I'm starting a long weekend today, so I'm pulling out a vintage post from my old Fit In Real Life blog. Here goes:

Sitting with my daughter the other night, watching some silly entertainment wrap-up show, a brief piece came on about female Olympic athletes...specifically, female Olympic athletes who'd chosen to pose for Playboy magazine's "Women of the Olympics" pictorial. We watched together in silence for a few minutes, then my daughter turned to me and said, "Why would they do that, Mom?"

I'm a pretty open-minded mom who doesn't back away from any subject -- I prefer that my kids get their answers from me and I've answered some doozies already in my time as a parent -- but I'll confess that this one stumped me. "I don't know," I told her.

We talked a bit about female empowerment -- you know, the old "it's my body and if I'm controlling how it's presented, and benefiting from it, then I'm in charge" argument that some women have used to justify their choice to become strippers or prostitutes or anything else that requires them to put themselves forth as sex objects. We also talked about objectification and how it can be very demeaning to put yourself in a role where others are invited to judge you solely on what you look like, or on their fantasy of you.