"Hypothetical" question

[triskellian]

If one had to refer in an academic essay to the article of women's underwear which traditionally covers the bottom, how would one do so? I'm inclined towards 'knickers', but it doesn't sound very serious :-(

Time for a poll...

Poll The naming of pants

Comments

[onebyone]

The former sounds to me like a secular synonym for "God hates pictures of people in their undies". I know of the existence of that point of view, but I don't share it. If someone does something which she herself is not ashamed of, then you can call her "demeaned" if and only if you choose to consider her demeaned.

It's interesting to compare this with the (in)famous WI calendar, containing similar shots as far as I'm aware. Would you say that the WI models were demeaned, or does the fact that you don't fancy them make it not demeaning? ;-p

The latter is a tactical decision. If the bank believed that putting senior employees in the calendar would significantly impact their jobs, then I imagine it would have used models instead.

I would add a possible extra problem, actually, which is that in general these employees have performed non-contractual duties, possibly under duress, which might have long-term effects on the employee. But there's no evidence that the employees are unhappy about what they've done (then again, maybe there wouldn't be...), so I consider that none of my business unless indicated otherwise. The fact that the CEO and his wife were running the show is a bit worrying in that respect, I'll grant you.

Any indication that there may have been duress again comes back to the fact that women have been used and not men. It suggests to me that there *may* be discriminatory expectations about the willingness of women to do this (among the women themselves as much as anyone else, perhaps). It *may* be that those women will be forced to accept attitudes and comments from co-workers and customers which a man would never face, because they would be considered unacceptable directed towards a man. The calendar suggests to me that perhaps the bank expects its female employees to get their kit off, which if true I consider a problem.

If the calendar were mixed-sex, it would be a lot closer to suggesting that the bank can find 12 members of staff willing to take their kit off, which for me is not a problem on a scale sufficient to care about. It would be far less suggestive of an ingrained lack of respect for "any person willing to appear in a suggestive picture" than the actual calendar is suggestive of an ingrained lack of respect for "any woman". The same applies to the way the story was covered.

[undyingking]

Personally I do feel that the WI people were demeaned too, regardless of whether or not I fancy them. Of course, they may not have felt themselves to have been so, and nor may these Russian women -- nor may people who work as strippers, etc. But in that case, I don't share their view.

I entirely agree that a mixed-sex calendar would have been less problematic in a number of ways. (And probably wouldn't have been covered at all in the UK news, let's face it -- or if so, I bet the female photos would have had more prominence than the male.) However I believe that still would have been sufficiently suggestive of the ingrained lack of respect etc to be considered objectionable.

(BTW I've just noticed the most amusing name of the poll. If triskellian is still reading this thread, ha ha ha, and I can only hope that "yesterday we had daily cleaning".)

[triskellian]

Still reading ;-)

I went to reread before writing this comment because I only remembered the first line. Tomorrow, presumably, will just be "refer to two days ago"...

[undyingking]

"what to do after firing" -- it's not got that bad, has it?