The Provocative Female Pop

[Asher Kelman]

A critical photo essay By the BBC news!

“From Madonna with Like a Virgin to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion with WAP, singers have explored what it means to be truly provocative. But, asks Arwa Haider, can explicit expressions of female sexuality in pop really be empowering?“

 

[Asher Kelman]

Swedish singer Zara Larsson's first original song Uncover topped the music charts in Scandinavia in 2013 (Credit: Getty Images)

 

[Jerome Marot]

Why this sudden interest for pop music, if I may ask?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Our culture experiments and tests the boundaries.

Part of this is how we see women. It ends up with Europeans accepting leaders like Merkel or even Marie Le Pen.

By going more extreme we end up accepting in the USA a mixed Indian-Black woman as VP of the USA.

We started out with slave owners who write a Constitution tgat didn’t allow either enslaved Blcks to vote nor even any White woman, uneducated or scholarly!

Women like Madonna have aggressively pushed boundaries on female social empowerment.

Lady Gaga has not only broken social norms in her entertaining behavior but also carried it through to political activism.

So, in the end, Jérôme, these strong and expressive wom, yes, so provocative, are really effecting our society in such powerful ways!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Well, I can't fail to notice that "Megan Thee Stallion" does not look like Angela Merkel. Yet the two names crop up in this thread about "female social empowerment". I have a feeling that this discussion may miss an essential element. Don't you think so?

 

[nicolas claris]

Part of this is how we see women. It ends up with Europeans accepting leaders like Merkel or even Marie Le Pen.

May I correct ?
Part of this is how some men see women…

 

[Asher Kelman]

May I correct ?
Part of this is how some men see women…

Women are part of the problem too!

Right wing women, more often than not, share the same views of the role of women is secondary to that of the men as head of the household! Even today, too many right wing women think of the men as having special status!

The latest US Supreme Court addition, Amy Coney Barret is one perfect, albeit exteme and iconic example. She belongs to a Christian group , “People of Praise” who take oaths of subservience and even private details of their daily lives are controlled by a men’s council!

It’s politically correct, but an error of history, to point to “some” men’s views as being exceptionally disrespectful. Even outliers, predatory men, pointed to by the #me too movement have equivalent predatory females to balance them, either in exploiting men under them or falsely accusing men, (as it’s an easy way to get a cash dividend). One of my wife’s friends claimed sexual harassment when she was fired as an advertising agent, for being lazy and non-productive with her accounts! She admitted to us, her claim against her male boss was totally false, but she felt she “deserved it” as she had tried and her life was hard! False claims are common but so are actual proven rapes of female employees!

Male teachers, who have sex with students are vile and have always been jailed, while boys who get sexual experience from a female teacher are considered lucky! Only recently have women offenders been thrown jail too!

I believe aggressive entertainers help us see women as more deserving of respect!

To me it’s obvious that both men and women share a pool of “givens”, values and opportunities that are jointly carried by the community. Just that men may be more obviously offensive in expressing offensive and selfish attitudes and actions.

I believe that it’s the unique, strong adventurous women, from Joan of Arc to the pop entertainers of today, who are self driven and stretch and refashion invisible boundaries.

That ends up with a new consensus.

Some objections are trivial. Today folk question why men’s nipples are OK in public but women’s are if exposed! But just a decade ago, a Volvo dealer wanted assurance and proof that she had my permission to buy a car! That she had her own credit card and checks with her name, had no bearing on the matter!

It’s part of the nonsense that suppresses women and devalues them. But the entire society is at fault, not just men. We are one civilization! We just express norms differently.

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Pardon the sarcasm, but is this the thread where old white men discuss about empowering women of colour? But first, the video which is cited above. Warning, probably not safe for work (unless your work involves plastic surgery, maybe):

Don't misread me: I am all in favour of equal rights and I see lots of problems with bigotry. But the examples in the cited article to not strike me as chosen in good faith (pun intended).

More seriously: I see a very big problem with a judge of the highest court of the USA taking oath of subservience, independence of Justice be damned.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Jérôme,

Old White men can actually be right! I am not so concerned with sexism. That is merely one facet of narrow lack of rights and worth of many citizens.

I have no problem with criticism and even being mocked, in jest or not. It’s expected when an old man, (who photographs naked young women) gets up to speak of “women’s rights”. I set myself up to that possibility. I can admit that!

However, being flawed, doesn’t disqualify the mathematician or the logical arguments of fairness. If champions had to be without fault, there’d be none!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

BTW, Jérôme, the video was a surprise, more than I imagined but does its job of being aggressive, shocking and pushing societal boundaries of feelings a woman might wish to express. It’s essentially a flamboyant cartoon of erotic rights!

I have no problem with it at all. It now explains to me a few Tik Tok presentations that shocked me two weeks back and made me realize how out of touch I can become!

 

[Jerome Marot]

I have no problem with criticism and even being mocked, in jest or not. It’s expected when an old man, (who photographs naked young women) gets up to speak of “women’s rights”. I set myself up to that possibility. I can admit that!

😇

I don't really mock you, at least not without mocking myself. I am an old white male myself. But I am really concerned about the article. I'll give my opinion, plain and simple: the article is a fraud. It pretends to speak about empowerment. Sure, there is power in boing able to titillate the lust of rich men for money, but it does not serve to diminish the problem of sexism, on the contrary.

I am impressed that you could type diacritical marks on a US keyboard, BTW.

 

[Asher Kelman]

😇

I don't really mock you, at least not without mocking myself. I am an old white male myself. But I am really concerned about the article. I'll give my opinion, plain and simple: the article is a fraud. It pretends to speak about empowerment. Sure, there is power in boing able to titillate the lust of rich men for money, but it does not serve to diminish the problem of sexism, on the contrary.

You are not wrong about insincerity.

But, Jérôme, I consider they even when the female sexually exhibitionistic performers are themselves exploitative, and even totally insincere, they are still moving boundaries!

As us surviving flawed elderly white men taking up causes, there’s something important to consider. How come guys beyond work age that need to use resources, survive beyond obvious utility?

It’s because they are libraries of experience and reserve sperm incubaters, should too many young men get slaughtered in battle for a village to otherwise survive!

Not only that, it has most elderly women switch off interest in sex so that elderly white men will tend to move towards any unmatched young males!

In fact, I am convinced that some minimal availability of experienced and intelligent elderly men and women confer survival advantage to any isolated village or outpost that otherwise would collapse after a variety of tragedies!

When we speak out, it can be selfish and biased, but enough times it’s a long term insight that can keep society on a winning path.

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

But, Jérôme, I consider they even when the female sexually exhibitionistic performers are themselves exploitative, and even totally insincere, they are still moving boundaries!

I don't doubt that they are moving boundaries, but I am not sure that they are moving the right boundaries in the right direction.

As us surviving flawed elderly white men taking up causes, there’s something important to consider. How come guys beyond work age that need to use resources, survive beyond obvious utility?

It’s because they are libraries of experience and reserve sperm incubaters, should too many young men get slaughtered in battle for a village to otherwise survive!

Not only that, it has most elderly women switch off interest in sex so that elderly white men will tend to move towards any unmatched young males!

In fact, I am convinced that some minimal availability of experienced and intelligent elderly men and women confer survival advantage to any isolated village or outpost that otherwise would collapse after a variety of tragedies!

This is related to so-called "sociobiological theories". Sociobiology is a minefield of scientific fraud because most of the human evolution that would have been responsible for the behaviors in question would have happened before the neolithic period and we know surprisingly little about that long period. We even know little about the neolithic period. So was sociology often does is to extrapolate some romantic idea of "primitive" societies from carefully chosen ethnologic reports about surviving traditional societies which match our limited set of beliefs and then imagine some evolution under these constraints.

That is not science.

In what you written, there are several ideas with little factual support:
-the idea that it was difficult to survive for a long time. This does not fit with bone records, which show that life expectancy was rather long before the invention of agriculture.
-the idea that early societies lost a large proportion of young men. That is also not in the records. Our idea about early societies being often at war comes from the fact that it was so during the historical and protohistorical periods where the population density made wars more common.
-the idea that elderly women lose interest in sex is also not quite correct, even in modern times. Think about so-called "cougar women", for example.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I don't doubt that they are moving boundaries, but I am not sure that they are moving the right boundaries in the right direction.



This is related to so-called "sociobiological theories". Sociobiology is a minefield of scientific fraud because most of the human evolution that would have been responsible for the behaviors in question would have happened before the neolithic period and we know surprisingly little about that long period. We even know little about the neolithic period. So was sociology often does is to extrapolate some romantic idea of "primitive" societies from carefully chosen ethnologic reports about surviving traditional societies which match our limited set of beliefs and then imagine some evolution under these constraints.

That is not science.

In what you written, there are several ideas with little factual support:
-the idea that it was difficult to survive for a long time. This does not fit with bone records, which show that life expectancy was rather long before the invention of agriculture.
-the idea that early societies lost a large proportion of young men. That is also not in the records. Our idea about early societies being often at war comes from the fact that it was so during the historical and protohistorical periods where the population density made wars more common.
-the idea that elderly women lose interest in sex is also not quite correct, even in modern times. Think about so-called "cougar women", for example.

I conceded that we know little.
I read everything I can get on archaelogy of early hominid settlements. I do not study sociobiology just the original academic papers as new sites are excavated. My ideas are only my current and evolving open opinions based on what I know, I have observed and a hell of a lot of guesses and assumptions that obviously wouldn’t justify a bank loan!

But I do recognize all the flags you raise.

Cougar women are not the center of the presumed Gaussian distribution of female behavior!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Cougar women are not the center of the presumed Gaussian distribution of female behavior!

Here again we know very little about women or men pairing behaviour, let alone how it evolves with age. These are fields where one questions a few self-selected students on a campus and writes a paper complete with percentages with 2 digits after the comma.

 

[Jerome Marot]

As far as I know, the only study with a sufficiently large sample in the USA are the ones from the CDC, but these are only designed to study the propagation of STDs.

 

[Asher Kelman]

As far as I know, the only study with a sufficiently large sample in the USA are the ones from the CDC, but these are only designed to study the propagation of STDs.

And what did we learn from that?

 

[Jerome Marot]

And what did we learn from that?

I should try to find the study again, but I recall that it concerned itself with the number of sexual partners in life and in the past months and what was practiced. The results were not in a Gaussian curve, depended on education and race in relatively unexpected manner and there was a large percentage of people who basically never had sex.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I should try to find the study again, but I recall that it concerned itself with the number of sexual partners in life and in the past months and what was practiced. The results were not in a Gaussian curve, depended on education and race in relatively unexpected manner and there was a large percentage of people who basically never had sex.

Not so surprising, Jérôme, the way many folk are instilled with “sin” and need for modesty and privacy and have shame in just undressing!

I remember my shock, discomfort, glee and horror at seeing so many women with bare chests simply walking around when I first travelled to Nigeria! Now of course, Western custom has likely smothered that freedom.

Asher