Letter to Editor: Images are learned
To: Student Newspaper Editors
Images are not incidental to a civilization. We study them to discover the nature of the most deeply-held, unthinking assumptions of a culture.
What does it tell us about ourselves, that we are surrounded by images that objectify and devalue women? Images which make of a woman’s body a stereotype characteristic of no real women? And at which we then find reason to laugh? (See "Funny Fotos Sends a Dangerous Message," page 4.
Is there a connection between this and the fact that one out of four women in our country is sexually abused before the age of 21?
Is there a connection between this and the fact that a woman college graduate will, in her lifetime, earn less than a male who never attended college?
Is there a connection between this and the fact that in the U.S., every fifteen seconds another woman is beaten? That one forcible rape is reported every six minutes? That every day, four more women have been murdered by their husbands or boyfriends?
Where does the laughter at a woman’s body begin, and where does it lead?
IVCC should be active in asking these questions, rather than in providing a place where, just for fun, women are insulted while the stereotypes are perpetuated.
If very few people were offended, it tells us how deeply these images, and their assumptions, reside within us.
N. Dana Collins
Art Department
Oct. 8, 1998 the Apache