Update re WHSmiths...and more random thoughts

Actually, it turns out that Smiths do not now stock 'girly' mags in their High Street shops any more, so maybe all that campaigning wasn't in vain. (They do still sell them in motorway service station branches etc. where they also stock erotic women's magazines too, such as 'Scarlett'). However, rather than responding to customer outrage, it seems more likely that the move was motivated purely by economic considerations: I managed to speak to a lady at WHSmiths head office, who said in fact they didn't really sell many Playboy-type magazines in their stores any more. Now anyone who wants to view scantily clad women only has to buy Loaded or Maxim, or even turn on MTV. None of these activities have any shame attached to them, unlike buying soft porn mags in your local shops. Presumably, most of those who actually want wank fodder these days will go online for it.

I don't have the same objection to porn now that I once did. The casualisation of the naked (and very stereotyped) female form in the newspapers, in Page 3 etc, is probably more damaging, long term, to women than the publication of such images in specialised erotic magazines, as it implies that women dressing and looking like that is part of everyday life, rather than being erotica, and therefore belonging more to the realm of fantasy than reality. Which is why the bizarre spectacle of naked women pasted up alongside often serious news items never fails to surprise me.

Which kind of brings me back to the book I just read: 'Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture'. Whilst I disagree with many of the points Ariel Levy makes, and her rather dodgy annecdotal evidence-based research methods, there is no denying that sexualised images of women are becoming increasingly unbiquitous. These images are spilling out of specialised publications, and into lifestyle magazines, pop videos, adverts, tv programmes, etc. Arguably this removes such images from their previous place in the sphere of private material and this view of women as largely based on fantasy, putting pressure on women to conform to increasingly unrealistic body type expectations. Particularly young, impressionable women, i.e. teenagers.

But does this matter, long term? Should feminists really be spending time worrying about this? It seems to me that in countries like France and Italy, sexualised images of women have been much more widespread and much more casually disseminated than in Britain or the US for many years...but can we say that French women correspondingly have lower social status than their UK counterparts, worse pay and conditions, more anxiety relating to their bodies, experience greater sexual harassment? Could we even prove this??

Either way, I don't think we should be looking at these issues in isolation, we should be considering the wider social and economic factors which affect women, and how we might change these.