Because two tiny triangles of fabric mark the line between sexy and slutty

Womanist Musings has a great summary of why the new development in the Miss California controversy sucks. If you desperately try to avoid tabloid style news, let me fill you in on what has happened. Miss California says she’s against gay marriage during the Miss USA pageant to Perez Hilton, of all people. She loses, scandal ensues saying she lost because of her views, yadda yadda. Miss C claims she’s just a good Christian girls with strong morals and all that jazz. Photos are released of a topless Miss C that she took when she was trying to become a Victoria’s secret model. Both sides freak out. Conservative pageant people are pissed because you’re not allowed to have any nude or semi-nude photographs. Liberal people are gleefully chuckling at her hypocrisy and are glad she’ll probably lose her title.

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There is so much Wrong floating around that I don’t even know where to start. Pageants are such patriarchal stereotypical sexist bullshit to begin with that ranting about them is a waste of time, but one thing really bugs me. Let’s compare the two photos, shall we?

What the hell is the big flipping difference here? It’s okay for girls to parade around in skimpy bikinis so we can judge them on their sex appeal, but remove two tiny pieces of fabric and it instantly becomes slutty and bad? It’s not like the right photo is hard core porn (which still shouldn’t matter, but whatever, I have to fight the small battles first). I’d even say it’s a pretty tasteful nude if you removed all the Dirty watermarks. It really makes me wonder what’s going to happen when my generation is the politicians and businessmen of the world. There will probably be so many “scandalous” photos floating around that they won’t be scandalous anymore.

“Ms. President, another topless photo has surfaced. The elderly members of the press want a statement.”
“Oooh, I remember that one! That was some good tequila. Man, look how nice my boobs looked.”
“Uh, they’re great, Ms. President.”

But you know what, okay. She signed a contract saying she didn’t have any nude or semi-nude problems, and the pageant people get to make their own dumb rules. So fine, punish away. But to all the liberal people who think these rules are stupid and don’t have a problem with boobies, but are just glad to get revenge on a conservative girl…shame on you. She’s not the freaking Westboro Baptist Church. She said she doesn’t support gay marriage, not “all fags should die in a fire” or something. People say she’s a hypocrite because she’s claiming to have conservative values yet has posed topless…but seriously, so what? Why are liberals forcing anti-toplessness to be a conservative value? If we want people to stop freaking out about women’s boobs, we need to stop treating it like it matters. Why can’t we all be accepting of teh boobies?

Maybe I’m just a softie, but I don’t wish bad things upon people even if I fervently disagree with their political viewpoints. I also think boob scandals are about the most stupid thing ever (the Janet Jackson incident made my head nearly explode), so I just wish we’d stop making such a big deal out of them. Pro-boobs people unite!

Warning: Girliness

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a stereotypical girly girl. However, I do relapse in three main ways:

1. I’m a D cup. ‘Nough said.

2. America’s Next Top Model is my guilty pleasure TV show. I have no idea why. Tyra Banks’s insanity is always amusing, and it’s just so addictive watching girls be catty to each other when you’re not involved. I think I’m satisfying some sort of primal female urges that I otherwise ignore. Oh, and artsy pictures are a plus.

3. I hate bugs, insects, spiders, and any other kind of creepy-crawlies.

Yes, I know that I’m a biologist…but I am not a hippie/pot smoking/one with nature and all of God’s creatures biologist. Hiking and bird watching and camping are all just sort of “meh, okay” to me. I get excited over stuff like genes and evolutionary theory (I’m super cool). I’d honestly enjoy nature much more if I had a magical force field that kept bugs a meter away from me.

That being said, I found a cockroach in my apartment this morning. Not. Cool. I’m sort of glad no one was around to witness me doing the “freeze in spot and flail arms uselessly” pose, which I totally did. The nasty thing was just lying on its back in the middle of the bathroom floor not moving. I wondered why the hell it would randomly drop dead and roll over in the middle of the floor, so I got a cup to try to scoop it up…and it came back alive.

*insert flailing and squealing here*

Wtf, seriously? Was it trying to trick me? Why the hell was it playing dead? I ended up just putting the cup over it and leaving it for my roommate to dispose of…who wasn’t too happy about it. Blech. I really hope this is an isolated case, but you know what they say…when there’s one, there’s more. The apartment I lived in last summer was infested with them, and it was horrible. Every night I had Kafka-esque nightmares of giant cockroaches trapping me in my bedroom.

The worst part is I know my fear is illogical. If cockroaches were rainbow colored or shiny neon green, I would probably be poking them with sticks or playing with them. Buprestids are awesome looking. But no, they had to be twitchy and poo-colored, and who wants that as a roommate?

Speaking of boobs…

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m one of those girls with secret boobs. That is, I’m always wearing non-revealing Threadless shirts covered by sweatshirts, so no one notices that I’m a D cup. The few days I’m not bundled up under three layers of sweaters (blame Indiana weather) or wearing a v-neck, I literally get friends going “You have boobs!” Why yes, yes I do.

Why do this matter? Today I totally splurged and bought a couple hundred dollars worth of bras from Victoria’s Secret. Not only are some of them push up, but some are lacy and sexy. Look out, world. I’d say I wish I had someone to show them off to, but that would probably result in me getting lots of creepy emails…which I don’t need.

Boobs and Bad Statistics

Ok, who can point out what’s wrong with the following statement from this story:

“New Zealand women are getting bigger breasts, with D cups and bigger accounting for nearly half of Bendon bras sold in New Zealand last year.”

I know there has been a trend of increasing breast size, but this particular study is correlation, not causation. Maybe bustier women just buy more bras. If you want to know if actual cup size is increasing, you should probably go measure actual women. I’m sure there’s a disgruntled graduate student somewhere in New Zealand willing to do that.