To grope, or not to grope, that is the question.

The other day, I had this entry brought to my attention. The tone with which it was mentioned? A great evil, a horrible thing.

So I read it, trying to figure out what the deal with all the vitriol was. And frankly, I didn't really get it. Something about reading the entry made me a little uneasy, but why the big outpouring of hate? There seemed to be a conviction that the events recounted were downright misogynistic. What the hell?

Don't get me wrong, I think the so-called "Open Source Boob Project" had many flaws. Mostly, it didn't take into account the fact that, guess what? Women are wrought with insecurity and bloody obsessed with the notion that they're being objectified. I honestly think it causes many a woman to go off half-cocked. Starting that sort of project with such an emotionally explosive social group (I'm sorry, okay?) is bound to get messy eventually.

I know I'm probably totally betraying the sisterhood here, but I frankly think that women should learn to understand that just because a man is preoccupied by her breasts, that doesn't mean that he thinks her breasts are all there is to her. Remember, men are less well-equipped to multitask than we are. It is a physiological fact. Therefore, he will most likely pay attention to what preoccupies him most, and guess what that tends to be? Ka-ching! Yep, it's the boobies. No need to be offended about it. I say just give him time to get over it, and then show him that, yes, you're smart, too. Then you can preoccupy him with that. Or something.

My point is, I'd be very surprised if, in the moments when a man stares at a woman's breasts, he's thinking, "Oh, look at this complete embodiment of who this person is, I know everything I need to know about her just by looking at her breasts." Er. Doubtful. Sorry, but I still choose to have a little bit more faith in my male counterparts than that.

No, I think the real problem with the open-source boob project is that it was dealing with a bit of a touchy subject, pardon the pun. Really, I do think it's kind of a nice idea, in theory. Unfortunately, "In theory" is the operative term here. In an ideal world, where women (and people in general, really) are less worried about validation, it would be kind of nice to be able to ask, and to be able to get an honest reply, without discomfort. That's the thing, women do have a tendency to feel pressured, even if that's not the intention. And that, unfortunately, probably comes down to it being an evolutionary advantage dating back to the stone age. I'm not going to go into it now, but if you really want to investigate, you might like to read The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, M.D.

And even if a woman is very confident in herself, and will quite happily say "Yeah, sure have a bit of a feel if you want"/"Nah, I'd rather you didn't, no offense or anything," (for pity's sake, be polite!) there are other issues. Sure, we can go on about how a woman would feel pressured to give her consent, or wouldn't want to seem prudish, or would want validation of her attractiveness, but frankly, I think that's a lot of wank. All that comes down to is, in my book, an unhealthy lack of confidence, which the rest of my sisters should really bloody well own up to instead of making it the problem of the men out there. Feel free to slam me for this, I probably deserve it, but it has to be said. I'm not going to pull any punches here just because we have the same bits between our legs.

The biggest problem in my eyes is this: there's still the matter of choice. A woman may be perfectly happy to have one stranger feel her breasts, but feel a lot less happy about another doing the same, for whatever reason. What if they're standing next to each other? Oops. Talk about a minefield. Of course, if you don't mind treading on a couple of toes, then I suppose that's not a problem either, but I think the object of the exercise was not to tread on any toes or make anyone feel uncomfortable here.

I guess that's what it boils down to: there is just too much potential for discomfort here, even if it's not intended. A bit of a pity, really, because a lot of this would probably be much less of an issue if we were all more confident in ourselves and our own attractiveness. In fact, I'd say let's all go lynch the media, instead of getting into fights amongst ourselves, but fat chance of that happening. A better alternative would probably not to let the unrealistic ideals of beauty we are presented with get to us, and just like ourselves the way we are.

I'm probably repeating myself a lot here, so I'll try and wrap it up now. I wanted to say a whole lot more about the whole objectification thing, and how it would probably bother us less if we weren't to a certain extent made to believe this objectification ourselves, but I've crapped on enough here.