Undead sexist cliches: It’s a thin line between virgin and whore

An article by Catholic writer Patrick Archbold in the National Catholic Register mourns “The Death of Pretty.” Archbold explains it’s “a lament for something in the culture that is dying and may never been seen again.”
The gist is that Archbold is nostalgic for the days when women looked innocent. Even if they weren’t really pure, they “wished to project a public innocence and virtue.” Now, women want to be hot and that’s bad because “pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable.”
The fault, of course, is feminism: “It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out … women should know better and they once did. Once upon a time you would hear girls talk about kind of women men date and the kind they marry.”
So Archbold is basically recycling the time-honored cliche that if men get the milk for free, they won’t buy the cow. And that he doesn’t notice that by so doing, he’s treating pretty/innocent as just as much a commodity, something women offer to men to get them to purchase the cow. Have to offer them: Even if they’re viragos or sexually active, don’t let it show.
His emphasis on innocence and the evils of feminism make me think he’s also uncomfortable with women who aspire to anything other than being pretty. The image of innocence (which as he points out is quite separate from actual sexual experience) involves a lot of things that don’t really work for grown-ups: Sweetness, submissiveness, lack of knowledge. Innocence, in most cases, is childlike.
As Echidne points out, Archbold also assumes that how men treat women is entirely the women’s responsibility. If she’s not innocent, she’ll be thrown away. Discarded. And if she’s the kind of woman men date (but don’t marry), well, what else can she expect?
I suspect the boundary women have to cross to be the kind men don’t marry is pretty thin in Archbold’s eyes. He cites the end of Grease as an example: Olivia Newton John dressed Bad Girl to win John Travolta and it’s horrible, horrible! She destroyed her own purity! Of course, the movie’s ending makes it pretty clear Sandy and Danny are heading off to a happy monogamous relationship (hell, even Bad Girl Stockard Channing gets a proposal) but … ONJ wore tight clothes! She’s … bad!
It’s depressing this outlook has lasted into the 21st century.