Maxim Gentleman’s Quarterly, which is not a quarterly, and is apparently not run by gentlemen (burn!), so the entire magazine is a lie, released its ranking of the 100 sexiest women of the century — of the MOTHERFUCKING 21st CENTURY, you guys. Well, we’re only thirteen years into the century but still, any excuse for a list of half-naked female celebrities! The tireless editors at GQ combed time and space to find some women they want to fuck sometime because they care that much*.
As if these arbitrary hot women lists aren’t obnoxious enough, this one takes it to the next level when it ranks women by their ethnicity or nationality. According to Shine, the list includes:
“Hottest Indian Chick”: Freida Pinto
“Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan”: M.I.A
“Hottest Italian Chick”: Monica Belluci
“Hottest Chinese Chick”: Zhang Ziyi (sometimes credited as Ziyi Zhang)
“Hottest Blue Chicks“: Mystique and Smurfette
Ummm…
So, being Indian or Chinese is the same as being blue? They each get their own fun categories, so generous!
One of the issues Shine points out is Halle Berry, Beyonce, Penelope Cruz, Rosario Dawson, and Shakira are all on the list, with no mention of ethnicity or nationality. Which, if you’re gonna make one of these stupid fucking lists, you can at least integrate it. You can pretend you’re not engaged in blatant tokenism, right? The whole thing is just weird, why would you call out certain women as contextually hot, and others not?
“If the magazine were saying, ‘These are all the beautiful women from every country in the world’, that would be a bit different; that’s what the Miss Universe pageant is all about,” says Ruth C. White, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social Work in the Department of Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Work at Seattle University. “But by calling out certain women’s ethnicity and not others, what they’re implying is that these women are not beautiful simply because they’re beautiful; they’re only attractive within the context of their own ethnicity. This is qualifying their beauty and dismisses the idea that beauty comes in many different forms.”
Agreed, but I think the last sentence speaks volumes — the minute GQ decided to publish this list, they dismissed the idea that beauty comes in any form other than super famous women who are widely regarded as the socially acceptable beauty ideal. Part of me wishes they had just named everyone by their ethnicity or nationality, at least then there’d be some honesty in their tokenism.
*about selling magazines so they have jobs next month and can write more articles about the TEN SEXIEST PREGNANT TEEN MOMS and the FIFTEEN HOTTEST PBS COOKING SHOW HOSTS.