28th
Dear Norma Kamali,
I try to stay out of things like this, but I had to speak up. A fashion designer talking about the objectification of women is about the same as a pornographer talking about the objectification of women.
OBJECTIFYING WOMEN IS WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING. THESE ARE YOUR DESIGNS, RIGHT?
Women want to be desired. Men want to be desired. We all want to be desired on one level or another.
We all want to be the object of someone’s desire.
Most people get up and take showers, put on clothing they think makes them look better, fix their hair, etc., because we want to make ourselves more attractive to someone. We all objectify ourselves… and you help.
And please, please, please, don’t try to tell me that women don’t objectify men, because they do. I went to see Twilight New Moon in the theater. You want to try to tell me all the middle aged women in the audience were saying to themselves, “I sure want to have a conversation and share my feelings with Taylor Lautner,” when he took his shirt off and they all let out cat calls? Women objectify men just as much as men objectify women. Women are just pickier and less direct.
I have kind of gotten off track. My basic point is that you are a hypocrite, and if you think that women are objectified too much, you should stop designing sexy clothing, and or you should only use real people as models. The fact that you employ “models” is at the very core of your hypocrisy.
I don’t want you to stop designing sexy clothing. I don’t want women to stop trying to be attractive. I just want you to stop being a hypocrite, to stop spouting off some quasi-feminist bullshit distracting us from the fact that your clothes are probably being produced by children being truly objectified, exploited, and abused.
Chuck McCarthy
