notes.
As a godless fornicator, I spent my Xmas with my ankles overhead. I hope you all had a merry holiday as well.
I’m glad to see the AA ads getting press. I saw that the excellent Refinery29 wrote it up a few days ago, and now I’m seeing blips and notes from NBC, AVN, a few business sites, and some nicely drawn blogs. I’m glad in part because I like the AA ads, but also because I dislike North American nipplephobia. When I lived in Europe, I saw bare breasts sell windows, shower products, and jeans. When I moved back to the States, a woman was kicked out of the National Gallery for breast feeding (yet a museum is not a museum without a solid inventory of bare tit). I want to see more breasts because there shouldn’t be any shame in a conspicuously exposed nipple.
But more than that, I like the candor. I’m a little tired of the coy push-and-pull that we teach young women, as if they should play up their sexuality but ultimately recoil from sexual activity, resulting in our classically conflicted nympho-puritanical views: we’re sex-saturated (advertising, porn) yet we’re also sex-avoidant (MPAA, morality laws). If we’re talking about depictions of women, I want to see more of this, of women looking you in the eye and fucking owning their sex. I want to see more women like Sasha Grey and Charlotte Stokely.
I’m looking forward to seeing the new AA ad for my site. They’ve got me very intrigued about the next one.
And apropos of nothing, except maybe the holidays, I’m getting a lot of mileage out of Gabriel’s headboard. It’s made of steel bars, which means I can reach back and grip it when I’m on my back, or reach forward and hold it for leverage when I’m straddling his hips at strange angles. It’s good. It’s solid. It’s making me rethink my position preferences.
Happy New Year to you all. Me, I have some resolutions to draft. Among them, more posting.
D -
More comments from you in the New Year would be a welcome blessing.
When I start reading you 10ish months ago, I was living with much less of myself expressed. Now, with inspiration from you, Kasia, Jefferson, and a lot of welcoming supportive people, I have been to Dark Odyssey, found a community of players in L.A. whom I like, and a few days ago, started my own blog.
Things like Twitter and RSS also feed in there, but it’s more about the conversations and connections than the nifty, albeit fun, tools.
Happy New Year. Glad to hear you continuing to enjoy Gabriel so heartily and looking forward to more.
Happy New Year! I haven’t seen the AA ads yet, myself. Being in L.A., we’re kinda into nipples. I’ve never been thrown out of anywhere when I wore a mesh top, or one that just showed contours. Of course, I’m small-breasted, so who knows what the reality is for others?
In reference to the paragraph Being Amber Rhea cited, calling out that ridiculous “be sexy, but don’t actually LIKE sex” attitude sounds very much like the best parts of Female Chauvinist Pigs.
I like the candor too, and the nipples, although I draw the line at the bodysuit.
“A godless fornicator”?
Nonsense. You’re surely divine.
I agree with you so very, very much.
I actually had a college student cross a manga artist with a Botticelli, resulting in a drawing of a naked nymph, BUT he left out her nipples. When I asked him why, he said he was too young to draw pornography (he was 18). And apparently manga is nipple-less.
This after we’ve discussed piles of shit by Serrano, Kiki Smith’s women with animals, and of course the Renaissance masters.
Happy new year D, and look forward to your writing in 2009.
Also, the phrase “Godless fornicator” – I don’t know why, but I love how it rolls off the tongue.
http://www.lukeisback.com/stars/stars/charlotte_stokely.htm
Yes, check out this interview with Stokely. She seems SO classy… everything I would want a college-aged daughter to be.
Hello Debauchette,
Just discovering your excellent writing. You’re gettin one of my favourites. I’m from Europe, lived in the US for a while and above all I have a personal “war” against censorship of all kind. I also had a baby some very few years ago and used to breast-feed her almost anywhere: restaurants ,public gardens, in the car and even while shopping for clothes. I have friends who did or do the same. Never thought this could hurt anyone and never received any message of this kind from anybody. Often I got nice smiles. Now I’m back to a mix of two “passions” I have in life: sex fantasies combined to photography. The one trying to be a tool for expressing the other. But my question is still the same: when the hell are we going to forget about this shitty thing we call “education” and get into another millenium by admitting that sex is as natural as smiling and a lot less harming that using guns, bombs and even words :) I posted a message about my definition of porn – I hate this word – on my blog, which contains also private explicit sex pics.
Kisses and I’ll be back to your prose,
Yola (http://mysexblog.blogbugs.org)
Oups, by the way, you made me real curious. What’s the AA adds for your site you’re talking about ?
Yola again
De-lurking to say – you know, after all these months, I’ve finally figured out what it is about your/the AA web-ads that bother me.
It isn’t the large glasses or nipples on pale skin.
It is only partly, “Why would anyone wear a bodysuit?”
What bugs me, is that the ads move.
(I don’t own a TV.)
:)
I love Sasha Grey! However, for some reason, I never heard of Charlotte Stokely until now. She must have slipped through the cracks. Well, I trust your judgment and taste, and I’m already in the process of introducing myself to the works of Ms. Stokely.
I pretty much agree with what you wrote about our nympho-puritannical views. I doubt it will change any time soon. We started here with a puritannical culture 400 years ago, and waves of immigration from all corners of the globe still haven’t weakened its primal force.
That having been said, there’s a chance that the current cultural wave might actually make a difference. The women I’ve met with the fewest hypocritical sexual hangups are Hispanics … the ones I know the best are from Ecuador and Colombia, but I suspect that this is equally true in most parts of the Hispanic world.
As for that insidious puritannical force, I’m now thinking that it might actually have some value. The inner conflict that it leads to causes some very intense sexual feelings to be built up, and the pleasures that come in fighting against, playing with, and overcoming these puritan forces lead to some powerfully intense orgasms.
Think of how less hot Sasha Grey would be if she just enjoyed sex as part of the natural expression of love and human intimacy.
Maybe those original Puritans were on to something, after all!
Happy New Year!
If we’re talking about depictions of women, I want to see more of this, of women looking you in the eye and fucking owning their sex.
Amen to that–from another godless fornicator.
My first visit to you;I’ll be back. Thanks.
amen: the “coy push-and-pull” you just described clicked with me in a way i can’t quite express — probably because i’m at any given time caught in the middle of those two extremes; that “nympho-puritanical” viewpoint is one i don’t know how to shake, and it’s disgusting.
reading your blog opens my eyes somehow. keep writing; i’m loving it.
Hey D,
Out of topic for this post, but check out the work of the guy below on Flickr if you have time, you may find it interesting.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellylind/
“nympho-puritanical” “sex-saturated (advertising, porn) yet we’re also sex-avoidant”
A perfect example of the natural balance of the universe. What would one talk about without the other.
I thought you’d be interested in this AA vs. San Francisco clip. Old-School hipters vs. neo-hipsters.
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2009/02/old-school-hipsters-vs-neo-hipsters-community-independent-businesses-vs-progressive-chain-storeits-the-mission-vs-american-apparel/
oxox
~ib
I have never heard about Charlotte Stokely, but I do know Sasha Grey. I agree with you that she owns her sex, but she pretty much owns anything she does. She gives her all no matter what, from her music projects to her porn, to her main stream appearances.