Give Zac Efron his shirt back

I realise I missed the boat a bit with this one, but I’ve only just come across this video of Zac Efron being molested at the MTV movie awards. Now a man of my disposition doesn’t normally mind seeing a strapping young something with his top off, but I’ve been trying to develop a moral compass recently and I’ve decided this doesn’t fit.

Objectification is rife in the world today. The motto ‘sex sells’ doesn’t seem to do justice to a society where record labels are surreptitiously sexualising prepubescent popstars, and advertisers use orgasms to sell everything from shampoo to icecream. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say ‘sex rules’ if we were to recognise the omnipotence of the stiff trouser pocket.

The problem is not so much with the media, as it is with the reality that it will inevitably trickle down into our society, into our schools and into our overloaded chimp brains. It quickly becomes not just the people on TV who we’re objectifying, but the people we run into in day-to-day life as well.

Don’t you just hate it when you get ice-cream stuck in your teeth

Sucks if you’re ugly but it must be great otherwise, right? All the attention and the friends and doubtlessly a lot more honkhonk in the bonkbonk. Being objectified sounds fun.

OK sure, but it would get kinda weird after a point too, even for them. I can’t help but think liking someone for their face or their body seems quite similar to just liking someone totally different. You’re stepping straight past any part of a person which they have any real control over: you know, their personality or whatever.

For me while my face is inevitably part of my identity, I don’t know how much I identify myself with it. It’s more kind of like, ‘huh so that is what my face looks like, ok’. I can’t even see it unless I look in a mirror. Which all means it is a bit weird if someone wants to make out with it, not with you. Do you know what I mean, it’s quite impersonal.

What I see in the mirror

Mind you, it’s still quite hard to be offended when someone compliments you, whatever your opinion about being complimented is. Which is probably why Zac Efron went along to the MTV Movie Awards the other day. Being loved for anything feels great. And if it’s not for your acting ability at least it’s for your six-pack.

But my god did I feel bad when Rita Ora elected to rip his shirt off. He looked like a rabbit in headlights. A thousand libidos swelling in unison because his bare chest was exposed. For him, that’s a pretty unavoidable part of his body, and whether he chose to have it that buffed up or not, he didn’t choose for it be exposed on that occasion. It’s like having a superpower that makes people immediately disregard your personhood. No wonder he wanted to keep it covered up.

Clark Kent becomes sex-object-man

Life seems so much easier for beautiful people. You get all the attention just by showing your face or taking your top off or wearing a lower cut dress. But then it must be hard again, knowing that those gazes aren’t really for you; they’re for whatever it is that got stuck on the outside of your body that time you were in your mum’s belly becoming a human.

So take a leaf out of my book and forget the six-pack, forget the nice hair and the nice teeth and the nice smell. You might not be getting any action, and you might not have any friends, but at least you’ll have ‘Miffy’ your moral high-horse, and that’s all I’ve ever needed.

Oh and give Efron his shirt back, he looks uncomfortable.