Jodie L. Pearl '01

Feb. 12, 2001

Cartoon Objectifies

To the editors:

We are shocked and dismayed that The Crimson would print the cartoon ("The Ideal Harvard President," Feb. 14) by Jason Farris, an illustrator for Maxim magazine. Why would this figure, with its dysmorphically thin, highly-available female body and Albert Einstein's head be "ideal" as president? Because he or she would be smart--"like a man"--but also sexually available? Or because his or her male students could ogle and leer while walking to class?

We understand that this cartoon was intended as some sort of joke, but the implications inherent in such a representation demean and objectify women nonetheless. Presumably a woman's head could not possibly signify the requisite intellectual capacity to be president of Harvard; it seems that all of our icons of genius are male. The objectification of a female, anorexic body sprawled across the pages of a supposedly serious newspaper is even more unconscionable.

What Maxim does in its own pages is offensive enough, but The Crimson's editors have assaulted the Harvard population with an image that simultaneously degrades women and embarrasses your newspaper. It conveys the message that you support the objectification of female bodies for sexual use. Harvard has come a long way since its days as an all-male Old Boys' Club, but this kind of representation is an acute reminder of how far we have yet to go.