... referring to men?

I'm preparing to get slated for this post but I'm typing it anyway and I know many will no doubt reply along the lines of 'woman had to put up with it for centuries and still do, so deal with it!!'

I've noticed on strictly tess, claudia, darcy and bruno will sometimes give some sort of ogling/corr comment about a male pro or celeb e.g. 'you definitely got my attention when you ripped off your shirt' ... 'omg you're simply too beautiful to look at' ... 'you've got a lot going on down there!' ... 'tbh I didn't see a lot of the routine cause I was mesmerised by your torso darling!' etc etc, all followed by much tittering.

yes they'll pass comments about the female pros and celebs as well, however unless I'm missing something it's rarely in the same vain. I just wonder if people would still find it a 'bit of fun' if it were two male presenters giving the same sort of comments about female pros and celebs?

It was the one thing really made me cringe about Arlene, you could almost hear her salivating. Although Darcy, Tess & Claudia seem to be far more low key in comparison.

Len - 'Georgia. Your lovely little titties did a rhumba all on their own'

...dream line??

I find the ogling over the men really uncomfortable to watch. A simple 'You look really good too' would be fine, but it goes so OTT. It'd be ok if the object of the admiration was in on it like 'hot lips' Karen, but many times they look really uncomfortable. (Gleb is the first one who comes to my mind.)

I think that's fair comment (although Bruno is not a woman). I hate all the shirt-ripping-off nonsense. It's cringeworthy. It's OK to comment on someone's good looks whether male or female, though.

I'm not going to slate you - and if males went on about a female pro in the same way (and consistently) the way they have with Gleb thete would have been an outcry.

I'm not that fussed about it personally (though I do find it a bit cringey) and I know it won't bother Gleb, but I hate double standards, especially when its coming from my own gender.

I'm not going to slate you either. You are quite right. Women don't want comments like that so in this world of equality men don't want it either. Let the judges and presenters keep the comments to the dance not personal comments.

They do it to the women too. They are always commenting on who has good legs, looking sexy etc we just tend not to notice it. If a woman rips off anything of course they would comment. It's almost insulting not to.

absolutely agree

there would be an outcry if it was a male commenting about a female the way Claudia and Tess do about Gleb

Its totally cringeworthy and not really funny anymore - it was ok for the 1st week, he was a newbie and yes, he is damn fine looking BUT they don't have to keep banging on about it every show

we all have eyes - we can see that he is a good looking man

complete double standards

I'm another who's not going to slate Bonnie Scotland. The judges/presenters who act as if they are lusting after one of the dancers (pro or celeb) are way out of line.... Darcey and Claudia are the main culprits at the moment.

Bruce used to make comments about the female celebrities (as a Kara fan I can remember him saying she was gorgeous and 'If I was 20 years younger etc.) but I don't remember him perving over the female pros in quite the same way they do over the male pros. I think a lot of female celebs (like Fern Britton) get away with constantly groping their partners when a male celeb who stroked a female pro in the same way would be called a lech. I remember reading a post on here from someone who had been to see 'Strictly Confidential' and Lisa Riley had got Artem to lay down at the front of the stage so a female audience member could come up and feel his bum. The same woman who did it would probably have been horrified if Natalie Lowe had been asked to do the same so a male audience member could feel hers. There's definitely a double standard and its pretty embarrassing how women behave sometimes.

Completely agree. It was ok when Claudia did the Alijaz I can't look at you thing because it was pretty innocent. But it has gone far too far! It's unconfortable and it's obviously scripted which he makes it all worse.

I am not necessarily disagreeing with the sentiment of this thread and certainly not slating the OP. Personally I find the salivating over performers quite cringey when it is done to the extreme. Bruno is as 'guilty ' of this as the women in my opinion.

However there are two things I think need to be factored in when assessing how acceptable or not this is. The first is minor observation that there is only one person on the entire team of judges and presenters that finds women sexually appealing - Len. I am fairly sure he has in the past made appreciative comments about the women contestant's appearances that are heading down the scale (although never quite reaching) a phwoar! However as 5 out of 6 of the team fancy men we are likely to get an imbalance.

However my more serious point is that context should be taken into consideration. If Gleb, for example, was starting out in his new job as a bank clerk I would agree that only comments about his work and not his personal appearance are acceptable.

But he is a dancer and dance is a visual art and all about appearance. His personal appearance is part and parcel of his professional and his currency within that profession. Furthermore many of the dances have notions of sex appeal engrained into them. Many of the Latin dances, in particular, are the modern day result of dances that were originally fertility dances.

I can't quite express what I am pondering here so I will try to phrase it as a question or food for thought. Isn't dance by its very nature an activity where a human being turns themselves into a transient art work? Isn't it therefore by its very nature objectifying?

I agree objectifying and the women are so routinely objectified and their looks, dress and sexiness discussed that we almost cease to notice it. It just seems odder seeing it done to a man and so it stands out more.

Great post.

I agree to some extent, I think that comments regarding their bodies in a dance are ok I.e talking about someone having amazing legs can be both a general compliment on having fab legs and how they are using them in a dance. Likewise Bruno saying I couldn't take my eyes off your bum or something, again whilst it is a bit objectifying it is also commenting (usually) on a section where it was prominent in that part of the dance.

Where it's going off for me is Claudia/Tess constantly mentioning how good looking someone is - this series it's Gleb, and TBH I'm not sure he looks all that comfortable when they are doing it. The bit last night with Claudia holding handcuffs and with the policemans hat was embarrassing.

Blame the producers. They write the scripts..

Totally agree with you. It's actually really childish and crude. If they did that to all the women there'd be an outcry. If you are going to dribble over men stick to private forums where you are amongst mates.

On a TV show in front of millions No! Just no. It's like a bunch of stupid school kids sniggering in class.

It also makes the object of their fake lust squirm with embarrassment. What is cool about that?

This!

Claudia looked ridiculous and quite demented last night. It was really crude

Not in the exact same way but there were a *lot* of jokes about him making comments backstage to the female pros, which usually ended with some variation of them calling him a dirty old man and telling him to naff off.

That's true....maybe it went a bit more unnoticed because he called himself a dirty old man at the same time so saved everyone else the trouble. Although even Strictly would probably have drawn the line at him wandering on in a policeman's hat with a pair of handcuffs while calling out Ola's name (although I don't even know anymore )

There was that pro routine where Ola was dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood, and he and Lance Ellington stood there singing and leering at her, although I may be remembering it as worse than it was through a haze of nausea.

...and I cringe when lewd comments directed at the male contestants/dancers are coming from my own gender....

Here's what it comes down to:

The reason we don't see women vocally objectifying men as a thing to be discouraged is because we as a society don't see women as sexually aggressive predators to the same prevalence as we do men. 1 in 5 women will experience sexual violence sometime in their adult life (I think for men it might be 1 in 20? Someone might have to check that). Parents are more protective of their teenage daughters when they receive male attention than they are with their sons.

Hence, when a woman is behaving like that to a man, we don't jump to the same panic stations if the genders were reversed. We might be rather grossed out, but we don't believe that the man is in any serious danger from the woman. If we see the same lecherous behaviour from a man, we get an automatic mental red flag, because in some ways we're more protective of women than we are of men. (There's still a great deal of ways in which we still do drool over women for their bodies and catcall them and attach all of their worth to their appearance, but that's a whole other kettle of fish).

Also, I think the women's outfits are doing more than enough objectification by themselves, don't you think?

Good point. I agree with your analysis, but I also agree with the OP that the one-sidedness of it makes me cringe. Body image is an increasing problem for men as the large pecs/six pack type figure is touted as the only one which is sexually attractive. I found Claudia's obviously scripted leching after Gleb really unconvincing, especially as she looked as if she should be at home tucked up with a hot water bottle! And it's another kind of sexualisation of women, eg middle aged women are gagging for it!

(I say this every year and get told I'm talking rubbish every year )