Does Pornography Objectivize Women? - Of Course It Does, Isn't That The Point? The Inescapable Sexual Truth

Jimmy's Smoke Shop was a New Brighton fixture.  A shop carrying all the local newspapers plus those from Boston and New York, candies, cigarettes, novelties, bus tickets, and in the back room girly magazines. 

 

Jimmy DiMarco was the third member of the family to run Jimmy's.  His grandfather had opened it in horse-and-buggy days.  His father had continued the business, expanding from smoking supplies to Greyhound and Peter Pan tickets; and Jimmy made it what it was in the Fifties, a catch-all shop that catered to bus riders, school kids on their way back home, and older men who spent hundreds of dollars on the latest editions of 'Cunt!', 'Pussy', and 'Crack'.  

Those were the days before upscale adult magazines - the ones with long articles on the economy and social change.  Jimmy's racks were filled with straight, down-the-line pornography.  None of the men who sidled their way to the back of the store where Jimmy kept the magazines wanted nothing but. These men, well-dressed in suits, snap-brim hats, and overcoats - lawyers, bankers, and accountants - sidled because in those rather censorious days, any sexual interest other than that for wives was verboten. 

 

Of course New Brighton was just as sexually obsessed as any other small New England town, more so in fact if you tallied the assignations, cinq-a-septs, and longer affairs.  Word had it that Edna Jones, the wife of the Methodist minister, was having a steamy relationship with the pharmacist - an unlikely lover.  Herm Zackin, stooped, myopic, and very Jewish looking did his own compounding, boosted the new tranquilize formulations for his special customers, Edna Jones being one, and had an easy time with her, stoned as she was after one of Herm's concoctions.  

The affair lasted as long as Herm stayed in business which was quite a few years until Lilly and Pfizer heard about his little schemes and shut him down with the threat of punitive law suits. 

Betty Carlson was as close to the town tart as could be, a woman free and easy with her favors, eclectic in taste, married to a uxorious husband who had no idea of her affairs; but still waters run deep, and when he found out, he bought a pistol from Bristol Firearms, waited until dinner was over, and shot her dead as a doornail. 

 

This is all incidental to the story of Jimmy's Smoke Shop and its girly magazine rack. 

When Bobby Finkel, son of the furrier, reached the age of sexual interest, he was of course drawn to Jimmy's. Even in those days which were long before the howling hysteria of feminism and MeToo neo-Puritanism, there were laws on what one could and couldn't sell to minors.  These laws, even in blue law, Calvinist Connecticut, were rarely enforced, so Jimmy could let Bobby and his friends wander in the back if they didn't touch the merchandise and bought a dollar's worth of candy and gum up front. 

Eventually the temptation was too great and while Bobby distracted Jimmy, Barry Klein lifted the latest Cunt!, slipped it into his knapsack, bought a Whoopie Cushion, and walked out the door.  The magazine made the rounds - all Barry's friends had their turn - and when it was returned to him, ragged, torn, stained, and barely readable, it was time to head back to Jimmy's. 

There is nothing new in this story - men of all ages ogle women, desire them, dream about them, and think about them until the day they die.  The feminist claim that this persistent, single minded sexual interest is demeaning to women and objectifies them as sexual objects is absolutely correct. When a man's head is turned by a beautiful, sexy woman passing him on K Street, he is not thinking about her portfolio, her law degree, or her business acumen but about sex, and what it would be like to be in bed with her. 

In Anna Karenina the Konstantin Levin character laments the irony that God created Man as a remarkably intelligent, sentient, observant, creative, and insightful being, granted him a scant few decades of life, then consigned him to the cold, hard ground of the steppes for all eternity. 

A parallel irony is that this same God created men with a lifelong sexual desire for women, granted them a scant few decades to do something about it, then consigned them to lonely, solitary, unsatisfied longing.  In this miserable state, any woman would do, any young, supple, eager thing. 

Most educated men will not stoop to the sort of trash sold at Jimmy's. The tamest, most acceptable, and most virally available half-naked women are on movie sites - Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, and a bevy of other Hollywood beauties are there to download and enjoy.  With a few clicks, the less educated or more obsessed can find the dirtiest, smarmiest, most incorrect, improper images and videos possible; but for most men, these beautiful, sexy, media icons are more than enough. 

So, enough claptrap about objectifying women.  They objectify themselves! Taylor Swift does not promote the most sexually provocative poses for nothing - she is a canny businesswoman, and although her stock in trade is music and pop extravaganzas, her sex appeal is a big part of the heady package. 

Sexy women's images are not just found in the pages of men's magazines.  Look at the cover of any women's magazine - Cosmopolitan, Elle, Women's Health, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar - and you will see alluring, sexy, attractive women.  Sex is sold by women for women for men. 

The age-old conclusion that when men look at women they see a sexual object; and when women look at men they see a cash drawer may be overdrawn and perhaps a bit incorrect; but it is nonetheless true. The most feminized, dutiful, respectful, faithful, and admiring man cannot help himself when, in of a sea of retreads he sees a beautiful, alluring, impossibly desirable woman and thinks exactly what every other man on the planet thinks - I want her. 

Little Bobby Finkel turned out to be a fine young man, married to Esther Pilchman right out of Yale, two children, house in the wealthy Washington suburbs, partner at Reed, Ramlow, & Cohen, occasional adulterer but generally faithful husband, admirer of Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson, envying those men who court them, but all in all, an ordinary man. 

Is there still a market for pornography? You bet your life there is, and although the Jimmy's Smoke Shops of the world are historical footnotes, the electronosphere has more than taken their place. Is this a problem or simply a reconfirmation of the old adage about lifelong male desire and 'the objectification of women'?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former French presidential candidate and self-described sexual obsessive, was arrested once for participating in a sexual orgy with hired women.  Strauss-Kahn objected and responded. 'How was I to know they were prostitutes?  All women look the same with their clothes off'.

And so it is with the rest of the sexual paraphernalia around town - who cares?  There will always be a Jimmy's Smoke shop in brick and mortar or in cyberspace.