...and look damn good doing it

Via Jezebel, Stiletto Spy School (a short workshop in the sexy arts and various other ways to make yourself seem like a Bond Girl) seems like the most objectifying thing on the planet. "As long as my attacker has a broken ankle and doesn't wear eyeglasses, I can disarm him with my stiletto heel. Leave the years of martial arts training to ugly girls who can afford to spend time on creating a robust, functional skill that doesn't necessarily arouse men." It makes me think of the Neal Stephenson bit:

“until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.”

Unfortunately, I think the female equivalent of this is, "under the right circumstances, I could exercise a bunch and go to a great salon and be a stone-cold hottie." But then, you sit down and watch an episode of Made and you realize that a lifetime of training really does take a lifetime. Training montages don't really cover the whole experience.

Comments

[litbrit]

Sara, I think the Jezebel commenters summed up that totally unserious (but not especially funny or intriguing) Spy School thing pretty well, to wit:

I hate that word. "Empowerment". First of all, it's bandied about by people wary of offending like beads at a Mardi Gras parade. And second of all, it kind of implies that the party looking to be "empowered" didn't really have any power to begin with. Hell, it appears none of us women do, until we enroll in this BADASS SPY SCHOOL! OH MAN! SIGN ME UP! MAYBE NOW I'LL GET PAID THE SAME AS MY EQUALLY EDUCATED MALE COUNTERPARTS! Oh, wait... never mind. Sorry, got all caught up in being "empowered".

Hey, other than the burlesque part, I'm already pretty empowered, spy-wise: I can gouge out an eye, play poker (and blackjack and pool), shoot tight clusters with a semiautomatic and run in high heels. And when I run to the getaway car, I can hot-wire it if necessary and drive it veryveryvery fast, too.

I should start a Florida Spy School campus, I think. Teach women how to shut down an enemy by squirting Coppertone in his eyes to blind him and then strangling him with a bikini top. Forget stilettos--it's even easier to run in flip-flops. Pesky evidence like blood and body parts are handily dealt with thanks to the abundant bodies of water in this state, most of which are full of alligators or sharks.

[C.S.]

"Most objectifying thing on the planet"? I think you might have meant "Most awesomely awsome thing on the planet"?

Well . . . okay . . . sure, it is damned objectifying. But isn't it a little bit awesome? I mean, just a tad? No?

Okay, then. I'll go away now.

[litbrit]

C.S., it's objectifying in a sense, I think--the same sense that reduces male baseball players to their throwing ability or boxers to their weight class--but it's also a class/seminar that women can choose to take, you know, for fun.

And fun is always awesome.

But so is knowing how to handle things that are/were traditionally reserved for men in our culture: weapons, hand-to-hand combat, driving evasively and rapidly, climbing heights, etcetera. Although I completely agree with Sara that being proficient at these things--proficient enough to actually put them to use as a spy--is something that takes years (if not a lifetime) of training, not something one can master in a couple of days.

[Tracy]

I always thought I'd be a good spy, because I used to be pretty good at seduction. I could at very least get someone into a compromising position and then blackmail them with the evidence. If they didn't kill me. But, yeah, I can use a gun, too. And, like litbrit, drive really well and veryveryvery fast. :o)

[Sir Charles]

I was always very good at being seduced. Not to mention being placed in compromising positions. As long as they didn't require an overabundance of flexibility.