How do I love thee? Let me count the positions.
It only takes speaking to my 16 year-old sister to realize that female sexuality is not only exonerable, but revered, it seems, at any age where members of the opposite sex realize the interlockability of their pubescent parts. One's desirability is measured by how many members of the opposite sex wish to bed you, such that "he told me he wants to hook up with me," becomes the ultimate expression of one's own worth.
It is not a world that I knew as a teenager, but it is also not one that I am willing to judge. Not because I embrace it, or even condone it. But because I understand it, and at times, even in my more matured years, fall victim to it.
Slate magazine quotes from a recent essay by a certain Dr. Kass of the University of Chicago, who blames the female sexual revolution on such forces as effective contraception, the notorious ephermerality of modern marriage, the de-romaticizing of sex in high school sex-ed, and the concomittent erotization of sex in media. But I believe underlying all of this is this basic desire to be desirable. And while quoting sonnets and picking flowers were the terms of endearment in the past, a sexual invitation, or even the insinuation of such is the modern equivalent. Who is to say that long stem roses speak more affection than an experienced tongue?
We lack an effective language to woo, and so we dismiss language altogether. Because while chocolates and flowers bear the potential to become hackneyed expressions, an orgasm never will. Yes, there will always be the admonishment that a dead goose lays no golden eggs, there is always potential for another one, mayhap laying platinum eggs, to come along.
It is not a world that I knew as a teenager, but it is also not one that I am willing to judge. Not because I embrace it, or even condone it. But because I understand it, and at times, even in my more matured years, fall victim to it.
Slate magazine quotes from a recent essay by a certain Dr. Kass of the University of Chicago, who blames the female sexual revolution on such forces as effective contraception, the notorious ephermerality of modern marriage, the de-romaticizing of sex in high school sex-ed, and the concomittent erotization of sex in media. But I believe underlying all of this is this basic desire to be desirable. And while quoting sonnets and picking flowers were the terms of endearment in the past, a sexual invitation, or even the insinuation of such is the modern equivalent. Who is to say that long stem roses speak more affection than an experienced tongue?
We lack an effective language to woo, and so we dismiss language altogether. Because while chocolates and flowers bear the potential to become hackneyed expressions, an orgasm never will. Yes, there will always be the admonishment that a dead goose lays no golden eggs, there is always potential for another one, mayhap laying platinum eggs, to come along.
posted by Maureen @ 1:55 PM
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