Wired.com is currently running a contest for 2009's Sexiest Geek. The candidates are celebrities from various geek-related interests, and include both genders. However, if a male geek is a candidate, the odds are much higher that the attached image will have them with full clothing, looking casual or at least posed for a conventional head-shot and not a Maxim pin-up.
Posted by an anonymous fan, the picture for Alyson Hannigan, the actress who starred as horny band camp girl Michelle in the American Pie movies, was in every episode of geek phenomenon Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is a regular on the awesome sit-com How I Met Your Mother, is here...
It is worth noting that this picture came from the men's magazine FHM in 2003, when Hannigan was 29. There are plenty of pictures that " Anonymous " could have gotten of her in the present day, six years and one pregnancy later. Certainly she's far from unattractive, but why would they want a picture of a woman in her * gasp * mid-thirties when they could recycle an old issue of a younger Alyson posing in sexy schoolgirl attire?
For comparison, here's a picture of Nathan Fillion, another actor popular for his work in Joss Whedon shows and considered quite the looker...
But if he were given the same treatment that most of the women in the Sexiest Geek contest have received, we'd likely be seeing this charming shot...
And I doubt that the geek community at large, too often stuck in a He-Man Woman-Hater's club mentality, would vote for Fillion on the basis of the good Captain Malcolm " Mal " Reynolds' bared ass.
I'm not opposed to a Sexiest Geek contest, but the image of Alyson Hannigan ( amongst most though not all of the women in the contest, such as Danica McKeller, Kristen Bell, Kari Bryon, Jewel Staite, and others ) is the kind of low-clothing image that a 15-year-old me would have voted for. In the decade since, I've matured enough to realize that women are people with no more or less inherent value than men, and should be treated as having the same complexity-- skin is just one part. I've also realized that being a geek means being outside the norm, with more esoteric and intellectual pursuits-- the kind of mentality that shouldn't be won over by " T&A + connection to favorite TV show ". That thinking is the norm-- the large portion of humanity that for whatever reason you feel apart from.
There are many things that could hypothetically put Hannigan on that list, but instead of an outdated pin-up, how about something that actually captures her true appeal to geekdom, such as this..
From the set of How I Met Your Mother, when Hannigan was pregnant. The baby bump was ( rather poorly ) hidden most of the time, but the writers actually worked it into the show's canon in some scenes of her winning a hot-dog eating contest. Isn't her participation in that kind of quirky humor a better appeal than just another FHM pin-up?
....wait, I already know the answer to that.
You are the most awesome thinker
ReplyDeleteI'm not certain I understand the source of your frustration. Is it that people are submitting sexy pictures to a contest about sexy people? Is it that the contest exists at all? Is it the way your culture defines beauty?
ReplyDeletethe last one. I apologize if that wasn't clear.
ReplyDeleteNow, is it wrong that I find a woman being able to win an eating contest kind of sexy in and of itself?
ReplyDeleteBut to the main point, I'm not surprised, just disappointed. Because really, what we have here is people thinking the idea of Hannigan is sexier than the reality of her, and their idea is clearly cemented from her co-starring role ten years ago.
Of course, this also speaks poorly of a whole generation who can't find anything sexually appealing unless it's laid out as sexy right in front of them. Does the word "tantalize" mean nothing? Less is more.
The idea of Hannigan is the best way to put it, E. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's hardly wrong to find competitive eating sexy. Were I homosexual, Takeru Kohayashi would be my dream date...
Very well said. I especially liked the shot of the naked guy talking to the girl. I have often thought of how partially naked women are obliged to make themselves in social settings where men are dressed to the nines.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for putting your comment here for posterity, Dad. :) ( The last Anonymous comment is from my father).
ReplyDeleteI suspect some of this is also down to a kind of hyperbolic performance of heterosexual masculinity on the part of a subculture often excluded from traditional performances of the same.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, Omar. Similar to how stereotyped online gamers show the same kind of macho posturing as stereotyped sports fans.
ReplyDeleteIt cuts both ways, too: on the one hand, the anxiety over one's seeming exclusion from "typical" masculinity causes an exaggerated imitation or interpretation thereof; on the other, the comparative lack of experience with that same gendered performance means that it remains a stereotype to its imitators, who never see that there's actually a range of gendered performances and even certain boundaries to those performances that do somewhat resemble the exaggerated stereotype.
ReplyDeletehave you ever considered that maybe straight women just don't find male nudity sexy in the same way that straight men find female nudity sexy? similarly, that women tend to find older men sexy, even though men don't generally find older women sexy in the same way, with a few exceptions?
ReplyDeleteI think that pic of Aly Hannigan looks ridiculous, and very unsexy - and I don't meant the hotdog eating preggers one. And the one of Nathan Fillian is just hilarious - male nudity can be perfectly sexy, but that one is just plain funny :D
ReplyDeleteThat's true, Mand01-- it looks like FHM invented a Photoshop filter called " Department Store Mannequin " and ran Hannigan's photo through it a few dozen times.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thank you for the kind comments elsewhere on the blog, and the follow. I look forward to seeing more of your thoughts.
I was especially upset that it was Wired who was invloved, a great magazine that expect better from. But I may be expecting them to have chosen to take down the fan's photo, which would be a bit of censoring. So they might be just letting the contestants speak for themselves in terms of how they're represented.
ReplyDeleteI do find these visual inequities to be bothersome. Running the bum-pic of Fillion was brilliant -- it really hit the point home (and made me laugh!)
Points made in the comments above about what men and women tend to want to see have some merit and there's data out there to back up some of those thoughts. But I wonder how much is of that is due to what it's considered ok for us to want to see (and how much of that message has been internalized).
PS One of the men's mags, either Maxim or FHM, ran a pictoral years ago of Alyson Hannigan in a black bra and panties. It was really unnatural-looking and had an odd quality. It also had some very ovious digital enhancements to her breasts, which I believe eventually got brought out in the media somewhere. I've just been re-watching some Buffy episodes and have been struck by the fact that Hannigan is sexy even when she ties her shoes. So it makes the idea of seeing her in these exaggerated Jessica Rabbit-like poses even more silly.