Strippers

A friend of mine wants to take me to a strip club because she thinks it would be amusing, given I've never been to one. I really have no desire to go to a strip club though, and I was trying to describe way to another friend, who didn't really buy it (what hot blooded male wouldn't want to go to a strip club?). The reason behind is it not that I disprove of strip clubs or think they are morally wrong. It's that I'm greedy. Here's what I came up with to describe them:

Strip Clubs - They're like a going to a candy store and looking at all the great candy, then being told, you can't have any of it.

My friend laughed, and I agreed that that was a pretty humorous way of saying it, so I posted that as my Facebook status. And no sooner did that happen than I got a comment about how I'm treating women like objects. I disagree.

My friend's mistake was misunderstanding what the analogy relates to. Mistaking what the stripper is selling for the person underneath. What she is selling is her physical appearance. She's selling it on purpose, and the appearance IS an object. And that is what the joke is refering to. The candy is analogous to the object that is being sold, which is the physical appearance. Another analogy would be to a musician. I pay for the singer's music, not for the person underneath. I don't interact with the person underneath, there's no contact. All I hear is the singing. Just like all I see is the body.

I objectify the singer's music, I buy it. But no one protests. Yet when a woman (or a man!) wants to see their physical appearance instead of their voice, people talk about how it's objectifying them. It's not.