Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

It was only last week that I twigged how men’s magazine ZOO got its name. The women are the animals, and the magazine is the “zoo” where the readers go to look at them.

Men’s magazines are strange creatures, the models (or “babes”, as they’re usually called) utterly unlike any woman you’re likely to come across in real life. I’m not just talking about the way they look - their very-thin-yet-curvaceous bodies, pouty lips and perma-tans - but the way they behave.

“Babes” love to run about in their underwear with their girlfriends, soaping each other, play-wrestling, and engaging in other faux-lesbian activities. They can never seem to keep their knickers up. Even the word itself warrants contemplation, distinguishing the models from other women to often seem like a different species altogether.

Which, I suspect, is exactly how it’s intended. Whether you’re a drooling fanboy or derisive critic, it’s all too easy to forget that the “babes” in magazines like ZOO are also human beings - friends, students, daughters, sisters. In a professional capacity, after all, they exist only to flirt, have their picture taken and not wear a whole lot of clothing. But that’s how objectification works - it’s about elevating or decimating someone at the ignorance of their humanity.

As 25-year-old Greg comments in Michael Kimmel’s Guyland:

“I think it’s because the women are so posed, you know, like they’re posing for the camera, for me; they’re not doing some other guy and I’m supposed to get off on that. They’re trying to look sexy - for me! And same thing about that Playboy back to campus issue. God I love that one. It’s like whatever college you go to, there are such hot babes thee who love to pose naked and turn guys on. They’re the best antidote to all that feminist stuff about staring at women. They’re begging you to stare at them. No, that’s not quite it. They’re daring you not to stare at them!”

It’s a strange job to have. I get where the appeal lies - it’s an affirmation that you’re hot, desirable, and it certainly pays more than most jobs young women are employed to do. But it’s sad that it does, and it’s sad that being “hot” has so much cache that young women are willing to be portrayed as less than human in order to be stamped with the accolade.