Programmed for Unreality
2/27/07
"Men want Playboy Bunnies . . . which can be difficult to live up to when your boobs are down to here, when you're sagging, when there are creases in certain areas . . . the boys are programmed for unreality, and that I find really annoying -- boring."
-Lynda Meyer
"WHAT IS SEXY?"
Victoria’s secret asks the question. Their answer? Sexy, apparently, is a seven foot tall 19 year old with artificial D-cup breasts and a ravenous appetite for male flesh. Sexy women want to eat men -- devour them, and floss afterward with a poly-cotton blend g-string thong. Huh?
I say, shove it up your seven foot tall bottoms, Victoria Secret. The image of women as agressive man eaters is so passé. I’m personally sick of it. I’ve tried to fulfill the huntress persona in the past. It was never quite me. It never felt quite organic or even sexy to hunt and prowl and claw and bite and dry hump the air. I can't perform all those tasks AND achieve intimacy at the same time. It doesn't compute. So enough already. Besides, posturing oneself in a way that imitates a marketing campaign isn’t sexy. It’s stupid.
So what IS sexy?
While commercial and corporate America wants us to believe that sexiness is a visual experience, something that must be fabricated by way of purchasing itchy rub-you-raw hootchie slutty ho attire, those of us who have actually HAD good sex know that sexiness is a feeling, a vibe, a loveliness, a small and very close intimacy, a tingling in your core, a silkiness, a passion, a cellular cataclysm, a spiritual obsession. Sexiness turns your body and being into an ecstatic receptor of electricity. Sexiness is life force, charisma, joie de vivre, and quite possibly the most fundamental thing we feel as human beings and what separates us from a head of cauliflower. Frilly underwear, though fun to wear, can’t possibly be expected to deliver all that.
But underwear, and especially contemporary skimpy aka slutty lingerie, in combination with the visual bombardment that commercial media accosts us with, has unfortunately become the grotesque thing that is now associated with sexiness. I personally stand behind Hanky Panky lace thongs, because they are comfortable and unassuming and I just personally dig thongs. But not for anyone other than myself. I’m not wearing them with the intention of displaying anything for anyone, and they certainly aren’t what makes me feel or exude sexiness. But that’s what we’ve sort of been programmed to think.
I had a girlfriend in L.A. who said if she didn’t want to go to bed with a guy on a date she would wear her most period-stained underwear because that would ensure that she wouldn’t get undressed in front of anyone. The reality is, the guys she was dating at the time would undoubtedly have been just as happy to nail her in whatever horrible, stained, mutilated, stretched out, baggy, saggy, or downright putrid underwear she was wearing. Hello – you have to take it off anyway.
But these fallacies plague us as women, and as sexual beings. Discovering what really IS sexy is liberating. It’s not the flat stomach or the waxed legs or the fake breasts or the designer underwear, it’s a state of mind. And that makes me think of something I had heard my friend, clothing historian Lynda Meyer say. Contemporary lingerie, she says, is either slovenly or slutty. It is not what it once was, which was an intimately personal experience. A lovely experience. Something that felt good against the skin. Silk, finery, something that was not implicitly associated with sexual aggression and the sole purpose of male arousal. It was ours. It was FOR US.
I decided it was time to go have tea at Lynda Meyer’s house and hear more. I took K-Lee and my gal pals Darlene and Paige with me. And we did, drink tea, Lynda’s famous tea from England that I swear is laced with something stronger than caffeine, eventhough she denies it, and we discussed lingerie, and sex, and nudity, and other matters. Entering Lynda Meyer’s house in Adams, Massachusetts is like entering a different realm. It is a simple row house with a sign by the front door that says “open.” But then you walk inside. There is lace, and velvet, and vintage, and loveliness in every square inch. And then, Lynda appears . . .
(To listen to the uber-deep and juicy-yet-high-class conversation about nudity, lingerie and hwat, just what, IS sexy at Lynda Meyer’s house that day, featuring Karen Lee, Darlene White, Paige Carter, and moi, click for download, pod-cast or rss feed varieties. Show features music from Janet Klein, episodes with handyman and hunky beau Scribby, and more . . . Enjoy! )
3/1/2007
Simple is SEXY... my Dad said the Sexist thing was a woman with just a man's white T-Shirt on
and nothing else.... and use your imagination !
3/1/2007
I refrain from getting advice on how to be sexy from my father.
3/1/2007
Yes, we must only get advice on how to be sexy from OTHER people's fathers...
3/1/2007
ewwww, gross!
3/5/2007
Now I cannot get my father in his T-shirt
OUT of my head...
3/6/2007
know matter my amazing imagination,
my father is not sexy in his white t shirt,
p.s. my therapist says this is a good thing.
[his therapist disagrees]
