Objectification is bad, whoever's doing it. A (now former) friend, who was in the habit of openly saying "wow!" loudly and staring whenever a handsome young (and I do mean young) man came into her field of vision, and I were having lunch one sunny afternoon. The topic of objectification came up. My unsurprising egalitarian attitude is that objectification of either gender is wrong. She said, "Well, I figure they've been doing it to us for centuries so it's okay for us to do it." My jaw dropped and then I wondered why I had been so surprised by this comment. She stared me down from across the table, "I'm not wrong," she challenged. There's nothing that can be said to this so I closed my mouth and concentrated on lunch. But, when Pirelli tires announced that none other than Sophia Loren will be posing nude in their 2007 calendar, my first thought was, "You go girl!" In a world that equates youth with beauty and has forgotten the wisdom to be found in the elder population, it seems refreshing to know that somewhere there is someone who is not afraid to honour a 72 year old woman who once represented youth and beauty and now represents age, beauty and wisdom.