Thursday, October 27, 2016

Butt Grabbing. The Trump Chronicles, Episode Twelve.


This would be the twelfth woman who has accused Trump of inappropriate sexual advances:

Miss Finland of 2006, Ninni Laaksonen, stated in an interview with Iltasanomat, a Finnish tabloid newspaper, that Donald Trump squeezed her butt, hard, while photos were taken* before an appearance at the Late Show with David Letterman:





Picture:  Eddie Mejia/Splash News


Here's the interesting thing:  Ms Laaksonen did not come forward with the allegation.  It was Iltasanomat which contacted all the Miss Finlands** who had had contact with Trump, and her statement was in response to the questions the newspaper posed.

Beauty pageants are pretty problematic from a feminist angle, especially when there are no equivalent pageants for handsome young men.

But they become even more problematic if the participants are viewed as almost the property of the guy who runs the pageants, if the assumption is that he has some sort of extra access to the contestants, or if he can, for example, bring in a pack of his older male friends to watch the rehearsals and to holler at the contestants, as happened according to another Miss Finland, Bea Toivonen (2014).

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* This picture is not intended to show butt squeezing.  But it was taken at the same occasion that Ms. Laaksonen mentioned the butt squeeze.

*Misses Finland?  How does one do the plural?