Oh, Giroud, We Love You
Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud today admitted to cheating on his wife after a photograph of him in his underwear, accompanied by a kiss-and-tell story, appeared in the newspapers. The football player took to Twitter to confess and to apologise, and the reaction was... well, shocking.
People - mostly men - have taken to the website to post photographs of Giroud's wife, adding comments such as, 'Look at her; I can't blame him for cheating.' Others - again, mostly men - have published images of the model he cheated with, saying, 'Look at her; he had to do it.'
This is where I have to remind myself to take a breath. I suspect the majority of women know that we are judged on appearances to a greater extent than men are, but to see a photograph of a woman and then pin the blame for her husband's infidelity on her because of how she looks? To deem it okay for a man to cheat on his spouse if the woman he cheats with is deemed more attractive in appearance? To demand it, even?
Unacceptable.
While women's rights have progressed significantly in the last century or so, sex and relationships is one area in which perceptions of men and women are rooted in the Stone Age. Those people applauding Giroud for having an affair are liable to be the same people who call promiscuous women 'slags', 'whores', and 'sluts'. And don't tell me it's in a man's nature to sleep around to help ensure the survival of the species; if we're considering that argument it's also in a man's nature to hunt and kill, yet I don't see many doing that these days. No, women are still drawing the short straw, to the point where it's thought that she has rightly been punished for not looking like a supermodel.
Age of Enlightenment? More like the Age of Men's Entitlement.
People - mostly men - have taken to the website to post photographs of Giroud's wife, adding comments such as, 'Look at her; I can't blame him for cheating.' Others - again, mostly men - have published images of the model he cheated with, saying, 'Look at her; he had to do it.'
This is where I have to remind myself to take a breath. I suspect the majority of women know that we are judged on appearances to a greater extent than men are, but to see a photograph of a woman and then pin the blame for her husband's infidelity on her because of how she looks? To deem it okay for a man to cheat on his spouse if the woman he cheats with is deemed more attractive in appearance? To demand it, even?
Unacceptable.
While women's rights have progressed significantly in the last century or so, sex and relationships is one area in which perceptions of men and women are rooted in the Stone Age. Those people applauding Giroud for having an affair are liable to be the same people who call promiscuous women 'slags', 'whores', and 'sluts'. And don't tell me it's in a man's nature to sleep around to help ensure the survival of the species; if we're considering that argument it's also in a man's nature to hunt and kill, yet I don't see many doing that these days. No, women are still drawing the short straw, to the point where it's thought that she has rightly been punished for not looking like a supermodel.
Age of Enlightenment? More like the Age of Men's Entitlement.