2-25-89 The most recent issue of Playboy magazine (April 1989) contains an eight-page pictorial entitled “Beach Blast”. It’s a photographic essay on spring break in Daytona Beach, Florida. Each spring, college students flock from all over the nation to the beaches and bars of Florida. The goal is to get away from books and professors, soak up the sunshine, get drunk, dance, and ogle the bodies. Of course, most of the ogling is by males, of females. None of the pictures in the magazine shows a naked male, but nearly all of them show either a naked woman, a topless woman, or a woman in a skimpy swimsuit. I’m not sure how the women get away with the nudity, unless the police simply look away, but there they are, parading like cattle on elevated platforms, leaning against cars on the boardwalk, playing volleyball, or lying in the sun on the beach. In one picture, three women stand under palm trees, facing a crowd of men, while a fully dressed man holding a clipboard speaks into a microphone. Two of the women are in the process of removing their T-shirts, thus exposing their breasts, while the other stands transfixed, covered breasts protruding. It’s clear that the man has given a signal of some kind for the women to start undressing for the men. I assume that there is a “winner” and that she receives a prize.
Why do women do this? Many of them, I assume, are college students themselves, with careers of their own, jobs, and respectable families and friends. What prompts a woman to expose herself to hundreds of strangers, many of whom are drunk or high? Surely it’s not the chance to win a prize; that wouldn’t suffice. I’ll bet it’s the rush that comes from being desired, ogled, and attended to by men. To a woman in this society, being desired by a man, or many men, is the greatest thrill, the height of femininity. It shows that she has made it—that all the hours of preparation, of learning how to apply makeup, of dieting, of learning how to stand and walk, have paid off. “Look”, she says. “I’ve worked on this body. Do you like it? Would you like to possess it, or at least use it?” By cheering the women on, or by attending the event at all, the men encourage other women to inculcate similar traits or skills. That, at any rate, is my interpretation of the spring-break phenomenon. If men want flesh to go with their alcohol and sunshine, there are plenty of women in this world (some in college) who are willing to give it to them—for a fee, for a chance at a prize, or just for the attention. Women exist for the pleasure of men.
