Haggling over revealing

There's this joke that I heard a long time ago that actually made me laugh. This man sets down next to a woman on a plane and after conversing for awhile he asks her, "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"

She mulls it over and tells him yes. So then he says, "Would you sleep with me for 50 bucks?"

She glares at him and says, "What kind of woman do you think I am?"

And he says, "We already established that and we're just haggling over the price."

That's what I think of when I read about the participants of Miss America revolting over the skimpy bikinis.

Instead of cheering, Curry felt uncomfortable, writing that changes in this year's pageant "implied the emphasis had been moved from scholarship to sex appeal to gain viewers" in response to declining TV ratings.

I never thought that the pagent was anything but a competition between women to see who's the most fuckable, and anyone who suggests otherwise is fooling herself.

This sort of thing shows how the cult of "modesty", regardless of the religion that is enforcing it, is just as much about defining women solely by their sexual functions as any pornographic magazine. Hell, I have more respect for a woman who models for Playboy as a woman who gets up there in a bikini to be ogled but convinces herself that it's better because the most shameful parts are covered up.

Via Ms Musings.