It didn’t take Spitzer’s fall to reinforce the fact that our society is undergoing a moral crisis and it’s time we pay attention to it. Whether walking through the mall or watching television, I am constantly bombarded by an invasive level of ‘soft porn’ that is widely accepted as ‘advertisement.’ The greatest culprit, the marketing industry, caters to men as their primary consumers, appealing to their scopophilic desires (obtaining sexual pleasure by looking at nude or erotic images) and projecting women’s bodies as commodities. The sexually provocative images used to sell nearly everything – from a pair of jeans to a chocolate bar – depict women in a way that subconsciously leads to their degradation and objectification.

Our society’s glorification of sex through the media, music and film industries has come to haunt us. Young girls as young as 11 and 12 years old are growing up in America believing that their value as human beings is based on their sexual appeal. Dressing beyond their age, young girls engage in hyper consumerism of skimpy clothing and cosmetics – not for their own gratification – but for the gratification of men. Young boys in middle school are growing up to believe that women were created for their own sexual pleasure.

As a Muslim feminist, I have a serious problem with our society’s denial of this epidemic. If we’re going to pay so much attention to one man’s illicit sexual behavior, let’s look at our own society’s encouragement of deviant practices through the ways in which women’s bodies are exploited, commodified and objectified in film, music and – the worst culprit of them all – the marketing industry.

I am not, by any means, absolving Splitzer of responsibility for his outrageous behavior. At the same time, I find it hypocritical not to turn a critical eye inward and address our own responsibility – as a collective – for engendering the type of attitude and atmosphere where women’s bodies are treated as commodities for sale.