Is GQ Trying to Be Offensive?
SodaHead Celebs
2013/02/05 15:00:00
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Hitting newsstands this week, GQ released “The 100 Sexiest Women of the Millennium” issue with Beyonce on the cover, fresh off her impressive Super Bowl performance. And while some people are offended merely by the concept of a sexiest anything list, the men’s magazine took it one step further and categorized some of the women in what many are calling a racist context.
A few of the categories in question include “Hottest Indian Chick” (Freida Pinto), “Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan” (M.I.A) and “Hottest Chinese Chick” (Zhang Ziyi). Sure, saying someone is a sexy Indian woman might not be offensive in and of itself, but opponents are pointing to the random nature of the call-outs as the issue. To them the fact that every woman is not categorized by ethnicity makes those titles problematic.
Ruth C. White, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social at Seattle University says, "If the magazine were saying, 'These are all the beautiful women from every country in the world', that would be a bit different… But by calling out certain women's ethnicity and not others, what they're implying is that these women are not beautiful simply because they're beautiful; they're only attractive within the context of their own ethnicity.”
But are people like Ms. White reading too much into this? Isn’t GQ just trying to sell magazines? What do you think? Is GQ trying to be offensive?
A few of the categories in question include “Hottest Indian Chick” (Freida Pinto), “Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan” (M.I.A) and “Hottest Chinese Chick” (Zhang Ziyi). Sure, saying someone is a sexy Indian woman might not be offensive in and of itself, but opponents are pointing to the random nature of the call-outs as the issue. To them the fact that every woman is not categorized by ethnicity makes those titles problematic.
Ruth C. White, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social at Seattle University says, "If the magazine were saying, 'These are all the beautiful women from every country in the world', that would be a bit different… But by calling out certain women's ethnicity and not others, what they're implying is that these women are not beautiful simply because they're beautiful; they're only attractive within the context of their own ethnicity.”
But are people like Ms. White reading too much into this? Isn’t GQ just trying to sell magazines? What do you think? Is GQ trying to be offensive?
other similar publications such as Maxim, and Esquire. And the most nortorious
of those being some of those radical feminist organizations out there. Their goals
seem to be the oppression and persecution of those who are unfortunate to be of
the male gender. While, there a few men out there who deserve exactly that, the
overwhelming majority of men out there, don't. Most men are good, and don't
deserve to be punished for the thoughtless acts of few bad men.
But I am very careful about when I go into any details like this just for the simple reason that people are so blasted touchy these days and you never know what kind of stupid reaction you're going to get anymore. The funny thing is there are a gazillion, oft-repeated, well-known racial epithets and character slurs that can be used to insult people, so if GQ wanted to be insulting they sure wouldn't have made up those innocuous adjectives that you list here. What the heck is wrong with a "hottest Indian chick" or whatever anyway? My only "question" about that would be, hey, India Indian or American Indian!
Uhm...Whut?
But if we are supposedly PC, and age, sex, race, etc. are not to be deciding factors anywhere ...why are all asked on every item of paperwork you fill out for the government? The same government that tells us those statistics are not to be used.
Male - for feminists, & Caucasian - for all other races...
These are merely facts stated by the magazine, trying to sort in order to find more beauties is not racism.
Next thing it will be wrong to sort wrestlers for weight ranges...
I'm very curious though why they chose the people they chose!
I'm surprised that people jumped all over racism and didn't say anything about the blatant sexism. A list of "beautiful women from around the world" is one thing, "hottest...chick" is another. If I were a pregnant Sri Lankan woman, I would NOT be happy at being called the "Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan."
So, GQ, bring on the list of "Hottest... Hunks" from around the world. I want to see the "Hottest Afghani Hunk." Better yet, the "Hottest Taliban Hunk" (no racism there).
Different ethnicities are what make this world so interesting. When you say Chinese, Indian, etc....we automaticly associate that and can relate to a particular range of traits. It is the world as we live in it....embrace it!