Let me make it clear that women can be as chauvinistic and as bad as men when it comes to gender relations. Regardless of whether one calls it ‘liberation’ of women, being ‘comfortable’ with one’s sexuality or other nonsense, the fact of the matter is that women like Paris Hilton and Britney are not emblems of feminist emancipation. In fact they represent the worst excesses of a compromised feminism i.e., objectification and reduction of women to one dimensional objects, sexual objects to be exact. Consider the following excerpt from an article in the Wall Street Journal.

In fact, Britney was following to its logical end what has become the first rule of contemporary American girlhood: to show that you are liberated, take it off. Liberty means responsibility . . . to disrobe. Paris Hilton, Britney’s BFF (Best Friend Forever), taped her sexual escapades with an ex-boyfriend, though even she was tactful enough to pretend that she hadn’t meant for the video to go public. Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid have also staged their own wardrobe malfunctions. But flashing is hardly limited to celebrities. The girls-next-door who migrate to Florida during spring break happily lift their blouses and snap their thongs for the producers of “Girls Gone Wild,” who sell their DVDs to an eager public.

Is it just the men’s fault? Many of them are more than happy in this state of affairs but in this case I think some of us women are to be blamed as well, as Ariel Levy calls them Female Chauvanist pigs. Here is another excerpt from the same article.

Some people believe that it is lingering misogyny rather than naive exhibitionism that leads the public to define women by their sexual anatomy and proclivities. Perhaps there is something to that. But the exhibitionism surely doesn’t help. It seems that men, despite their reputation as braggarts, actually don’t find self-exposure all that appealing. Where are the male counterparts to Britney Spears and “Girls Gone Wild”?

I am not a prude but the media and even people’s (men and women’s) obsession with celebrities like Paris, Lohan and Anderson just makes me sick. I mean aren’t there important things in life. May be all people are shallow and go for looks. So may be there is some shallowness in me as well but there is a limit to shallowness and our contemporary culture is on the verge of crossing that limit.