à la mode breasts for men or women?

 The attention given to Celica Sarkozy over recent days is understandably considering how attractive, demure and chic she looks. Combine this with her marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and her illustrious past as a super model and you have an even more alluring combination.

Notwithstanding such achievements should British women feel the need to emulate her French style of femininity? The reason Latin women dress more sexily could be because they need to play on their looks and feminine charms in order to mitigate the sexual inequality which pervades their countries. Similarly the recent TUC’s report Closing the Gender Pay Gap highlights the entrenched inequalities in our society.

This might account for the way some British women to fall into the Bridget Jones syndrome – their reliance on men for self-esteem. Such women and an increasing number of girls, dress themselves up in the high street style of ‘come and get boys’ solely to attract men to the extent many girls aren’t even aware of patriarchy. Just think of boob jobs. There’s been a massive increase in teenage girls have their breasts enlarged. The question is for the owner or the viewer?

Patriarchy is about commodification, about objectifying women for male pleasure. For example breast modification is currently à la mode; another fashion accessory, like clothes, to be adorned, homogenised. Men control big businesses be they plastic surgeons or retail MDs the reproduced image of femininity continues unabated. Cloned breasts mirror cloned high streets full of the same stores, with the same images, selling an endless array of the same skimpy tight fashions. This engineering by proxy extenuates the feminine as predominantly to attract.

Go to Scandinavian countries and you’ll find women dressing for themselves. They dress to enhance their beauty as an end in itself not as a means to attract men. Perhaps they can do this because they live in a society which is far more equal. The Swedish parliament and government is composed of around 50% of women. In his book Affluenza Oliver James talks about how sexual equality in Denmark has helped women become valued as people rather than simply objects of desire. This position isn’t advocating asexuality, it just means women ought to be desired as a facet of rather than the dynamic of their life. Such a shift would help engender greater social equality and therefore status and self-esteem.

So I hope the Sarkozy bandwagon encouraged women to dress to be beautiful rather than to attract – the difference becomes enormous.