This post is about the alleged Russian spies, in particular one of them, the sultry-eyed, pouty-lipped one. This is how the media discusses our (yes, our) infatuation with her:
But mostly we care about the hot one.
Ever since photos of Anna Chapman began circulating online late Tuesday, the Internet at large has been foaming, frothing, fanatic for details about the reported 28-year-old secret agent/Maxim model look-alike who specialized in sultry-eyed, pouty-lipped, come-hither stares. Da, da, da!
News sites immediately uploaded photo galleries. Someone said "Bond Girl" and we all immediately began casting her biopic in our minds. Scarlett Johansson -- no wait, Jessica Biel!
...
The three-minute video, entirely in Russian, is now going viral on YouTube, with plenty of salivating fans. "That's one hot Russian spy," Assaultman45 offers in the comments section. "Her punishment should be a date with me."
That was the Washington Post! And here comes the Los Angeles Times:
One day you're a 28-year-old red-haired beauty from Russia trying to make it as a "businesswoman" in New York City. The next, your name and sexy Facebook profile photo are splashed all over the world, your every status update — "Pain is only weakness leaving the body," for instance — the subject of international fascination. You are a femme fatale.
And all you did was allegedly participate in a Russian spy ring.
Every good Cold-War-style spy scandal needs a Natasha, and Anna Chapman, who appeared in court Monday in designer jeans and a white T-shirt, has emerged as the tale's sexy antagonist.
I keep asking myself why that bossy goddess who takes my body over once in a while is so firmly intent on writing about this topic. It's a silly topic, a topic of no special importance, a topic which will get me into trouble as a prudish and humorless feminazi.
All she will tell me is to do a gender reversal to find out the reason. A sultry male spy would not be written up in such a manner because heterosexual women do not have that kind of generality in people's minds. Even if he would make us sweat and faint and breathe very very rapidly and develop misty bedroom eyes none of that would be subsumed under the general umbrella of him being hot to everyone in the whole world and nobody would expect heterosexual men to faithfully join in the admiration of the man. His sexiness would be described as something only affecting women.
But a female spy with sultry eyes is obviously sexy to everyone on this planet.
So the post is a very meta one. An opportunity to glimpse at the underpinnings of our popular culture. It's not a criticism of the way the media covers the hotness of an alleged spy. The media is covering it in the exact way the society thinks.