Vince A said:
Although, I too used the word "ask," I don't believe that is what pe asked.
Oh, well--yes, I was a little off-topic, responding mostly to Mac Moto, as I agreed with what she was saying.
But is there a double-standard in dancing? I don't think really--at least not in competition. The men are equally required to be slender and beautiful--see for instance ShyDancer's hilarious Dr. Evil's Etiquette thread. There's a lot of truth to that.
When men do the asking, do they tend to ask more women they find attractive? Certainly. Do most of those women tend to be slender? I think so, yes. Why is that? Because our perceptions of beauty are shaped by culture and advertisement, partly. However, motion is also attractive, as is scent. So I think men and women will be equally attracted to great dancing and to partners who smell nice.
The double standard I think comes mostly from the convention that has men doing the asking--even a guy who is a little overweight, or even a lot overweight, will be a whole lot more likely to nourish a healthy self-image than a woman who has been told by virtually every cultural marker that her self-worth is bound up in how she looks, or how "attractive" men find her.
Since I'm on a pedantic kick today....
Mary Wollstonecraft said:
The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly, yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavor by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves,--the only way women can rise in the world,--by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act:--they dress; they paint, and nickname God's creatures. Surely these weak beings are fit only for a seraglio! (Italics mine)
Thus Mary Wollstonecraft, writing more than 200 years ago--and one can wonder what she would say if she could see today's culture. Women are working, engaged in careers, able to govern their own bodies--and still to a large extent limited by the same perceptions she was complaining about in the 18th century. Evidently, the problem went deeper than Wollstonecraft had ever suspected--it is more than simply an issue of education, or working, or financial independence. There is the culture of advertisement, commerce, and the marketplace--and nothing is marketed so effectively as self-image.
It's hard to say, because Wollstonecraft talks about "strength of body and mind," suggesting that physical education should be part of a woman's upbringing as well as a man's--and that such physical education could free her from the tyranny of the male gaze.
Has that happened? Uncertain. It's very clear that dancers, professional and amateur, are highly conscious of their bodies, interested in health and fitness if for no other reason than the ability to dance well. Incidentally, dance instruction was a staple in the 18th century, and evidently Wollstonecraft does not include it in her idea of an education that can contribute to strength of body and mind. It's a truism that obesity leads to serious health problems--and so slender bodies are also symbols of a supposedly healthy lifestyle as well as personal attractiveness.
There's no question that slender-looking bodies have been promoted for men as well as women. Yet it does seem the double-standard persists, that men are still judged more for their characters and professional accomplishments--or rather judge themselves in these terms; whereas many women, whatever their professional accomplishments may be, will still remain anxious over the way they look.
In the 70s, when women were trying to assert more control over their bodies, there was a book that turned out to be a kind of Bible of liberation and self-sufficiency,
Our Bodies, Ourselves. Many women who are 35 and over may still remember it, either because they consulted it themselves, or because their mothers gave it to them.
But in the 80s, as the fitness craze was commercially capitalized on, the emphasis shifted from the liberating effects of exercise itself to control of body shape. Jane Fonda was the guru of women's fitness, and the body became the symbol of the new supposed control (the slender, flexible body that is). Not only that, but the fitness craze saw a new line of clothes products you could buy--the headbands and leotards, matching colors and designer workout labels. Self-discovery gave way to a form of self-possession that was more or less entirely commercial. Your look was something that you could buy.
How much more so now, with plastic surgery more and more common and affordable, liposuction, etc. And all being marketed to women who are to read in the advertisements a form of self-empowerment! Lately, it's all about feeling good about yourself--and how convenient that these fashions and body looks that make women feel good about themselves also happen to be what men find attractive (or are told by the culture of advertising to find attractive).
So it there a double standard? You bet there is--just as there has been for centuries. But don't give up hope! The double-standard is being fast eroded by a commercial ad culture that is well aware of how men have been left behind since the women's movement, that they are beginning to experience their own anxieties over selfhood, and are prime targets for a new ad campaign that objectifies the male body as effectively as it has done for women. Of course, men have a long history of cultural support for a self-image that's built on accomplishment rather than looks, but never fear--with the rapid spread of images in the Internet and digital photography and home movies made easy, pretty soon men will also be able to join those women who for so long have been made to feel wholly inadequate by a commercial culture that is bent on turning insecurity into profit, and robbing people of self-worth so they can sell people self-image.
As the Pink Floyd song goes,
"Welcome my son! Welcome to the machine!"
And on that cheery note.... :twisted: [/quote]
Maybe it's not so much us at the DF group. But I see it happen alot particulary if people are not die hard dancers as we are at the DF. Socially, real dancers tend to look beyond the superficial.