At last week’s assembly, former SBP and current comedian Scott Rogowsky ’03 made the following comment about an adolescent crush of his: “I really mostly liked her because she had huge bazongas.”
Last week The Record ran an OpEd from Leah Byland (12) accusing the school of “complacency and calm in the face of the degradation of women,” and equating that to the school promoting an environment in which women are objectified and openly disrespected. If a female comedian were to make the comment, “I really only liked him because he had a big dick,” she wrote, students and faculty alike would be outraged.
“The fact that there hasn’t been more of an uproar regarding the offensive, antifeminist nature of that speech in a school environment is upsetting and dangerous,” she said, adding a negative depiction of what this said about the community: “Surely it’s only normal, surely I’m less-than, and surely I’m asking for it by showing up to school… If you don’t like hearing boys greet you with ‘nice bazongas,’ then, well, leave. Those bazongas are the only reason boys would like you, anyway.”
While there are many, many instances of real sexism and misogyny within the school community and the community at large, this was not one of them.
First of all, as was very clear from the context of the speech, Rogowsky was not mocking or demeaning women; he was mocking the immaturity of his teenage self and making a larger point about the shallowness and the extreme superficiality of adolescents—particularly male teenagers—in general. He never said, nor suggested, that a woman’s worth derives solely from her physical attractiveness.
Moreover, the speech as a whole was deliberately written to be absurd. A large portion of it was dedicated to describing a Freemason-esque secret society of former SBPs that controls major worldwide corporations. Rogowsky spent a significant portion of his stage time describing massive, to-the-death street melees between students and sewer monsters called “grawl dogs.”
I also completely disagree with the notion that people would’ve found it offensive if a female comedian had made a comment about a girl only liking a guy for, say, his “giant willie,” (the word “dick” is not a reasonable analogy, as it is universally considered to be a vulgar term. “Bazongas,” while perhaps tasteless, is not.). I think it would’ve been taken for exactly what it was: commentary on behaviors that exist.
Pointing out that men can be superficial or sexist is not sexist in itself; rather, it is a statement of fact. Whether we like it or not, these behaviors do exist, and recognizing that is not the same as condoning it. A former HM student using the word “bazongas” in the context of a purposely preposterous speech in which he was primarily ridiculing himself can hardly be construed as equivalent to the school promoting the objectification of women and consequently creating an unsafe environment.
Most important, while I believe that those who raise such issues are wellintentioned, I would argue that turning this non-issue into a hot topic devalues the arguments against real sexism and makes the whole feminist movement seem like a joke. Leah’s letter made the movement she was purporting to defend seem ridiculous, humorless and oversensitive, and, worst of all, associated the comment with issues of greater importance, thereby diminishing the value of the latter.
Real sexism, misogyny and the objectification of females exist within our community, from the notoriously revealing girls’ Halloween costumes that have become a staple of the Homecoming festivities, to the fact that we’ve never had a female SBP, to the fact that just a few weeks ago our female GC chair was repeatedly shouted down and disrespected by her male colleagues in a circumstance where she actually outranked them. Where is the outrage over that? Those are issues that should be discussed. Not bazongas.
