able to follow a puck around the ice because our boobs get in the way or something. So just to be clear, I do love me some hockey for hockey’s sake, and I will get into a long debate with you about the relative merits of the salary cap or exactly why it is that I’m pissed that Marian Hossa decided to go and score 12 goals during this year’s playoffs, but I will also fully acknowledge that while I’m watching these guys hit each other into the boards, I’m seriously contemplating how they might translate that energy in *my* direction.
Thing is, sometimes it is “all about the game,” and sometimes not, and, I don’t know that the fannish behavior is always going to look different to someone else. (Well, maybe if you know someone really well – which could be what’s going on with the Roger Federer fan – but not always.) Whether it’s athletes, or actors, or musicians, or whatever. When I was in high school, my male sports hero was Bjorn Borg. Many years later, out for dinner with coworkers from a previous job, I happened to mention my admiration for Borg, and another woman chimed in with agreement. So, here we are, talking about the coolness of Bjorn Borg, and, since this is the computer industry and we’re all techies, we’re the only two women at the table, and the two obvious Borg fans, so one of the guys remarks that our eye must be caught by his blond good looks. Which, you know, nothing wrong with his suggesting that – if guys can lust after Anna Kournikova, no reason women can’t similarly lust after Bjorn Borg. In fact, if I go back and check his photos, he is kind of good looking. But it had actually never occurred to me to see him that way. Why I admired him, above all other players, was his combination of skill and cool on the court. While other tennis players were throwing tantrums, Borg seemed unshakeable.
On the other hand, Omar Sharif when young = my idea of sexy. But, what I’d do about it wouldn’t be particularly different from what I’d do about admiring Bjorn Borg. They’re both people at a distance that I’ll never meet in real life; they’re both people I pretty much know only by following and admiring their careers. In either case, I have pretty much the same fannish relation to the man. Similar deal with women. I love Meryl Streep’s acting, but, though I’ve found her pretty, she’s never really been my idea of sexy; Helena Bonham-Carter is much more in my sexy range. But what I’d do about my admiration for either one is still just to be more likely to watch her movies.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:43 am
But what I’d do about my admiration for either one is still just to be more likely to watch her movies.
Agreed. This is something of what I was trying to get at in my followup post on “sex positive” feminism. Sometimes I’m in the omg-sexy-look-at-that kind of mode. Sometimes I’m watching a hockey game or a movie or a concert that happens to be performed by someone I also find attractive, and I’m appreciating the art or the talent or the intelligence or the athleticism that’s also being displayed, more than I’m having crazy sex fantasies. And the frustrated rant of mine you linked was based on what seems to be the assumption that I can’t, actually do *both* that comes up a lot.
This is also what bothers me about the equation of attraction with objectification. Again in the follow-up post, even though I’d *really* like to see more pictures of Sidney Crosby without his shirt on, I haven’t reduced him to *just* a sex “object” and when I think of him, I think first and foremost of his phenomenal hockey skills.
The lines can even be fuzzy, as well. It’s all good. Point is, sexuality doesn’t reduce a person to a non-person, and it’s okay to appreciate a talented celebrity for his/her talent and looks simultaneously. I feel like this shouldn’t be as difficult to explain as it sometimes is.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
What Purtek said. Which was what I was trying to get at.
I mean, right now I have a terrible crush on a guy who writes for a living. I think his writing is excellent, and I think that he is cute, and both of those together contribute to the appreciation of him as a person. But on its own, his writing is still good, and no one would think of that as objectification, so why does the appreciation for looks become objectification?
June 11th, 2008 at 7:03 am
True, Purtek and Sarah J. Appreciating someone’s looks only means you don’t appreciate the rest of them if you convey that in how you admire the person’s looks. People have plenty of ways of saying, “cute, but not worth taking seriously,” and making that quite clear, but absent the “not worth taking seriously” part of the message, “cute,” alone, doesn’t mean “not worth taking seriously.”