Ten Sexy Ladies

You might know Joshua Allen from the Twitter, where he posts hilariously (and not often enough) under the handle Fireland. Allen is one of the three or four people who make it seem possible that Twitter can spawn something like art. (Others? Tim Siedell, Adam Lisagor and Christian A. Dumais, the guy behind Drunk Hulk. That's my list. I'm sure you have yours.) Now, just to rub it in, he has a new project: Ten Sexy Ladies, in which he rates "everything ever, on a scale from one to ten sexy ladies." And when Allen says "everything ever," you better believe that's exactly what he means. Here he is on "This Thing of ChapStick":

Come closer, mon petit chou. I have generously applied deodorant that smells like a lumberjack fresh out of a clear mountain stream. I have swished mouthwash until it burned my gums like a sexual fire. I didn't floss because come on, really? But I did shave. Everywhere. And I got in there real good with a Q-tip. I am ready to receive your makeouts. (Rating: Two sexy ladies.)

Allen, who in real life is a writer living in Denver, is so prolifically funny that he makes me feel a little ashamed. The only comfort I can take is that sometimes his ratings are, like, way off. I mean, a mere "One sexy ladies" for pennies, which are so fantastically useful as to stagger the mind, as Allen himself admits?

Got chewed out by the boss? On your way out throw some pennies in the recycling bin. He'll be impressed with your lackadaisical approach to finance. This kid knows something I don't, he'll think later that night as he pays a woman to take a straight razor to his neck hair, slowly, so slowly, the only time he ever really feels anything.

Yeah. That's a Six Sexy Ladies right there. Four, minimum. Certainly no fewer than three.

• [Cefeida]

  “it’s not as though men aren’t objectified as well.”

  Not as often as women. You know that! If we had a long history of the genders being equal, this wouldn’t be an issue. But we don’t.

  “get out. assert your agency and objectify a man.”

  Seriously? So, the answer to getting crap is giving crap back?

  Feminism isn’t about revenge, it’s about equal rights for everyone (otherwise they’re not really equal, get it?) If the crowning achievement of feminism is that women of the 21st century can go out and objectify men, then that’s a massive fail.

  • [Iscah]

    Thanks, Cefeida.

    And remember folks, the fastest way to dismiss someone else’s concerns about any societal or sociological issue is to just conclude that the poor buggers can’t understand a joke. As seen in action.

    Pssst, Anon – I never said it was hateful. But intention doesn’t supply societal context.

    • [jere7my]

      And remember folks, the fastest way to dismiss someone else’s concerns about any societal or sociological issue is to just conclude that the poor buggers can’t understand a joke.

      And the fastest way to dismiss someone who legitimately disagrees with your offense level is to haul out Standard Non-response Response #13, “You’re trying to dismiss my concerns by saying I don’t get the joke!” Sometimes the shoe fits.

• [EMJ]

  @Boondocker
  Iscah said it: “Ladies, sexy or not, are not an object to be used to rate things.”

• [Anonymous]

  for iscah and cefeida,

  ok, I agree with your theoretical arguments. can you please explain how Joshua Allen’s project is particularly harmful? besides what he connotes or evokes (our sociologically telling thread included). just his website. who does the website objectify, how, and who is the victim (more specifically than all of womankind). does he offend you personally, how so?

• [Iscah]

  *sigh*

  Nope. I observed the attempt at irony and didn’t appreciate it. Unless it was meant to be Barol’s ironic not-criticism of this not funny thing? Clearly I got stuck on the not-funniness of the sexy-lady object rating system and my little lady brain couldn’t move forward.

  Boondocker, something cannot be both ironic social commentary and arbitrarily meaningless. It means something. It means “ha ha, look at me objectifying ladies as if that were an absurd thing.” It’s not funny and absurd if it happens every day, and no amount of ironic intention can make it so.

  • [Anonymous]

    if you want to argue that the use of the [sexy ladies], be it symbolically or ironically, is manifest objectification, and as such perpetuates the patriarchal hegemony, I think you go too far.

    it’s not as though men aren’t objectified as well. for starters, think of the linguistic and sociological connotations of terms like “hunk”. Despite issues like salary disparities and subtle (or not so subtle) remnants of the patriarchy, we live in the 21st feminist century! sex and the city!

    if we’re going to bring terms like hateful and objectification and sexist into this discussion, it’s important to look at the context and intention of the work. also consider it from the other side, not just the perspective of the default-to-victimization, unfortunately misguided liberal.

    get out. assert your agency and objectify a man. challenge the status quo. you don’t have to be a sexy lady. and if I’ve been wrongfully normative, all sorts of queers can also employ manipulative objectification, be it for good or evil or just to get off, or just for laughs.

    -someone who considers hirself a progressive feminist

    • [DoctressJulia]

      Shorter Anon: ‘BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!!????!?!?’

      This crap is sexist and objectifying. FAIL.

    • [robulus]

      You win the thread.

  • [Marktech]

    Thought experiment. What if it’s a character in a novel who’s judging things in terms of sexy ladies? We may disapprove of the actions of the fictional character, but do we disapprove of the author?

    • [Iscah]

      @AMrktech – That would depend on the way the author presents the character. I wouldn’t be impressed, though.

• [Anonymous]

  To all the (mostly) men grousing about feminist critiques: If you’re so sure that this is an instance of PC-Police/feminazism/whatever-kind-of-attack-you-believe-is-ruining-the-internet, then why not let it pass you by like so much noise?
  If you just can’t get yourself to let go… Why are you so invested in proving that these jokes aren’t actually sexist?
  And, if you really want to change someone’s mind, ask some questions to explore your opponents’ perspectives, before you mock and malign and mangle the arguments.

  Allen is using the “ten sexy ladies” rating system as part of a satirical persona, portraying someone to be appalled by and laughed at, in the same way that Sasha Baron Cohen and Sarah Silverman portray ignorant, racist ideas as part of their characters. Obviously the rating system itself is sexist, just as Cohen’s song “Throw the Jew down the well” is antisemitic.

  Cohen’s stated intent about that song is to reveal incipient antisemitism by showing how quick people are to accept his overtly Jew hating character. I’ll say for myself, as a Jew, I think his work does more to trivialize the issue than to illuminate it. Dave Chappelle began to feel the same way about his own work when he saw that it seemed to make more white people feel more comfortable making racist jokes.

  Allen doesn’t demonstrate any specific agenda by which he can be judged, other than wanting us to laugh. Clearly some do and some don’t. I did.

  (And, for the demographers, I’m white, male, Jewish, 1.5 on the Kinsey scale, and proud to self-identify as a feminist.)

  And, I personally found Iscah’s original comment to be disappointing. It takes the rating system at face value and doesn’t address the satirical intent, and suggests that boingboing has nauseated and let the reader down. Boingboing has made it clear over the years that they’re sharing what they like, not what they want us to like.

• [Anonymous]

  The irony escaped you. Quick, fire up those synapses and try to catch it!

  It would’ve been ironic if those images would’ve been used to rate feminist books, for example.
  But using them to rate any random product is not any different from using women to *sell* products: A cheap trick to get attention.

  And, as far humor is concerned – sure, lots of people find sexist or racist jokes funny. But that doesn’t make them acceptable or even “ironic”.

• [jere7my]

  Is there something about becoming a progressive that kills the sense of satire? Does the vaccine against right-wing intolerance and fearmongering have antisatirical side effects?

• [PeedieOxter]

  Wow, this guy needs to write for a sketch comedy show. Hilarious.

• [Dilapidus]

  Yeah, he’s funny but it feels a touch too close to Graham Roumieu’s Bigfoot stuff to really hit home.

• [justinfwest]

  I’ve been getting a kick out of John August’s tech guy: http://twitter.com/#!/ryannelson

• [Lynne]

  Yeah…hilarious. Must be a guy thing.

• [TheEvilJeremy]

  Man, everyone’s sense of humor must have left for Spring Break already.

• [Quiet Wyatt]

  Yeah, but I, uh… No. Not a chuckle. Must be a *straight* guy thing.

• [Gadjo Bango]

  God, thank you. So, so good.

• [JIMWICh]

  De humorus non est disputandum, y’all.

• [robulus]

  Although it panders to the patriarchal military industrial clusterfuck corpocracy complex, it is hard to argue with the sexiness of those ladies.

• [lewis stoole]

  i have a problem as i only count one sexy lady

• [burritoflats]

  Sorry – to me his writing seems too flowery and overly-quirky – I get the same negative feeling when I hear Americans trying to attempt British accents. The concept is good though, kind of like something Ambrose Bierce did a century ago with his “Devil’ Dictionary”

• [gwailo_joe]

  AHAHAHAHAHAHA. . .I don’t get it.

  But then again: there’s a lot I don’t get. All these Twitterers tweeting about. . .what, exactly?

  Lumberjack, Ok. . .nice imagery. Recycling pennies, hell yeah, quaint useless things. . .

  Still. . .people just write random bits and send them off into the void to various people that request the privilege . . .it’s all too much for me: though I suppose if John Cleese were to tell me a hilarious joke everyday or Michelle Yeoh text me goodnight kisses, maybe I’d convert.

  At any rate : I knew those sexy ladies would rile some folks. The sociological implications are. . .well. . . I don’t know what they might be. But after some deliberation I will accept said lady as the Archetype of All Sexy Ladies, The Ideal sexy lady on the wall of Platos cave, if you will.

  Why not? Yet, I suppose if the sexy ladies so offend, one could come up with ones own ratings system to flip the script. . .giant phalluses, perhaps? (no. . no…I think Hustler already uses that one. . .Next!)

• [Iscah]

  Ugh. Really, really Ugh. Ladies, sexy or not, are not an object to be used to rate things. Any things. Cool things or not cool things. Disappointed, BoingBoing.

  • [Mark Frauenfelder]

    The irony escaped you. Quick, fire up those synapses and try to catch it!

    • [meta_neris]

      Oh, wait, you mean that hateful, objectifying, sexist crap was intended to be IRONIC?

      Well why didn’t you just say so? As everyone knows, it is always perfectly acceptable to spew as much bigoted, harmful, objectifying, stereotype-reinforcing crap as you want, just as long as you say you were doing it IRONICALLY. And – bonus! – if anyone complains you get to laugh at them for not understanding your oh-so-clever sense of humour.

      Glad we cleared that up then.

      • [Mark Frauenfelder]

        And to think that all this time Nellie McKay was singing about *me.* [blush]

• [adralien]

  When it works it really works… The turnaround of the penthouse letter reminds me of Sarah Silverman’s Aristocrats skit, and the car wash is good… “1200 thread count sheets for your junk”…

  It has to be played right though, kinda like the glory days of the Simpsons when Bart would come in with lines like “I’m aware of the work of Pablo Neruda”… or Lisa would comment on social upheaval well ahead of her years.

• [InsertFingerHere]

  Ok, I’ll say it another way and hope THIS one gets posted.

  The content left me puzzled, as it seems to have done to many others. Obviously must be funnier if read off a portable Apple product.

• [IWood]

  I rate things in Iscahs. Pretty damn ironic, if you ask me.

  No, wait…not ironic. Obnoxious, that’s the word I want.

  And nobody asked me, anyway.

• [Anonymous]

  Myles Barlow would give this three stars

• [sbarnes2]

  I fail to see the humor here. Oh, sure, I see the irony, but it’s a sort of ironic sexism, which is a lot like ironic racism. Haha, blackface! Haha, women are objects! Call me a humorless feminist, but I don’t get how semi-clever descriptions of things and an ironic scale of measurement probably designed to point out society’s blatant objectification of women is hilarious. There are other ways to poke fun at an unjust status quo that don’t appear to reinforce it. I’m gonna get back to Parks and Recreation now. That show knows how to tickle my funny bone juuuuust right. And is full of sexy ladies.

• [DaHoss]

  Those who take issue with the rating system’s objectification of women and validation of patriarchy merit only two sexy ladies. This is ironic because usually such humorless browbeating is associated with no sexy ladies at all.

• [magpiekilljoy]

  for the original post: fun fact: women are not objects

  for mark: fun fact: irony takes context, something that is not applicable on mass, anonymous scales like public posts. So no, this is not funny. This is sexism.

  for anon: fun fact: patriarchy exists, and for this reason, the objectification of women is different than the objectification of men. (Though obviously, the objectification is not warranted either and the liberation of gender is the pursuit of contemporary feminism).

  for everyone else:
  http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/wp-content/doodles/sexism-all.jpg

  • [bmcraec]

    The second to last panel is the only one that matters. All else is distraction. Groups of any construct have no minds; they simply run the program that assembled the group, which casts out the initiating point as an outlier.

    That’s politics, and it’s pretty sausage-y.

  • [jere7my]

    http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/wp-content/doodles/sexism-all.jpg

    Your link is so good it makes me want to fuck you.

    • [jere7my]

      I want to apologize for the tone of my previous comments. I was in a terrible mood this morning, but that doesn’t excuse me being an ass.

      I still disagree, but I should’ve disagreed more respectfully.

      That is all.

      • [robulus]

        I give your apology 8 Buff Construction Workers! (out of a possible 10 Buff Construction Workers).

• [falz]

  I don’t get the hate.

  I’m a girl and I found the blog hilarious. I went to his twitter and that was hilarious too. What’s the big deal?

• [Boondocker]

  Oh, wait, you mean that hateful, objectifying, sexist crap was intended to be IRONIC?

  Just so we’re all clear on the terms, here, what crap exactly did you find hateful, what objectifying, and what sexist?

  I ask, because if you’re just talking about the rating scale, I think you read far more into it than I did. What I took out of it was… well, not much. It’s an arbitrary, mostly meaningless rating scale that, if it conveyed anything about the author at all, painted him as silly and slightly immature (intentionally, natch).

  The rest of his posts, when they mentioned women, were self-deprecatory. I didn’t really get a sexist vibe from any of them. So what was so hateful?

• [magpiekilljoy]

  Congratulations. You’ve cleverly combined the word “pout” and the word “outrage” to take all anger that you disagree with and diminishing its importance by gendering it.