I feel so conflicted

So. That's Jessica Alba, there, all naked and duct-taped and such. This image, along with several others like it, are causing a bit of a stir in the feminist blogosphere, understandably so.

Now, I'm going to be straight up with you for a moment: my first reaction when I saw these was, "Wow, that's hot." Even though I'm not into piercing play, and "torture porn" a la Saw and the like make me retch, these images were really fucking sexy in a dark, gritty way.

But then I looked at them all, and noticed that, surprise surprise, all the women were nude while all the men were fully clothed (save one, interestingly enough). Sigh. Because, really, this image of Alba, in itself, is not necessarily sexist. However, in the context of all the other photographs in the ad campaign, in which the women are consistently sexualized/exposed more so than the men, it becomes sexist.

Which is disappointing. This could have been a really powerful, stylish, sexy-as-hell ad campaign, and they fucked it up by falling back on sexist advertising standbys.