To the Editor:
I would like to respond to the column in The Dartmouth ("Playboy Models Will Represent Dartmouth," May 11, 1995) which outlined the ignominy that we, as noble Dartmouth students, should feel on behalf of the morally corrupt harlots who pose naked for Playboy.
Now, I myself do not find Playboy's pictures appealing. And I think this is a point which has been somewhat overlooked. I would appreciate it if the 'shame' and 'blame' of the industry (if it must exist) were shifted slightly, perhaps onto the 15 million-plus readership of the magazine, composed largely of men. If we are going to turn a spotlight of shame onto the Dartmouth students who choose to pose for the magazine, should we not at the same time target the component of Playboy's readership which attends our college?
I think it's equally blush-worthy to be one of the men at this school who pussyfoots into the toilet with Playboy in hand, as to be one of the women who strolls into the Hanover Inn with bikini in hand. Not that this aura of sin should exist anyway -- but why do we continue to perpetuate a system of thought which consistently denounces women for acts in which men are inherently implicated, and which seeks to both fabricate and denigrate women's sexuality while the men consuming it (and thus creating it) are shrouded in guilt-free anonymity?
It's rather like the censorship involved in historical study; alas, the hundreds of thousands whose stories are lost! We read only of Napoleon ('Sandy', from Texas, pitchfork in hand), while the minions and peasants are sorely neglected (busy toiling in the fields/masturbating)!
Considering the fact that most of the images in Playboy are not made by or for women, I fail to see why Dartmouth's discussion of this issue should disregard the majority of people involved in it -- the pink-cheeked consumers. Why do the protesters not march outside the news agent as well as the Hanover Inn, seizing on unsuspecting purchasers who are aroused by images of nylon-negligee-clad women with vacant grins? If protesters take issue with a system of thought which loads opprobrium onto the women involved, why compound it?
This is not to say that I appreciate Playboy's images; again, this is the point. Fifteen million people out there are aroused by the tasteless objectification of women, but they seem to have slunk into darkened toilets during this debate. Would a courageous Dartmouth Playboy reader/looker please show his (or her) face? Hardly likely. They are the 15 million conveniently obfuscated, while a handful of women bear the weight of a sin which should not exist.
