GQ Magazine Publishes Racially Offensive "Hottest" List

I’ve seen the recent covers GQ Magazine have done over the last couple of years and they just seem to get raunchier with their photos and article headlines. I get it, printed magazines are a failing business so use sex to sell right? Sometimes I think publications just go to far. Take this months issue of GQ, there’s a half naked Beyonce on the cover along with article headlines that say “Gentlemen put your pants back on”. Also in this issue GQ has a list of the hottest chicks of the 21st century. The list is broken down into categories like; Hottest Indian Chick, Hottest Italian Chick, Hottest Chinese Chick, and Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan. Any list where women’s attractiveness is rated is offensive enough, but to do one based on race is just wrong. Yahoo! does a great job talking about why GQ’s being insensitive. GQ just released their “The 100 Sexiest Women of the Millennium” issue featuring Beyonce on the cover as “Miss Millennium.” Flip through it and you’ll find the obvious nods to Jessica Simpson, Kim Kardashian, and Katie Holmes. But this year, the lad mag has included some ethnic specific categories that have some people raising their eyebrows. Examples: • “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) While there may not be anything inherently wrong with saying someone is a “Hot Chinese woman” the seemingly arbitrary racial call-outs have people squirming. For example, why did the magazine deem Beyonce “Miss Millennium” but not “Miss African-American Millennium?” Mila Kunis was included in the top three hottie picks but the magazine didn’t mention her Ukranian roots. And why was Kim Kardashian lauded for her performance in her 2007 sex tape but not labeled “Hottest Armenian Porn Star”? “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.” Objectifying women in the media is an old song and dance. Studies have shown that women are more likely than men to get picked apart and seen as parts, rather than wholes. And it’s no surprise that men’s magazines sell so well in part because they feature women in racy, tantalizing photos. But reducing some women to tokens of their race (and curiously not others) others is a new low. Check out the full list of winners here. Is GQ being insensitive?