Huffington Post: Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Nipple Is Just Sexist
Last week, I suggested that the Huffington Post was sexist for devoting much of its Entertainment page to obsessively posting accidental female nipple slips caught on camera. Arianna Huffington responded via a Howard Kurtz column by saying:
“As Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’—and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip.”
Well, I’ve been mulling over Huffington’s retort for about 24 hours now, and I’ve finally figured out what is so fucking strange about this response. Let’s start with Freud.
Sigmund probably never actually said “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” but theories abound as to the source of the attributed phrasing.
Here’s the best guess of any: “Sigmund Freud was once asked about the psychoanalytic significance of his smoking a cigar, to which he replied that a good cigar was merely a smoke.” So, Freud is sitting around having a cigar, and some student thinks it would be clever to ask Freud why he likes to put phallic objects in his mouth all the time. And Freud is like, ha, ha, you got me, but seriously, I am not gay. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
Nipples, meanwhile are not stand-ins for sexualized female body parts—they are actually sexualized female body parts. It’s true, I’m not kidding. HuffPo confirms its peculiar interest in the female nipple by regularly posting intensely zoomed-in “nipple slips” on its Web site, while sparing male nipples—regularly exposed on beaches everywhere, even by smokin’ hot American presidents—the same “NSFW zoom” treatment and “check out these nipples, we found more somehow” headlines.
What might be a more apt comparison here? How about this: So, Freud is sitting around with a man’s penis in his mouth, and some student thinks it would be clever to ask Freud why he likes to put men’s penises in his mouth all the time. And Freud is like, ha, ha, you got me, but seriously, I am not gay. Sometimes, a man’s penis in my mouth is just a man’s penis in my mouth.
In other words, an Internet “newspaper” can feature sexist entertainment all it wants without actually being sexist, as long as it insists that its actions are meaningless, and can source that meaninglessness back to an unsourceable quote from Sigmund Freud, of all people. You’re good, Huffington Post. You’re really good.
Photo by RyAwesome
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
Blogs Linking to this Article
-
Linked From: June 23rd, 2009Huffington Post Sexism Goes Green - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
5:06 pm[...] my opinion, Tommy Lee’s low-ranked bare chest alone is enough to debunk HuffPo’s “sometimes a nipple is just a nipple” theory. Nobody wants to see that [...]
-
Linked From: June 30th, 2009When Gender Equality Goes Horribly Wrong - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
2:03 pm[...] then, there’s the whole cigar thing. If you buy into the idea that a cigar is not just a cigar, these men are getting off on the [...]
4:45 pm
But what’s a woman’s penis in my mouth?
5:14 pm
Don’t you have better things to do with your time?
5:44 pm
you are hilarious and so on-point. i love this blog and i admire your work!
11:04 pm
The picture should have been Freud smoking a cigar that had a cock bib on it.
12:16 pm
This would be funny even if you were wrong, but it’s hilarious because you’re exactly right.
2:02 pm
…with the bib saying: “Sometimes a chicken is just a chicken.”
2:23 pm
Still waiting on my CockBib!
3:54 pm
Keep sticking it to HuffPo. Obviously you’re ruffling some feathers over there.
2:21 am
AHAHA a nipple is not meaningless at all. nipples are very important an d frequently talked about. im interested to see if huffington will ever post testacle slips.