We'll always have Paris to blame

Prominent entertainment figures including 50 Cent, Paris Hilton and Ariel the mermaid were implicated Monday in a decades-long conspiracy to erode the sexual health of the nation's women, according to a report released by the American Psychological Association.

The study, conducted by the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (which, contrary to what it might sound like, is not a fraternity club), contends that media and society often present unrealistic, unhealthy images of women. While you're wrapping your mind around that bombshell, be sure to power down all your electronic devices and gather your daughters around a nice, gender-neutral newspaper column.

Led by UCSC associate professor Eileen Zurbriggen, the report says a lot that has been said before, but was probably worth repeating. Using everything from rap lyrics to parent influence, the task force argues that culture at large bombards females with sexual messages that often lead to reduced self-esteem, poor physical health and overall lower quality of life. What's new in the report is that the APA contends that the beauty blitzkrieg begins not in adolescence, but pretty much at birth.

As a guy, it's tough to even discuss studies like this without sounding like a total jerk. I like where the study (available at www.apa.org) is coming from. Certainly, there are many sectors of society where being female is a disadvantage, and you'll never hear me say that young women in America don't have a windy path to walk — one that detours through a surprising number of shoe stores, but still.

I have a problem, though, with the way the report's authors see nefarious macho intentions around every turn, even in female-oriented media. I'm usually the first one in line to bash magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Vogue, which are responsible for more pointless male-female drama than Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant combined, but do they exist solely "to remake the reader as an object of male desire," as Zurbriggen and company say? I wish. Most of the articles I've read were more about impressing other women.

Elsewhere, the study cites characters in the children's films "Shrek 2," "Ella Enchanted," "Pocahontas" and "The Little Mermaid" as "hav(ing) more cleavage, fewer clothes and (being) depicted as 'sexier' than those of yesteryear." Now, not that I was looking, but didn't the male lead in "Pocahontas" spend a good portion of the film shirtless and waist-deep in cold mountain streams? And wasn't the prince in "The Little Mermaid" a big, handsome serial dater with his own castle?

What do you women think these vicious stereotypes of male perfection do to my emotional development? When I see Justin Timberlake dance, it makes me insecure about my own dancing. When I hear about Donald Trump making millions of dollars in a day when I made less than a hundred, I start to compare myself to him, which makes me worry that I might not be rich enough. The only difference between me and Zurbriggen's subjects is that societal pressures won't allow me to binge on ice cream when I'm upset. I have to go drink and get into fights.

I am sick of this covert discrimination against the male gender. I'm a person, too, dammit, and I deserve a redundant sociology study of my own! Where are the reports lambasting the exploitive corporations who would have me spend all day buying nice clothes and eating tasteless food and doing sit-ups and otherwise improving the hand God dealt me? Someone's got to be held responsible for my imperfections, and it sure as hell isn't going to be me.

No matter how you explain it or which implications you attach to it, the truth is that it is better to be pretty than not. Beauty is not a reflection of inner worth, but it has recognized advantages, especially if you are female, and people have been chasing those advantages for a long time. Do jackass guys play a major role in the problems women face? Probably. But it does everybody a disservice to pretend that Jackass Road runs only one way.

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She takes a bus over to the north side of the city. She goes to work stripping for the rich white men. All the words mfarley@register-pajaronian.com gives her make her feel so soft and pretty. She wears them but they never really seem to fit.