Naked Chicks on Snowboards is NOT Cool

Apparently the latest thing to hit the slopes this year are images of naked playgirls on snowboards.

There are obvious reasons why this is striking a sour note with many. You don’t have to be severely conservative, a religious fanatic or even a puritan to find this offensive, and realize it’s inappropriate for many of the people who may be sharing the slopes. Debating what age a guy is old enough for a parent to not be concerned about their choice of visual aids or recreational habits aside, there is something that I find the most disturbing.

Men of all ages, bundled up in winter sports wear plan to slide and cruise down the chilly slopes, standing on the nearly life-sized image of a naked woman’s body. Male’s boot clad feet will be tromping on the bare boobs, hips and faces of coquettish, pouting- and very naked- women.

Is this just one more way to drive home purported male dominance over the female population? Is it not enough that men congratulate themselves on their superiority over women in the winter athletics play ground? Now they also have to do it tromping around on the bodies of naked women?

What gets me is how this particular new product is called their “Love” line. Are you freakin’ kidding me?? Standing on a naked woman is somehow related to love??

Wow. THAT is seriously frightening!

I understand that men are visual creatures. Many find viewing pictures of naked women’s bodies, uh, pleasing. But at least in the magazines, on posters and in most other visual formats the women are viewed vertically. They’re hung on a wall or in a locker. The guys aren’t tromping on life-sized images. The way that translates into the perception of appropriate treatment of women is shocking.

Fortunately consumers everywhere aren’t taking this lying down. Kudos to the protesters and ski resorts that have banned their employees from using these monstrosities called snowboard.

I am truly amazed that the company founder Jake Burton Carpenter is supposedly “scratching” his head over this. And while his wife Donna Carpenter who heads their company’s “women initiatives program" may concede to this disgraceful abuse of women, I’m disappointed that she concluded it’s "tongue-in-check and harmless”.

Oh really?

Well would anyone really have the same confusion about blatant sexual exploitation if say a female owned bowling pin company put pictures of naked men on a new line of bowling pins so all-women leagues can fling bowling balls at them?

Calling THAT their “Love” line would be just as fitting!

Or maybe women’s hair salons could retile their floors with pictures of naked men, so women every where could enjoy the satisfactory experience of walking with high hills all over the faces and private parts of young, sexy naked male models.

I challenge Donna Carpenter’s husband to consider THAT “tongue-in-cheek and harmless.”


To read the msnbc.com article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28518878/