Playboy. It's here. And Dartmouth is talking about it again, albeit not as loudly as we were in the spring when they came to recruit Dartmouth women. I guess agreeing or disagreeing with Playboy's right to be here and a woman's right to pose is a public thing, and reading it is, well ... a private thing.
Indeed, after all the hoopla of the spring, it would seem that the "Women of the Ivy League" have had a surprisingly small impact. On women's lib. On world politics. On campus life. Yet I do not think this is quite the case. Playboy's impact is just remarkably more subtle than most of its photographs. (Especially the one of Lisa Bauer, Cornell Engineering grad.)
Dartmouth guys are not suddenly going to begin objectifying women, corporate males will not begin to see all their female colleagues as sex objects nor will men in law firms suddenly begin to hold their female counterparts up to comparison with Miss October.
The problem does not have its origins here, with this issue of this magazine. As one of my very astute male friends pointed out, it is not that Playboy creates tension between the sexes so much as it reinforces societal stereotypes of women.
I would guess that most of my male peers here at Dartmouth acquired, read, and maybe even concealed a copy of Playboy at one point in their young lives. Maybe there was one hidden in dad's office, maybe it was under a friend's older brother's mattress, but it was there. It was also most likely the obvious property of an older male role model.
Female that I am, I have a vivid recollection of my friend Rosie's fifth-grade birthday party. One of the kids discovered a Playboy in the hamper of Rosie's parents' bathroom. (What this child was doing looking in the hamper is still a mystery). The word of her discovery spread, and soon a pint-sized crowd was crushed into the tiled interior of the color-coordinated water closet.
As a dozen or more little girls gazed with open-mouthed fascination at organs we simply did not possess yet, Trevor, one of the only boys present, stood outside the bathroom and repeatedly intoned, "That stuff is disgusting. I don't know how you guys [sic] can look at that."
At that early age, we knew there was something forbidden about what we were looking at. Maybe it was the unfamiliar nudity. Maybe it was that it was hidden in the hamper and not sitting out on the coffee table next to Newsweek and Life. Maybe it was just the fact that none of us personally knew any women who tucked their breasts over their bras.
We knew we should not be looking, yet at the same time we saw that it was completely acceptable for Rosie's father to own it. The perfect paradox. The message we got was that these naked women served a purpose -- they were for men to look at.
Popular culture -- television, movies, video games, even books -- bears just as much, if not more, responsibility for creating and supporting society's view of women as Playboy does. Entertainment shows boys and girls how to act and how to treat one another.
Even if we only examine the issue of nudity in films, there is clearly a double standard. A heaving bosom, an escaping breast or even a gratuitous female crotch shot is a commonplace occurrence. But just show a small corner of what might have been Bruce Willis' pubic hair in Pulp Fiction and people begin to exclaim. This is because we have been conditioned to accept female nudity. Indeed, if you watch enough Sharon Stone films you could end up believing that women were meant to be exposed.
Unfortunately, female nudity is the rule, not the exception. Maybe we are too uptight. Maybe our 300-year-old Puritan heritage makes us prudes, but our comfort level with nudity is besides the point.
When women can pose naked without having it affect whether or not they get a certain job, or are allowed to be Miss America, or even win an Undergraduate Advisor position, that is the day when I will say that Playboy is perfectly acceptable. Until then, I will always advocate a woman's right to pose, but qualify that she must understand the consequences.
The average Dartmouth student's thoughts may not have been radically changed by this issue, but I would be lying if I said that the "Playboy girl" had not been pointed out to me numerous times. And I cannot help but think that in some way the Good ol' Boys have crossed their legs, leaned back and sunk a little deeper into their leather recliners, content in the knowledge that if women have not been pushed back by this issue, at least we have not made any progress.
