Forgotten Sleep

So, this is how it’s going to be. Correction — this is clearly how it still is.

I’ll preface everything by saying that I’m an early-life convert to the Democratic Party, but this post has absolutely nothing to do with politics except for the person in question. This is a male-female thing.

I consider myself an avid follower of all things political: local, state and federal. How I missed this one, I’ll never know. But, I must take my hat off to Lovely College Newspaper at the University where I am employed for bringing this to my attention. It seems that Scott Brown, the new Republican occupant of the Massachusetts Senate seat left empty when Ted Kennedy died (rest in peace, sir), posed naked for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982. Now, being the shy and chaste person that he clearly is, he strategically placed his arm/hand — whatever — in front of anything that could be considered tantalizing and taboo.

He was even asked about it during the campaign, and reporters and voters let him slide — all the way to victory, mind you — with a mere “You can’t see anything” and “It wasn’t Playgirl” as an explanation.

I. Call. Foul. And I consider it an epic failure in our society that he wasn’t skewered for stepping in front of the camera without so much as a fig leaf. Imagine if Maria Cantwell of Washington, Nancy Pelosi or even Sarah Palin (I’m not playing party favorites here) had posed sans their underpinnings. They would have been pushed off the political stage to terrific catcalls that questioned their virtue and insinuated their sexual promiscuity.

I can’t help but wonder why someone, anyone, didn’t ask him why he did it. Shouldn’t someone have asked how he can be expected to set a wholesome example for people in his state when there are old copies of a Cosmo sitting around with him in all his youthful glory? Apparently, this one falls into the category of “boys will be boys,” just like everything else.

It infuriates me that we live in a society where we tell our daughters and sisters that they can be anything that they want to be. They can do anything they want to do. They can be confident in their choices — that they can make their own paths in life. But they are still held to a double standard. Now, I’m not advocating that we make it open season on posing nude or that we ban it altogether, but I am saying that it’s time we start treating the things that men and women do as equal. Not “virtually equal.” Not equal in only some circumstances. Equal.

If we’d politically crucify a woman for sleeping with her 24-year-old office assistant and shame her into resignation, then the Mark Sanfords of the world need to follow her right on out the door. If we’d belittle an accomplished woman for something that many of us would consider gross (but youthful) misjudgment, then we should make the man who does the same thing feel equally as dirty.

Frankly, I’m just glad I wasn’t old enough in 1982 to know or care what Cosmo was.