Help me explain to my friend why this is really wrong

[iMemoo]

A group of women in my town are organising an event to raise money for charity. They are holding a bikini car wash! So basically people (I suspect mainly men) are going to pay them to wash their car whilst they are dressed in skimpy bikinis. My friend is taking part in it. I am horrified by the whole thing. I can't believe that this group of woman are choosing to objectify themselves like this. There are a million things they could have done to raise money and yet they choose to do it by basically getting their tits out for the lads!! I have tried to explain why it is wrong to my friend but I'm just not getting through to her.

I know in my head what I think and why this is wrong but I just can't articulate it. How do I explain to my friend why this is so wrong. Please help me find the right words!

if the OP hasn't harangued her friend, there could be a queue on here who would like to. I haven't actually harangued anyone for aaaages. Volunteering!!

I'm always haranguing my friends.

And I'm sure you're very good at it.

I flag occasionally

there's a queue. apparently.

"Beachcomber: there is a difference in a white person blacking up for a charity stunt, and a woman putting on a bikini. A woman in a bikini is not pretending to be someone else or something she's not."

I dunno SGB. If I dressed up in a bikini in order to wash cars, I would definitely be pretending to be something I'm not/have the right not to be.

I would be pretending to be a sex object.
I would be pretending to be a patriarchal caricature of femaleness.
I would be pretending that femininity is an integral part of who I am, rather than a social construct.
I would be pretending to be someone who was flattered by being objectified.
I would be pretending to be someone who didn't care that other women would feel judged and measured against their ability to carry off being 'attractive as dictated by patriarchy'.
I would be pretending to be someone who was accepting of the status quo.
I would be pretending to be someone who performs femininity and is ok with doing so.

To be honest, I'm not sure that B and W minstrel shows are worse than/different to women behaving as handmaidens to patriarchy, by dressing in bikinis and getting wet and soapy whilst performing a cleaning service for paying men.

I think both are pretty hideous. Hideous in ever so slightly different ways, but hideous all the same. (ie hideous because caricatures of oppression are being normalized and presented as superficial/no harm/all good fun/just a laugh/good for charidee. In addition, the people being characterised, exist as real people who suffer real oppression - something which is not funny in any way, shape, or form.)

Of course this is why feminists are so often painted as 'humourless' - because we don't find cultural references to our oppression, or examples of our oppression screamingly funny.

Give me a fucking break already.

Beachcomber: So do you think that women should only perform in public wearing burquas? Or that it is always wrong for a woman to make any reference to the fact that she's a woman and has a physical body when she appears in public? What should a feminist wear on the beach, or to a pool party? I reserve judgements like 'hideous' for things like war crimes or strangling kittens, not a small-scale charity stunt that no one is being coerced into doing.

I'm with SGB - the fact that women should 'have' to cover up to be considered to be adhering to feminist principles surely just goes to prove how anti-feminist our society is. If that is going to be an excuse for men to letch and make comments it only proves that our society as a whole needs to take a good look at itself, rather than stressing out about a bunch of women dressing in bikinis to raise a few quid for a good cause.

Nope - sexiness and expressing your own sexuality is a wonderful thing, obv. But putting pantomimes of female sexuality in each or any pretexts reaffirms women's place as sexual playthings whose value is not in their car washing skills but in how well they fill a bikini, places stereotypical male desire on a privileged pedestal, and passes these 'values' down to children.

I'm with SGB too who has been sensible throughout.
I don't think that it is a good idea to wear a bikini to wash cars, but a post like beachcombers makes me want to go out and do it this very minute! If OP were to put that to her friend I doubt it would get her anywhere at all.

I can't believe this is still going. OP's friend is doing it, OP has told her she doesn't like it and she is still doing it. She has to leave at that.

I much prefer the fact that people can do a small scale charity stunt for fun than than they get lectured along the lines of beachcomber who would make me want to run screaming for the hills!

Of course this is why feminists are so often painted as 'humourless'

Too right! It doesn't help the cause.

Overall I think: fix the equal pay issues and reproductive rights, end honour killings and campaign against domestic violence then you can start harassing other women about choices they make that are different from yours.

SGB I'm a feminist. I live in France, I go to the beach and swimming pools often. I wear a bikini when I engage in these activities. Ok so it is a boards shorts bikini (so that I don't have to do any lady gardening) but it is a bikini all the same.

I also wear strappy dresses when it is hot in the summer (34 degrees today!).

The difference is that I am not wearing my bikini to the beach in exchange for cash with the insinuation that I am there to titillate (I doubt the sight of me in a bikini splashing in the water with my kids is titillating for anyone, but if it is, that is their problem and nowt to do with me).

There is no power dynamic, that reflects the exploitation of female sexuality that exists within our society, when I wear my bikini to the beach (although we could argue that I am performing femininity of course).

This power dynamic is quite clearly present if I wear a bikini to wash cars and get paid by men to do so (otherwise there would be a mixture of normally dressed men, women and children doing the car washing for charity).

I use the word hideous to refer to said power dynamic and the normalization of it by presenting it as fun fun fun for the charidees. In other words I'm looking at the bigger picture rather than glossing over this one (small not terribly important) event - nothing happens in a vacuum in patriarchy and all that.

Exoticfruits, I'm not suggesting that the OP lectures her friend or mentions anything anyone has said on this thread. I'm just chewing the fat on MN discussing the issues brought up by this thread because I find this sort of stuff quite interesting to analyse. I was answering SGB, not giving advice to the OP on what to say to her mate. I happen to think that she has said her piece and now should leave well alone.

It is often in the small (normalized) day to day things that we can tease out useful exploration of male/female dynamics - that is why feminism is predominantly a grass roots movement based on real life experiences and not an academic domain. I think that is one of the cool things about feminist analysis - it is accessible to all and can be explored using small, easily understandable every day events.

(This is, after all, the feminist section so it should hardly be a big surprise to you to come across some feminist analysis.)

Sure there are bigger issues to be discussed - I guess I'm lucky because I manage to care about obvious stuff like equal pay, and the insidious stuff like stereotyping women as the sex class at the same time.

If this bikini car wash thing is no biggie, why are you and SGB pulling the old 'you're doing feminism wrong, why aren't you concentrating on something else, you're a humourless prude who wants everyone wearing standard issue dungarees' silencing crap on me?

Well said Beachcomber.

We are continuing to debate this here Exoticfruits, because we still have things to say about it. We're debating it here, not in the OP's friend's ear. D'you get the difference?

"the fact that women should 'have' to cover up to be considered to be adhering to feminist principles surely just goes to prove how anti-feminist our society is."

I think you have missed the point. See beachcomber's post - this is not about what women wear, it's about the context in which they wear it. This difference is a difficult one for people to grasp when it's new to them at first, so it's important to really be clear about the difference. Took me years to be able to articulate it coherently.

"If that is going to be an excuse for men to letch and make comments it only proves that our society as a whole needs to take a good look at itself"

Precisely. In a society where men and women were equal, getting your kit off for charity would have absolutely no overtones and no negative connotation and both men and women would do it in equal numbers. Or perhaps nobody would bother to do it, because the fact that men have nice abs and women have nice breasts, would not be such a source of astonishment to people that they'd be prepared to pay for the sight of said abs and breasts.

Oh girls just shut up and giggle....

The thing is, in terms of lighthearted charity fundraising it is pretty common for men to strip off and display themselves as well. I have heard of 'slave auctions' for charity where people bid on having some bloke come round and clean the house in his pants, there are plenty of kit-off charity calendars featuring naked men, and it is highly likely that if the organisers of the OP's mate's event had suggested getting a team of blokes to wash cars in their Speedos this would have been greeted with equal enthusiasm. For all we know, this event will feature men displaying their bodies to raise money.
Indeed, it would seem to me that the best feminist response to such an event would be to arrange a team of men to do a similar job.

Don't think I would agree that doubling the amount of objectification in the worls will help matters much, to be honest.

Ah yes the sauce for the gander argument.

Which ignores context again.

Is it not possible that the women doing this charity car wash are actually the ones exploiting the men? Raising money for charity by using the fact that they know men will bring their cars to this event - playing on their baser natures?