An Ideal Lady

There are two recent news stories the algorithm has been repeatedly feeding to me lately that have become connected in my mind: the manufactured controversy around Sydney Sweeney's nude Novig ad and the Australian woman who had runner's diarrhea during an athletic competition in China. Mostly because the articles about Sweeney's ad tend to collect quotes from actual female athletes about how they disapprove of the false impression Sweeney supposedly creates of female athletes. Surely footage of a real female athlete soldiering on through physical discomfort and public embarrassment is exactly the counterpoint Sweeney's detractors would want to exhibit. But the psychology behind the clickbait of both stories highlights the current state of Puritanism and how it's being exploited.

The Sydney Sweeney controversy wouldn't make much sense in Brazil or Italy or any number of other Catholic countries in which physical human beauty isn't seen as a problem. But it was only twenty years ago here in the US that advertisements featuring naked women with their bits covered strategically, selling all manner of things, were so ubiquitous as to barely rate notice. Even so, the Puritanism was always a part of American psychology, lying dormant, perhaps. But it could still spring up, as in the 2004 halftime show when Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's costume onstage, revealing her breast. The term "wardrobe malfunction" was born as commentators and representatives tried to explain something as an accident that was clearly deliberate. Despite the pervasive sexualisation in media, this was somehow a bridge too far, and the psychological mechanisms nested deep in media and gossip went to work rationalising how something could have happened between two popular pop stars in public. To contemplate it as anything other than an accident was too close to the nerve, perhaps. It was like Norman Bates having to become his mother to explain his own murders to himself. The rationalisation must be arrived at, however irrationally.

A lot of writers have been having fun finding different ways to joke about the idea that Sydney Sweeney was sincerely trying to present herself as a professional athlete. The conservative writer Caitlin Flanagan amusingly wrote, "I don’t think there’s a single person who saw Sweeney obscure her large breasts who thought, She must play professional football." Sweeney herself posted a series of links to athletes who have posed nude in rebuttal. Yet Flanagan also points to the hypocrisy of feminism for shaming a woman for using her sexuality while also advocating for the right of a woman to "walk through the Mall of America in a pair of pasties and a G-string." This strawman doesn't last a brief perusal of liberal commentaries, like this one at The Guardian, and yet The Guardian also has this one that concurs with the ad's detractors. Conservatives have identified prudishness as a weakness on the left which they can exploit. It's something else that makes the liberals look like creepy zealots. This is a somewhat awkward position, though, as the comments sections on the conservative articles naturally have a number of conservatives saying they're also uncomfortable with the presentation of woman's bare flesh as something beautiful. Yes, even conservatives can be Puritans.

But who is really to blame for the Joanna Wietrzyk problem, the woman who defaecated while competing--and winning--the Hyrox? The Hyrox, by the way is a relatively new sport competition that involves running and various workout stations. It was during a burpee session, after pausing in her 8km run, that Wietrzyk soiled herself and apparently some of the equipment. Who is to blame? Is it the organisers? A number have people have apparently complained to the officials who say they didn't step in right away because, while the rules forbid leaving snot or spit on the equipment or the floor, no-one thought to include any rules about faeces. This is, of course, bullshit, no pun intended. Watching the video of the woman running and her suit bottom changing colour, it's absurd to imagine oneself in the shoes of an organiser spotting this and rushing into the fray in order to tell Wietrzyk to please stop pooping and seclude herself immediately. For one thing, runners soiling themselves in the midst of a marathon is not an uncommon occurrence, it's called runner's diarrhea. Nor is it unheard of for a runner to complete a race while defaecating. Wietrzyk found herself in the unusual position of being in an arena in which she also had to use communal equipment. To expect Wietrzyk or the officials to make snap policy decisions in the midst of the competition is unrealistic. Yet, the morality must rationalise, the morality must have hits comprehensible narrative. And so Wietrzyk had to make a public apology which I frankly consider an embarrassment more genuine than her uncontrollable bowel movement.

"I know my actions had an impact beyond myself, and I am genuinely sorry to everyone who was affected. I am learning from this experience and will carry those lessons with me, including remembering that there is more to life than racing and knowing when it is right to step away. On reflection, I have decided to retroactively withdraw from the race and forfeit the points I earned."

I'm compelled to wonder if the outcome would have been different had the competition occurred in, say, Mexico instead of China. Obviously China was never a Protestant country but it has its own form of Puritanism.

What connects the Sydney Sweeney story and the Joanna Wietrzyk story for me is the evident trouble many people have in being able to simultaneously enjoy a fantasy (or allow others to enjoy a fantasy) while having the maturity to realise that reality isn't always pretty, and that it doesn't have to be. The same attitude that shames Sydney Sweeney shames Joanna Wietrzyk--not for soiling equipment but for being unattractively human in public. So often when people insist on more realism in public what they're really insisting on is their own fantasy, and when people are pushing a fantasy they can't consciously acknowledge as a fantasy, it tends to be uglier than any reality and certainly an intentionally crafted fantasy.