I'm not sure what my avatar has to do with male chauvinism...Mine is more about recognizing physical beauty in the female form, and has nothing to do with the idea of males being superior to females.
I never thought I'd do this, but I'm gonna actually play devil's advocate on SJ's side. After he accused me for calling him one of the only names I've not gotten around to calling him (he has publicly apologized for it, too!) I was reminded of one of the only truly heated arguments I've ever had with my big brother.
It was when I first got into landscaping, and my boss (who really was a nice man) had an SI swimsuit calendar on the wall. I hated that thing, and I was whining about it on the phone to my brother. He told me to get over it.
I was shocked. My brother is a brilliant man, very respectable, married, a deacon in his church, and all that. He doesn't have a trophy wife, doesn't have any issues with porn (I don't think he would have time for it!) and doesn't keep anything like the SI calendar in the house. (The only girly pictures I remember seeing in his possession was the Farrah poster from the late 70's, and I would know--I snooped through his stuff until he got married.) We went round and round for what seemed like forever about it, actually yelling at times.
After that conversation, I had to wonder if there was more to it from a man's perspective. (This has absolutely nothing to do with all the feminist issues of why a perfectly good girl would sell herself short the way these models do, wrecking her health to be skinny, basing her life on body image, etc. That's another issue.)
But I read something a couple of years ago that gave it even more perspective to me. (Co-written by a Christian author and her husband, who is the speaker in this passage. Fair warning.)
"Beauty is the essence of a woman. We want to be perfectly clear that we mean
both a physical beauty and a soulful/spiritual beauty...Yes, the world cheapens and prostitutes beauty, making it all about a perfect figure few women can attain. But Christians minimize it too, or overspiritualize it, making it all about "character..."
"We love to wander for hours through [art] galleries...[One day my wife] asked me, "Have you seen one painting of a naked man?" The point was startling. After days of looking at maybe a thousand pieces of art, we had not seen one painting devoted to the beauty of the naked masculine form. Not one. (Granted, there are a few examples down through history...but only a few.) However, the beauty of Woman was celebrated everywhere, hundreds of times over in paintings and sculptures. There is a reason for this.
"For one thing, men look ridiculous lying on a bed buck naked, half-covered with a sheet. It doesn't fit the essence of masculinity. Something in you wants to say, 'Get up already and get a job. Cut the grass. Get to work.' For [man] is captured best in motion,
doing something. His essence is
strength in action..."
I still don't like that skinny little wench on the motorcycle. She makes me self-conscious of the places on my body that aren't airbrushed. But there is something innately pretty about women, and somebody is always gonna be drawing/painting/sculpting/taking pictures of them without their clothes...
I am soooo with you gulls on this one!
....................
"good night santa and mrs. santa's sister" 
He was the ONLY reason I ever watched Will & Grace.
