If you keep up with celeb gossip (guilty as charged), you probably came across this salacious and highly clickable headline over the weekend: Cameron Diaz thinks other women are hot, and that all ladies lust for other ladies!
In Glamour U.K., the actress said:
I think women are beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And I think that all women have been sexually attracted to another woman at some point. It's natural to have a connectivity and an appreciation for the beauty of other women.
While this has been treated as some titillating idea, many women have no doubt responded with a "no, duh" shoulder shrug. Research that came out a few years ago revealed that 60% of women have been sexually attracted to another woman, while half have enjoyed fantasies about the same sex.
Much of this, of course, can be attributed to human sexuality 101: the Kinsey scale concept that most people, male and female, fall somewhere between strictly heterosexual and strictly homosexual. But there's another force that could be at play here, and it's rarely discussed or studied: the influence of female objectification on same-sex attraction.
People have long lamented how sexed-up images of women in the media perpetuate male misogyny. But it's obviously not just guys who are regularly confronted with images of ladies in barely-there bikinis or lacy lingerie. It's women who peruse fashion mags with lusty female photos, and who drive the successful ratings of blatantly objectifying programs such as America's Next Top Model and the Hugh Hefner lady-loves show Girls Next Door (again, guilty as charged).
This objectification, of course, feeds the personal female quest for physical perfection. But doesn't it stand to reason that it also helps women see other women as hyper-sexual beings?
Indeed, one study found that regardless of their gender, participants tended to identify females through their individual sexual body parts, whereas men were remembered for their entire bodies. So both genders, it seems, are prone to check out a woman's sweet ass or nice rack.
The next time you feel sexually attracted to another woman, remember first that sexuality is fluid. But then ask yourself this: what have I seen over the years that would make me see this female as a sexual being? Lo and behold, even the Cameron Diaz interview in question is accompanied by racy photos of the star stripped down. Hubba hubba?
Image: Rita Molnar/Wikimedia Commons
