I don’t have a problem with it, honestly. It just seems hypocritical to other posts as of late on BB. I think it probably stems from various editors having various opinions, and they don’t speak with one voice.
Yes, it can be both.
She didn’t have to defy it. It did her bidding.
It takes a lot of hard work to perform gymnastics at that level.
And hard work good, and hard work fine, but first take care of head.
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Video games mostly portray women as sexual objects or the target of abuse. While the woman in the video is sexy, I think a lot could be said about her physical conditioning, sense of humor, athleticism, grace, artistic style, and she is probably a very driven and outgoing person. Likely many of the attributes you would like to instill in you daughter, but of course I can understand you not wanting your 8 year old to see it yet.
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You clearly have no idea what “hypocritical” means.
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Beautiful video, impressive level of fitness and skill. Bravo!
that video made doing everything in that video look fun.
as a guy, i’d never in a million years have though i’d want to try to pole dance, but i actually want to try it now…it looked fun…what kind of mind fuckery is embedded in this video anyway?
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Mallakhamb…once again Boing Boing delivers and provides yet another thing i’ve never seen. i love that about these comment threads! They even have women’s rope gymnastics!
Oh dear i’ve fallen down the youtube A.D.D. hole…thanks a lot bb…
Holy crap check out this guy (i have no idea how i got to that video from here…15min later…lol):
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It is. Even if gravity and leverage aren’t your friends, you can string a few basic moves together which can look surprisingly good.
Find a class that’s OK with teaching blokes (many are), drag a willing friend or partner along for moral support, and have a blast. It’s a decent workout and can be really good for your body-image.
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Happy to be of service. 
Objectification is something that is done to someone. So! If a woman displays athletic prowess, but you relate to her not as a human being but as something for a purpose (e.g. her value is in you finding her sexy, or reverse it, the idea that if you didn’t find her hot, both what she was doing and who she was would be pointless) than you are objectifying her. But that is something you’re doing, it’s not inherent in her actions. However, designed/created things (stories, drawings, things that are directed, like movies or photo shoots, where someone else is deciding how something will be shown, choosing what to emphasize, etc) CAN be objectifying, outside your individual reaction, because they are manufactured. A cartoon woman is not choosing to wear revealing outfits. She is made wearing revealing outfits. She is made and so if her sole purpose or primary value is in titillation, that’s sexual objectification that is embedded into the text.
However, women are so routinely portrayed as objects (sexual or otherwise) that many people have trouble seeing the difference, because where there is not inherent objectification, their minds often fill the gap, and they struggle with actually understanding the degree to which they expect women to have value based on their use to the subject. Look at the outrage surrounding Lena Dunham (or at least, one aspect of the outrage): all the rage that she should dare to portray herself as sexual in ways that do not cater to straight male sexual desires (either in how she portrays herself as sexual, or in her not measuring up to the minimum level of “hotness”) . It doesn’t exist without the assumption that women are MEANT for the consumption of the straight male audience, that their value, that their only justification for being presented as having a sexuality is in pleasing straight male desire.
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I am definitely impressed at her skills. And her tattoos. Also her willingness to exercise while stoned. It’s been a few years, but any time I smoked pot it was about the last thing that would come to mind.
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It would be nice if cell phone designers oriented the imaging sensor per the now defunct Flipcam as it’s easier to hold a phone portrait and shoot. That said, I have no problem watching snapchat videos in portrait mode because snapchat doesn’t try and force an arbitrary aspect ratio on its viewers (like YouTube’s pilarboxing) and instead allows the video to fit the whole frame.
You’ve decided in your own head that Feminism = Portrayal of Female Sexuality Is Wrong.
No feminist thinks this, no ant-GamerGater thinks this.
Gamergaters whine that nobody sees the subtle nuances of their view. Here you are not seeing the difference between a skilled performance and hooker-characters being killed in video games.
Where’s the love of nuance now?
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I’ve often thought his: why not just rotate the g@&%$# sensor instead of constantly harping on about “portrait mode.”
People hold their phones that way; the technology should catch up.
That’s not at all what I said.
But yeah, what exactly the difference here? It wasn’t just violence against hookers/strippers being criticized, but their use as “window dressing”. Somehow I don’t think if we motion captured this lady and put her performance in the background of a game it would get the same kudos.
Furthermore, what if this video wasn’t taken at her home (or where ever), but her place of business with a cheering crowd? Identical moves, with only the context of the location changing, does that somehow make it more or less ok? If so, why?
ETA - I have nothing invested in gamergate. I don’t play those games. I don’t read those sites. I don’t have a horse in that race. I do feel there is some hypocrisy here, even though I do love to point out how context is important.
Those contexts (transposing her into window-dressing for a game, performing in front of a paying crowd) do change whether she is being objectified.
Obviously context matters. A woman stripping naked in front of a webcam for her pimp has been objectified. A woman stripping naked in her house has not been.
Do you not see the difference?
In this case, the very same movements could have been performed by a particularly athletic old man. That video would also have been shared. Would you have compared it to naked women in video games then?
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I love exercising while stoned. Do it all the time, including heavy weight lifting (well, it’s been a year or so).
You have a valid point in your strip example, but in this case I am having trouble seeing the difference. The attire and moves, etc, are all identical as if this was at a club somewhere. The only difference is her audience is anonymous youtube viewers vs live people. If she had done all of this and not recorded it and posted it for all to see (or she recorded it just for her BF/GF) I could see that analogy lining up. In this case I don’t.
Some people seem to focus on the physical aspect and how it takes talent and skill. But I’ve heard those exact comments at a strip club before. I believe I uttered something like, “That should be an Olympic sport.” at my bachelors party. So while people can clearly appreciate the skill, they are also objectifying her (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, she knows what she is doing and is ok with it.)
Yes, I am playing devils advocate some, but in all honesty for a site that has dedicate a lot of posts to sexism in games for this exact act, yes I am confused why this doesn’t fall under the same umbrella. Do I see SOME difference? Yes, but I don’t see enough to see why it fits in a different category.
Just because you find the video sexy (or think it’s trying to be sexy) does not mean the woman is objectified. Go Google “objectification versus agency” or something.
Now, granted I’m a straight woman, but honestly I was too busy being impressed with the gymnastics aspect to think about the “sexy” aspect.
I know pole gymnastics ('cos this is way past just dancing) may have started in strip clubs, but it moved into the gym a long time ago. First person I ever met who could even start to do this stuff (not at the level shown in the video) worked for IBM training people about project management.
And honestly, I wouldn’t worry about little girls seeing this, except that they might try to copy it on the monkey bars and land on their heads or something. The physical prowess and grace are impressive on their own; it’s your knowledge of “vertical poles belong in strip clubs” that’s adding a lot of the “sexy” impression, it seems.
Edit: you might want to Google “sexy vs sexist” too. A woman doing something straight men may find arousing does not make it automatically sexist to notice it. There’s porn of women typing, for pity’s sakes.
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