Painters have been painting pictures of women for ten thousand years. Many of those have been erotic in nature. Why is a pin-up painting any more misogynistic than a Rubens'?

And haven't you told us that the burqa/chador/niqab are not misogynistic, and that they are liberating.

So I am not certain where the misogyny is.

Just to get things started:

There is a saying that "Sex Sells", but honestly, don't we really mean "Women Sell", or to translate further, "Female sexuality is a commodity".

Who buys female sexuality? Let us be honest, we all do, Aphrodite is alive and well.

Who sells female sexuality? Those who wish to make a profit (there is no more dependable commodity).

I don't remember the name, but another artist, a fashion designer with a Muslim name, has already done this concept much more subversively, using live models.

This stuff is already stale.

Also, this guy doesn't sound too brilliant. Hugh Hefner wannabe who thinks the burqa isn't wrong? Puh--leeze.

be a person who has their breath taken away by the beauty of a sensual human enjoying a breeze? What if women stared at men enjoying some sun on a beach? Is THAT equally perverse? Are the MEN the sexual victims here?

So, only women suffer for their sexuality? Maybe more than guys might, maybe not. But is that the ONLY form of suffering on the planet? Do men get off with ZERO suffering?

So why imply it in that shuttered, isolated, stodgy feminist way? The one that deliberately constantly ignores the bigger picture in deference to making some inaccurate "woe is me" point that might just snag some stupid people but that is no longer taken seriously by anyone with even a casual knowledge of rhetoric.

Feminism is stuck, rusty and oxidizing away. Either wake up and begin reinventing your wheel, feminists, or continue to be chipped away at and complaining about how people find feminism irrelevant.

Sure, men do things in the world, they move on, they get judged by their works. Even in this totally FREE society, where gender does not matter but mindfulness and talent does, women are still deliberately CHOOSING to be judged merely on their looks and youth.

As someone elsewhere posted, women 'act' dumb to become desired. I avoid dumb acting women like the plague. I want an equal.

I ALSO want someone who can take my breath away with her effortless sensuality.

Calling it abuse or putting it down? Sorry, but that ALONBE qualifies as a reason to tear down feminism if the alternative is to live on a Victorian Prude Planet.

not "Islamic" right?

I'm not quite sure what I think of them. Are they meant to be humorous? Due to the technique, the subjects are rather flat and seem more cartoonish than the fleshy reality of women, or even in the ability to mimic the pin up art of the late 20's. Plus, some of the poses are stiffer than the images they are representing. So that may harm the artists vision of intent, that perhaps each treatment of women, covering them completely or having them half naked is something that women have to struggle with and why do they struggle with it. Is either version correct, is either version wrong? I couldn't take them as serious as I think the artist wants you too, unless he wanted them to be sort of lighthearted.

I'm not sure it's all misogny against women. I think the burqua is more restrictive, because I believe it reduces men and women to nothing more than walking talking genitalia. Oh no men cannot cope seeing a woman in a normative state, he's helpless to his penis. Or that a woman's body in and of itself is sinful and must be covered.

Though the walking around half naked, also serves the same sort of purpose. I know you get horny peeps, here's my boobs, here's my butt, here's my legs get turned on when you see me, I want you to be reduced to your genitalia. I belive the difference lies in that I don't have to wear mini skirts and high heels. I can just wear jeans and t-shirts. Women in the west have a large variety of clothing they can choose to wear to express themselves. I can be a sexy siren one day and a dowdy makeup free the next. It seems as though the burqua and whatever the fundamentalist men wear are called, are bland nearly identical clothing. It's like they are awash in a sea of the same.

Now we are always focused on the burqua because it also covers the face and hair. But I have been noticing that fundementalist males can be just as covered as a woman. Baggy linen pants, a long baggy linen shirt. A beard and wearing whatever their little knitted hat is called. They show slightly more skin than a woman, but not much.

So I just think it's a difference between some cultures remaining in the sex is wrong, sex is bad, you should never ever be horny except when you are married and the flip of sex is good, sex is fun, who cares if you get a little horny looking at someone as long as you keep your hands to yourself.

Women and men are almost always going to be sexual objects to one another until you know them personally. When I see a strange man half naked and I think damn, yummy, like in that David Beckham spread am I really objectifying him? Am I being misandrist? Or am I just a healthy young woman who likes having sex?

I just don't know if women in the west are required to wear skimpy clothing or if plenty of women, some whom I know, enjoy wearing sexy clothes to be noticed?

"Is it a powerful critique of both Eastern and Western sexism? Or is it just perpetuating the worst Eastern and Western sexist stereotypes?"

That's a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be either brilliant or terrible. It could be mediocre. It could, for instance, be a man attempting a serious critique, with some insight, but with some weak rationalizations. At least from the brief interview and the website, that's how I felt.

Emadi's insight is that the physical covering of women (not just their uncovering), is fundamentally sexual. The purpose of the cover-up, put forth by both male and female Muslims in my experience (I live amongst them), is modesty. Who can argue with something as benign as modesty? But "modesty," in this case, is code for one unmistakable message: the fact that men want to have sex with women is the only essential fact about women. The burqa doesn't desexualize--it foregrounds female sexuality (contingent on the male) as the only significant aspect of female being. (Well, he doesn't say that, but I think he'd get the point.)

Emadi's weakness (after a brief glance) is a "gee whiz" comparison to the West. They're naked here and covered there! Wow, think of the juxtaposition! So, the point is that there's sexism in both the East and West but they're just evoked differently? That's as obvious as mud. As an exercise in cultural relativism, it doesn't leave you with much--juxtaposition but no real judgement. You know what? Actually grappling with the "veil fetish" in a unique way might be more worthwhile. (What creates the veil fetish? The act of veiling. See previous paragraph.)

Finally, your use of East and West here is also a false dichotomy, but I won't quibble as I used them in turn.