Breasts and burquas, the scrutiny remains.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's book, Hating Women: America's Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex, is not the sort of readable gift I usually enjoy. Unfortunately for my liberal feminism, Shmuley's critique of second wave feminism's results  is right on many counts.

As the concerned father of five daighters, he notes that, historically, the "degradation and scorn of any group of people is the prelude to their oppression". Boteach asks his readers to imagine the following scenario:

"....a television show that took thirty Jews to a castle in France, and told them that the had the opportunity of befriending a megamillionaire. The twist in the program is that the millionaire is really a New Jersey construction worker. The objective of the show is to see if the Jews, who everyone assumes love money above all else (italics his), will terminate the friendship on discovering their new buddy is broke. And imagine that this show is so wildly successful that fully 50 million people watch its finale, and that a new international version is quickly readied for release during the fall ratings sweep. You would be justified in thinking that the show's creator is Joseph Goebbels and that the intended audience is Nazi Germany."

Shmuley goes on to note that the TV show in question already exists by the name of Joe Millionaire, only the group being denigrated is women. Granted, one might say that each women on that show really did care about money more than character or individuals-- this can be true without discrediting Shmuley's point that women don't even protest their misportrayal anymore. His words:

"The portrayal of woman as prostitute is so pervasive in American culture that there is no escaping it... I never did figure out the point behind cheereading, always believing it was an anachronism that feminism would eventually kill. And yet it, along with the breasts of the cheerleaders, is bigger than ever."

This book deserves a good read by Naomi Woolf.