Oh, My!   Seriously??

The young women above were, respectively, on the covers of The New York Times Style Magazine last week and Vanity Fair this month. I’m so relieved my mother wasn’t around to see them.  She always taught me to cross my legs when I sat.  Or at least my ankles.  It was only proper and ladylike, she said.

The poses they assumed are obviously intended to be provocative and attention-grabbing.  I’m the first to admit I looked twice.  Perhaps more than twice.  And, I wondered:  Is this “womanspreading”?  Like manspreading but wider?    

If I were to suggest that the look is demeaning, I’d be very wrong. It is, most likely, empowering. After all, we say, if men can sit/pose like that, so can we.

But since we know that women nearly always do everything better than men, why bother with such unbecoming and in-your-face poses?  In my humble, if not slightly feminist, opinion, women should simply embrace their beauty, their brains and their remarkable selves. 

So, let’s just leave the so-called power poses to the men.  They probably need them more than we do.