How not to stick it to the Man.

Aaron sent me this link (NWS; Google cache due to the original site having technical problems) about a woman who decided to protest the TSA's sexually invasive search procedures... by wearing transparent underwear to the airport and taking off her clothing at security.

(I admit, I'm biased by the fact that her blog's premise is apparently "I'm not a feminist, because I'm sexy.")

Maybe it's my night-shift grouchiness, but this strikes me as a singularly ineffective form of protest. Sexy protesting is problematic to begin with, but a woman responding to pressure to expose herself by cheerfully exposing herself is sort of the exact opposite of a protest.

Put on your sexiest, filmsiest underthings, opt for a grope-down, have fun with it, treat it like a performance, and fake an orgasm in public next time you fly. You'll gain self-confidence, amuse and inspire other passengers, draw attention to the sexually-invasive nature of the modern airport security process, and make government employees look more predatory and inappropriate while feeling up strangers.

No. No, thank you. I'll be sexy on my own damn time. Fighting sexual harassment with sexiness isn't sticking it to the Man; at best it's making the Man's low-level employees vaguely uncomfortable, and at worst it's giving the Man just what he wants. It draws more attention to yourself than it does to the TSA screeners (they came off as the reasonable ones in the SeaTac scenario) and it seems to promote the idea that women can be happy sexy or angry sexy but by God you'd better be sexy.

I don't want to dress up sexy naked and fake a sexy orgasm and reclaim my sexiness next time I get groped. I want to NOT BE GROPED.



Anyway, from a purely practical standpoint, I think it would be a far more effective protest to burst into inconsolable tears during the screening. If you want to make the TSA look bad, sobbing "I'm so sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult, I just *sniffle* can't stand to be touched like this," does a hell of a lot more to highlight the real issues than sexypants shenanigans.