Samhain Publishing Ltd. Weblog

Could We Please Retire the Word ‘Hot’?

On Christmas Day, I was watching TV with my nine-year-old niece and my eleven-year-old nephew when a lovely young woman appeared on the screen. Or rather, she would have been lovely if she hadn’t been wearing enough face paint to fresco the Sistine Chapel, a skirt two sizes too small and the ever-popular teeny-weeny knit tank top with the obligatory plunging neckline. She was all of sixteen.

‘Wow,’ said my nephew. ‘She’s hot! She’s really hot!’

I found myself wincing. To hear a young kid using that word to describe a teenage girl was incredibly jarring, since for me, ‘hot’ has long since evoked the image of a steaming platter of raw meat. I’m tired of hearing that word. Constantly. Everywhere.

I’m also really tired of the idea that women are only desirable if they’re oozing blatant sexuality. In other words, dressed in clothes a reasonably self-respecting hooker would be ashamed to wear, and exhibiting facial expressions and body language that used to be found only on the rawer porn sites.