Some friends of mine started a webzine. I've been contributing a few articles, and the odd bit of web server tech support (web hosting -- lions and tigers and bears, oh my!!!). It's been fun.
As this project has taken off during the last few months, the site has somehow picked up a "monthly hottie" feature. The site has a fantasy/scifi/comic sort of theme, and the feature started as a purely occasional thing. One of the editors culled pictures women in semi-sexy superhero and Star Trek uniforms from God knows where -- probably from published photos of cocktail parties at sci fi and comic conventions. That's probably where it would have stayed until some attractive women started sending in pictures of themselves in costume dress. Go figure. If you build it, women will send you photos. I guess Hugh Hefner kind of started out that way too.
The comments on both the webzine and the various web content portals that point to it is an illustration of the full range of discourse on beauty in society today. For every "I love you" and "I want to marry you", there are two short, staccato comments that say "I'd do that", "I'd hit that", or "I'd tap that." Each "you go girl" has a "those boobs have got to be fake" in counterpoint. No matter how heartfelt or abrasive the comment however, all of them ring of some kind of objectification, good or bad.
Beauty is such a tricky thing. People seem to want to simultaneously worship it, envy it, and deny it all at once.
said drgeek
on 2006-11-02 at 9:47 p.m.
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The Wayback Machine - To Infinity And Beyond
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