Talking about sexual content the other day in class made me think about an experience I had in Paris this past weekend. A couple friends and I were spending some time in Montmartre and decided to visit the Moulin Rouge. We were told it was only a few blocks down the road, so we decided to walk. At first, everything was fine. Perfectly normal Parisian street lined with perfectly normal Parisian gift shops. We passed a little magazine stand in the middle of the road. Everything seemed fine to me until I realized that the magazines were covered with naked women.
Taken a little by surprise, we kept walking. After about a block, we began to pass all kinds of sex shops. Huge neon lights stuck out from tiny buildings, advertising all sorts of sexual acts and toys that could be purchased inside. Posters of naked women, lingerie-clad mannequins, and sexual advertisements covered all the windows of the stores. I felt like I was in a mini Las Vegas. It seemed like the red light district of Paris.
The sidewalk we were walking on was lined with benches, all crowded with men (literally, there was not a single woman). The number of whistles, catcalls, and vulgar things that were shouted at us in that short three-block walk to the Moulin Rouge was astounding. We decided going through the trouble of taking the metro just one stop to return us to where we started was worth not having to walk back the way we came.
In my mind, I wondered to myself if these men would behave the same way in a different context. Did being surrounded by sexualized advertisements, magazines, and other various forms of media make them behave in a way that was that degrading towards women? Or was this their normal behavior and they just put themselves in this context to make it seem more justifiable? In my personal opinion, I think it's a little of both. But it still begs the question of how much of an influence the media's content, especially sexual content, can have on the way we think and behave in society.
I also found myself right outside of the Moulin Rouge one night this past weekend. I definitely think the men in this area were encouraged by the media around them to act this way. I experienced three scary events during my night in this area. Two men sitting on a bench were screaming at me, trying to get me to come over to them. Next I got separated from my friends and wound up in a store by myself and three men. I quickly left once one man tried to grab my arm. Next I stepped outside of a bar to make a call, and a man followed me down an alleyway. Luckily I saw him and quickly ran back to my friends. I have never experienced that much negative attention in such a short amount of time in my life.
ReplyDelete