Pub­lished in the State Press on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2005.

ASU women have received a lot of press lately — so much so, in fact, the Uni­ver­sity should seri­ously con­sider rec­og­niz­ing their extra­or­di­nary efforts at bring­ing atten­tion to the school.

After all, what other aca­d­e­mic pow­er­house can say it holds the record for hav­ing the most stu­dents fea­tured in Playboy’s Pac-10 col­lege issue? Yale? Nope. Har­vard? Don’t think so.

This is our baby.

Between non­con­sen­sual appear­ances on Web sites such as PalmWalk.com and ambi­tious appear­ances in bikini cal­en­dars and sor­did mag­a­zines, ASU’s women have set a new prece­dent for women’s achieve­ment this fall.

Not only did they earn ASU the title of “the hottest place on earth” but they’ve also made a pow­er­ful state­ment about women’s lib­erty and free­dom of sex­ual expres­sion — and that is, they don’t know the mean­ing of either.

There is a big dif­fer­ence between “sex­ual expres­sion” and sex­ual exploita­tion, though the women of ASU (and the peo­ple who like to look at them) duti­fully fail to rec­og­nize this.

It is pos­si­ble they haven’t had the oppor­tu­nity to notice the dif­fer­ence. In the media frenzy that always accom­pa­nies the debate over women’s bod­ies, it seems that only the wrong ques­tions are ever asked.

In the whole Palm Walk deba­cle, for exam­ple, at issue was the legal­ity of post­ing pic­tures of women on the Inter­net with­out their per­mis­sion — not nec­es­sar­ily that women’s bod­ies were being used for the self­ish and uneth­i­cal enter­tain­ment of col­lege stu­dents with too much time on their hands.

The cre­ator of the site, mar­ket­ing senior Thomas McCarthy, even told The State Press last week that “from a util­i­tar­ian [sic] per­spec­tive … PalmWalk.com is morally just.”

For those who haven’t taken Phi­los­o­phy 101, util­i­tar­i­an­ism is the idea that “all action should be directed toward achiev­ing the great­est hap­pi­ness for the great­est num­ber of people.”

So, in McCarthy’s head, it seems like tak­ing pho­tographs of women (with or with­out their per­mis­sion), then post­ing them online next to the words “fork me,” and finally rat­ing them accord­ing to their attrac­tive­ness is morally just because it is brings the great­est hap­pi­ness to the great­est num­ber of people.

Here’s a rel­e­vant ques­tion no one’s asked: Does it bring greater hap­pi­ness to the women pho­tographed or men who have never had to worry about the risks of wear­ing a skirt?

Either way, it brings spec­tac­u­lar atten­tion to ASU. And many stu­dents seem to feel that’s a good thing. After all, any­thing that brings atten­tion to the school will help it make money, whether that’s women pos­ing next to ham­burger coupons in the Tempe12 bikini cal­en­dar or with paint for clothes in Playboy.

And if that’s the case, does that make Pres­i­dent Crow their pimp?

More unset­tling than the idea of a uni­ver­sity prof­it­ing from the mis­use of its stu­dents’ images, how­ever, is the fact that the women pos­ing for these pub­li­ca­tions seem obliv­i­ous to the absur­dity of their situation.

Rachelle Pfeifer, who posed for the Tempe12 cal­en­dar, told The State Press last week that the calendar’s mod­els were not selected “based on looks, but how you present yourself.”

What she didn’t men­tion was that the women “pre­sented” them­selves at pool par­ties that served as “open cast­ing calls,” as the cre­ators of Tempe12 pro­mo­tions told The State Press.

Nev­er­the­less, such pub­li­ca­tions are mostly accepted and gen­er­ally enjoyed — jus­ti­fied by the idea that par­tic­i­pat­ing mod­els are will­ing and free.

So why do they do it? Money?

No, that’s for the men who snap the pho­tos and print the pages.

Fame?

Nope. For every Pam Ander­son, there’s a uni­ver­sity full of rejects.

Of course, there’s the age-old idea that only inse­cure women need that kind of val­i­da­tion. But these days, inse­cu­rity has got­ten so pretty, it’s no longer rec­og­niz­able anyway.

Frankly, nobody cares what’s in it for women, why women do it or even who these women are. Men who ques­tion the sys­tem aren’t men, and women who do are jealous.

Maybe that’s why only the wrong ques­tions are asked.

But what­ever the rea­son, one thing should be made clear. How­ever you wish to exploit your­self or oth­ers, please leave ASU out of it.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the major­ity of stu­dents don’t pose for bikini cal­en­dars or take creepy pic­tures of pre­oc­cu­pied women. And when these stu­dents get their engi­neer­ing, busi­ness or lib­eral arts degrees, they don’t want their diplo­mas inscribed with the words “check out Miss July.”

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