Why men can show off their naked bottoms but women can't

Alice Arnold cares little for people showing off their bottoms, but Cambridge University's 'Rear of the Year' competition will come back to bite the women worse than the men who bared all

Bottoms are intrinsically funny aren't they? It's not a recent thing. Don't tell me Shakespeare didn't know what he was doing when he named the mechanicals in Midsummer Night's Dream. To be fair the naming of one character alone can probably take more credit than any other attempts to get children to take notice of The Bard.

Bottoms have never really done it for me though. The idea of people 'mooning' out of the rear windows of coaches on the M3 has never appealed. It has always struck me as sort of laddish and immature which I appreciate makes me sound like a square old fogey.

Now Cambridge University has come under criticism for publishing photos on the student website The Tab. The pictures showing five female and five male students showing their behinds. Their peers will vote online as part of a controversial 'Rear of the Year' competition.

The organisers say that all the entrants had 'volunteered' their services and they intentionally ran a male competition alongside the women. However, the poll, has been criticised by campaigners as irresponsible. So is it just a bit of harmless fun or is there something more sinister going on?

_{The Warwick uni girls who posed for a charity calendar}

Students are well known for their foolish and childish behaviour. The more noted the university, it seems, the more ridiculous the hi-jinks. David Cameron has admitted his embarrassment in joining the infamous all-male Bullingdon Club at Oxford. David Dimbleby, who was himself a member claims that Boris Johnson, David Cameron and George Osborne turned it into a notorious organisation where members seemed to delight in wrecking restaurants and getting wildly drunk.

In this light perhaps posing for pictures of yourself naked seems relatively unimportant, although they may not think so when the pictures come back to haunt them later in life. We may all have done things we regret in our youth. The difference is that nowadays those events stay stored on the internet in perpetuity. There is no way of removing them.

is 'Rear of the Year' more damaging to the women?

Well they have laid themselves open to sexual objectification as have the men. The argument against it is no different from the argument against Page Three in The Sun. Many women are battling against this. Trying to move our society into the twenty first century where women might be regarded for their personality and intelligence rather than a sexual object.
The men involved are not struggling against centuries of inequality and discrimination. Let's face it these men are on a winning wicket. They are men and they are at Cambridge. They are unlikely to come out disadvantaged.
These students are now paying hefty fees for their tuition so one could argue that whatever they chose to do with their time is none of our business. If these women chose to involve themselves in this sort of silliness should we really care that much? To be honest my answer is no. By virtue of the fact they are at Cambridge they are supposed to be intelligent, they are over 18 and made the decision to partake themselves, I am not going to condemn it.
 
_{The Warwick Uni female rowing team...}
I am not even surprised. What I do feel is disappointment. Disappointment that intelligent women should want to waste their time and put themselves forward to be compared with others in such a futile contest. I live in the hope that the generation that is now coming through our top educational establishments will be stronger. They have more opportunities for equality and employment and the chance to develop their careers without the sexism that we encountered.
I doubt either the men or the women will look back on this moment in 20 years time with pride. Maybe when they grow up they will realise that their bottoms were not all that important.
I won't be losing sleep over it though. My concerns are for women not blessed with such privilege. The chances are some of these students will become our future leaders. However, Oxbridge does not always produce the best…but then we know that already don't we?