David Garrett
David Garrett is a life observer - but also a doer! He uses a multitude of profitable, challenging and downright bizarre experiences from his life to further himself and inspire others.
Somewhere amongst the constant cries that men objectify the female body, female viewers of Magic Mike XXL have come to the conclusion that the film is feminist. The Washington Post, for example, has loudly sounded this bizarre klaxon with an article by Soraya Nadia McDonald. The crux of her piece, like many of the others, is that Magic Mike XXL is “a vehicle for freely and honestly discussing the taboos of (straight) female sexuality and desire.” In a nutshell, this means women getting wet at the sight of a chiseled male torso and being “worshipped like the queens they are.” Yes, that’s an actual quote from McDonald’s article.
Unsurprisingly, those declaring Magic Mike XXL an unabashed feminist odyssey have been unwilling (or unable) to reconcile that idea with the wider feminist narrative of vilifying the production of heterosexual male-centered media. Sports Illustrated, Playboy and many MTV video clips are decried as being socially prehistoric for portraying the scantily-clad or naked female form. Few would question that they represent what many men want. So how does Magic Mike XXL pass the test that these avenues for male sexual gratification fail?
Logical Paradox: Objectifying Women Sexist, Objectifying Men Fine
I like to do my research and so I have, begrudgingly, seen the film. One of the things that struck me most was the crude reversal of genders within the plot. Jada Pinkett Smith plays a female businesswoman in charge of the male strippers, very much a black female nod to Hugh Hefner. The dialogue also engages in the parlance of strangely flipped roles, especially the scene where Channing Tatum’s lead character says “my god is a woman,” as if that somehow is anything like what feminism purports to be.
This is the problem with the “feminism is many things to many women” mantra. I could partially understand the idea that Magic Mike XXL celebrates female enjoyment of the male body if it were accompanied by an acknowledgement that there’s nothing inherently wrong with a male enjoying a magazine cover, a pornographic video, a female stripper, or even a prostitute. But this is simply not the case. Whenever objectification of the female form is raised, it is invoked pejoratively, to attack the “sexist” male doing the objectifying.
Feminists Can’t Answer The Pressing Questions About Magic Mike XXL And Sexual Objectification
For “moderate” feminists who are “equal opportunity” objectifiers, the difficulty they have in logically championing this film is that feminism has continually and grossly misrepresented male objectification of the female body as misogyny. It is impossible to see how men regularly ogling publicly-displayed cleavage and ass is suddenly rendered acceptable just because Magic Mike XXL and whatever else comes along to pander to women.
If it is permissible now (not that feminists will lose their double standard), it was fine before. It was only therefore missing a heterosexual female correlative, which is itself contestable as objectification need not only be expressed in films. And, to boot, many movies have and still do objectify the male body outside of the Magic Mike films.
The less radical feminists of this ilk, often more motivated by ignorance and a half-deliberate tunnel vision than misandry, are in an exposed position. They applaud the Magic Mike sequel’s embracing of female sexuality, yet have to ignore that their own position on the matter proves the inconsistencies of the feminist historical narrative. Rather than mostly oppressing women through overt sexualization, men “reading” magazines and watching porn have simply been doing, in their own ways, what women are now doing with Magic Mike XXL (and have been doing even before that).
It’s harder still for feminists who cling to the notion that male objectification of women is inveterately patriarchal and demeaning to the objectified. Of course, these types of feminists will never suggest Magic Mike XXL is demeaning to men. These are the same kinds of women who successfully demanded the criminalization of strip clubs and prostitution in Iceland, punishing and shaming male purchasers of sex but not the usually non-abused women selling it for a small hourly fortune. (Iceland also has wanted to ban online pornography for the same reason.) Norway, Sweden and France have taken similar measures regarding prostitution.
Even in countries without such laws, such as the US, Germany and Britain, male enjoyment of the female form is invariably equated with malicious patriarchy and the abuse of women.
Common Sense Is Cheap But Too Expensive For Feminism
I did not like Magic Mike XXL because the acting was awful and the plot was terrible (oh, and additionally because it’s a film designed to make heterosexual women, not straight men, horny). What matters here, more than the film’s distinct lack of cultural value, is a proper assessment of each gender’s sexualization and its meaning. The myriad of meanings feminists are able to ascribe to this film can’t all be correct and they all have flaws. However correct the “equal opportunity” objectification argument may be, it depends on glossing over almost the entire history of feminist caricatures of male desire for women.
Do yourself a favor and see the film. Don’t pay to see it, as yours truly had to. You need to see the hypocrisy with which feminists will carry on their pet projects. It can and should make you angry, in a way that forces you to expose the double standards. As we have seen consistently with GamerGate and other fight-backs, the edifice of female privilege and SJW “morals” is already crumbling.
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