When it comes to sex, I've always been an overachiever. From the moment I crossed "lose virginity" off a youthful to-do list like it was taking the SATs, I relished the challenge of being good in bed. In my adventures I've experienced earth-shaking lust and utter abandon. Still, I realize now how often the thrill of sex was tinged with something else -- the triumph of conquest. I read the Kama Sutra and sex books with the steely discipline I applied to yoga class, confident there wasn't a skill I couldn't master with limberness and resolve.
Then I had a baby.
I don't know if it's true what they say about sex during pregnancy being incredibly hot. That's how I remember it, but now that I'm a mother the memory of any kind of uninterrupted, unexhausted encounter seems like the apex of ecstasy. I do know that as my belly expanded my libido went right along with it. When certain moves involving weight on my big, big midsection became logistical absurdities, I cheerfully learned new ones to compensate, flipping onto my sides, enlisting chairs and bedposts for support. My hormones were amped up to previously unimagined heights while my puzzle-solving brain relished every obstacle. It was perfect. In the back of my mind, however, I was worried about what would happen next.
I'd heard stories of couples who'd gone at it like gangbusters until an 8-pound bundle of joy killed their sex lives. I saw once recklessly sultry friends get sensible haircuts and saggy bellies, preoccupying themselves with sippy cups and singalongs. I became determined not to commit the sin of letting myself go. I was screwing like a condemned woman.
So it came to pass that precisely six weeks after pushing a human being out of my body, I lay on my back in the doctor's office awaiting the go-ahead to put something else in it. My middle was a vast expanse of squish. My breasts were tender and aching from the infant who'd clamped herself on me in the delivery room and had barely come up for air since. I was so sleep deprived I'd hallucinated a few times. And below deck? Pure wreckage. I had been torn, and was still bleeding. I had hemorrhoids, the least sexy condition ever invented. Yet I was considered normal for all I'd weathered, and had reached a deadline matter-of-factly referred to in pregnancy guides on the "How soon can I have sex?" page. So it didn't surprise me in the least when the doctor removed the speculum, peeled off the gloves and declared, "You're fine to resume sexual activity."
I took the words not as a suggestion but an imperative. It was what I was supposed to do. My body had been pronounced capable; my psyche didn't even stop to question why it was less enthused. Besides, I figured that after our longest period of marital abstinence, my husband was deserving of -- nay, eager for -- my lustful embraces.
I went home and informed him that as soon as the baby was solidly asleep, we were to commence fornication. He gave me a weary thumbs up. Had I not been too tired myself to pay attention, I might have noticed that his work-all-day, up-half-the-night-with-the-baby schedule hadn't exactly been stoking his fires.
The baby's sleep was still as easily and noisily set off as a car alarm on a Sunday morning. At the first sign of her buzz-saw-like snore, we plopped her drowsing form in the other room, where fitful gurgles told us we'd better try to wrap it up as soon as possible.
We undressed quickly and he fondly touched my breasts, a pair of old friends he hadn't seen in a while. I cringed. His hands felt like sandpaper on my raw skin. It wasn't just that it was painful, though; it was worse than that. After having the baby on them all day, I wanted them all to myself for a while. They'd gone from sex props to utilitarian devices, and the thought of having somebody else needing my tools filled me with dread. I swatted his hands away with a grimace. He looked at me, a mixture of hurt and concern on his face. So much for foreplay.
It didn't get any steamier from there. "How do you want to do this?" he whispered huskily, while I paused to contemplate my options. I climbed aboard, figuring that would afford me the greatest measure of control.
It was agonizing. You'd think that after delivering something the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, a woman would feel like she'd just added a lane or two to her private highway. Instead, I'd lately been looking at my ultra-slim tampons and thinking, Oh God, no, never. My earliest sexual exploits had been awkward and a little uncomfortable, but full of fun and foreplay. This? This felt like the Amityville Horror, my husband in the role of unwelcome interloper and my lower half ominously commanding, Get out!
We didn't last much longer after that. We hadn't even fully gotten to penetration, let alone thrusting, let alone pleasure. After a few uninspired minutes, I defeatedly flopped down beside him.
I had what is tactfully referred to as a performance problem. In a previous life, I might have gamely switched tactics, attempted some partner-pleasuring tricks of an oral or manual variety. Instead, I sulked. My husband didn't push it. You'd be surprised what a few yelps of "Ow. Ow. OWOW NOOOOOO" can do to dampen a man's mood. In retrospect, if he'd still been up for it at that point, I'd have considered the possibility that I had married a sadist.
I lay in bed thinking, I have failed. But the truth was, I hadn't wanted to have sex at all that night. I'd convinced myself that because I allegedly was able to, I automatically ought to, and preferably better than anyone else ever in the history of postpartum sex. It just hadn't worked out that way. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to have sex again. For someone who'd invested a certain amount of her self-worth in the idea she could be a wanton slut bomb at will, this was a terrifying place to be. If I couldn't make it happen tonight, surely I was headed down the road of separate twin beds and Lanz of Austria nightgowns. Maybe my brain was never going to have another horny thought. Maybe my body was never going to admit any more visitors.
Or maybe, I realized, this whole fiasco had been more about my ego than my libido. All those satisfying, playful years spent with a partner I loved hadn't diminished my sexual Type A personality. Instead, I had been plagued by the same doubt that had haunted me when I was a young woman devouring magazine articles on how to have Mindblowing Sex Tonight -- the dark fear of not making the grade. Humbled by my changed body and life, I had to learn something I couldn't find in a manual or a porn movie.
I could grit my teeth and attempt another crack at it, with this lovely man who looked petrified I was going to smack him if he touched me the wrong way, or I could let it go. I could cling to the hope that desire, like a full night's sleep and my curvy old ass, would one day return.
Much later, when I had cultivated candid friendships with fellow breeders, we could swap horror stories with the easy rapport of comrades in arms. "You waited only six weeks? My God, you're brave," I'd hear, from women who'd endured months of colicky babies and blocked milk ducts and episiotomy or cesarean scars before they could even think about intimacy again. Yet all of them, and their partners, had survived. Wounds healed. Kids grew, and sleep returned. And eventually we accepted that if ever there were a reasonable period in life for sex to take a temporary sabbatical, the time right after we've experienced one of its most awe-inspiring, ass-kicking consequences would be it.
My husband and I kept trying. Not every night. Not even all that often at first. When we did climb into bed together, I had to, of necessity, pipe up about what felt good and what didn't. Along the way, I began to notice a shift in my attitude. Never before in my life had sex necessitated such intense contemplation. Never before had I needed to plan for it, psych myself up for it, schedule it into my bedraggled existence. But as the months wore on, never before had I felt more appreciative of the simple act of intimacy, stripped of bells and whistles and fueled by pure longing.
I would no longer have the luxury of making love to prove my prowess. I would no longer have sex because I believed it was what I was supposed to do. I would have sex because I wanted to, because dammit, I believed it would be fun. I would discover all over again for the first time what would work for me and what wouldn't. It's not that things ever quite went back to exactly as they were, but I began to understand that they didn't have to. This new stage would have its rewards too.
I'm still open to possibilities, eager for novel ways to discover bliss. I'm just not such a hardass about it anymore. Six weeks after my second child was born, I was back at the doctor's office, in the same undignified, scooted-down position. "You're ready to resume sexual activity," he pronounced authoratively, as if speaking ex cathedra. I smiled indulgently, thanked him, and immediately resolved to ignore him. Because this time, I was going to be the one to decide when I was ready. And I knew that someday soon, I really would be.
Hey there, urban hipster columnists! Stuck for a way to meet your word count today and fresh out of lorem ipsum? Time to trot out the old "sexual taxonomy of women" satire you first took a crack at for your college humor magazine. You can fart it out before your first latte has kicked in, and the thing will pay for itself in outraged comments and blog links. And before you insist it's too dumb/obvious to work, I refer you to Spencer Morgan, whose withering New York Observer takedown of "cheetahs" has been setting forehead veins reflexively a-throbbing this week.
"Rrowl! Beware the Cheetah!" is a piece of such cynical, calculated offensiveness that my initial response was to ignore it entirely. But hey, I'm just a predatory female, and when that rodenty aroma of bad writing hits my nostrils, I can't help myself. In it, Morgan -- who pointedly excuses himself from the pack of prey by mentioning his wife -- alerts us to the growing menace of "the cougar's young niece," a woman who gets men wasted, takes them home, and then doesn't even have the decency to get up and leave. "The cheetah stays the night," he warns. (Yes, it's true, fellas, older Liz Phair-era riot grrls totally have a lock on the fuck and run.)
I'm all for mockery and making light of romantic foibles. But next time it might be helpful to add some wit, because the only insight here is how a story about female insecurity reveals so much about the male variety. Since we're all dumb animals, I'll speak slowly and break down why the story is so lame:
1.) The feline metaphor again? Really? Yet Morgan crams not just cheetahs and "self described cougars" into his story, but pumas and even the hoariest of all beasts, the dreaded saber-tooth. That shit is more played than "I Gotta Feeling." If you're a woman over 35, you've probably already heard it so much that you find yourself copping to it. Yes, I am a big scary animal. Now excuse me, I have to go take a nap in a gazelle carcass.
2.) While I'm loath to argue that a joke wouldn't be funny if the roles were reversed (in a good joke, it's the reversal that makes it work), I'm none too keen on Morgan's fantasy of desperate women sexually preying on drunken men. But good luck wringing comedy out of a city full of lady rapists.
3. The author's clear discomfort with females regardless of what neat species classifications they occupy. He grudgingly affords "Auntie Cougar and Cousin Puma … a certain dignity ... They’re out there shakin’ it up, slaying dudes and taking names." Ummmm, thanks? But as he channels Caitlin Flanagan, he reserves his greatest shudders for poor, lonely, spinster-to-be cheetahs. They're already "past the first flush of youth" and yet still "wanting to date or at least fuck 'above their station.'"
I'm not even sure how this whole aspirational screwing thing works, but gentlemen, you've been warned. The cheetah is out there looking for "potential mates," hoping, as Morgan's cougar pal explains, "her pussy’s still good enough to keep him." Why the insecurity? Because as another of Morgan's charming compatriots explains, "Getting laid is not as easy as it once was.”
4. The story's scolding reminder, via Morgan's cougar friend Angela, that "men like to chase." Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Congratulations, New York Observer, you're a Rules Girl! A woman who does not placidly wait around to be picked off by a wildebeest -- or maybe it's a crocodile -- is so unnatural, so terrifying, she threatens to throw the whole ecosystem into chaos. And who's the only man weak enough to be ensnared by her wiles? "A pussy."
5. Pop rhetorical quiz time! Why is it that gay men can classify themselves as bears and otters and all other manner of creatures and it seems cute and sexy, but female sexual animals are somehow just pathetic?
6. Final question: Is it possible to write about women and their dating habits and not sound like a nosy busybody, clutching at your pearls and fanning your scandalized brow at the garden gate? Answer: No.
Because the funny thing -- funny strange, not funny ha-ha -- in each eager new spin on the women-as-cougars-and-cheetahs-and-pumas-and-kittens-and-ocelots story is the same old criticism of us for our sexual choices and erotic initiative. Whatever species you name it, it's all just catty. Mrrrreeer!
In summation, there are three weeks left in this decade, and then I am personally shutting these BS trend stories down, rejecting all attempts to brand me as any feline predator. You will hence refer to my ilk and me as naked mole rats. We like darkness, multiple sex partners, and starchy food. See you in the tunnel.
It's official: Pornography doesn't affect men's view of women. This breaking news comes by way of 20 young men who ... just say so, OK? Stop asking so many questions, gosh!
But, seriously, a press release and various media outlets announced this news today based on a survey of less than two dozen 20-something-year-old heterosexual dudes, all of whom were ushered through puberty by hardcore porn. The original aim of the research, which was funded by an organization dedicated to preventing violence against women, was to find young men who had never watched porn -- but these fantasy subjects were nowhere to be found. (Thus, the Telegraph hyperbolically reports: "All men watch porn, scientists find.") So, the study's focus was redirected to exploring porn-watchers' sexuality.
All of the subjects claimed to totally dig gender equality and feel "victimized by rhetoric demonizing pornography," according to the press release. Simon Louis Lajeunesse, the Université de Montréal researcher behind the study, which is still in its infancy embryonic phase, reports: "Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship which they all want as harmonious and fulfilling as possible," he said. "Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner simply set aside the fantasy. The fantasy is broken in the real world and men don't want their partner to look like a porn star."
I don't doubt that most young men do not want their partner to look like a porn star and that X-rated flicks can be part of an innocuous -- and even healthy -- private fantasy life. It's just -- this isn't science. You don't determine the impact of porn by merely asking a small sampling of typical dudes whether it changed their view of women. If it's all they have known (since the age of 10 for most of the study participants), how the heck are they supposed to evaluate how it changed their view of women? I'm a female and feminist member of this porned generation and I'm only just beginning to pick apart how smut shaped my views on all things related to sex. I know one thing: It had an impact. I don't know how small or how big an impact, but I can't deny that such a major cultural influence had ... some influence.
These conversations are so often shouted across the chasm between political extremes -- whether it's an argument by Ariel Levy (for the record, a writer I greatly admire) that mine is a generation of "female chauvinist pigs" or a proclamation that porn is, meh, no big deal, so get over it. Neither position represents the whole truth, and half-baked research like this won't get us any closer.
Scientists have scanned women's brains and wired their genitals to measure arousal. They have meticulously cataloged the most intimate of feminine experiences and yearnings -- and yet these detectives in lab coats haven't been able to map the fingerprint of female desire. It's an unsolved mystery. Still, there is plenty intriguing evidence to sift through and competing theories to consider. Case in point: The New York Times Magazine feature on ladies who "want to want" -- or, put in technical terms, women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
The search for a "female Viagra" makes clear that there is no easy fix -- but writer Daniel Bergner points out that there isn't an easy definition of the condition, either. The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M.) defines it as "persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity." These are women who can become physically aroused but mentally just aren't going there all that often. An essential element of the diagnosis is that a patient is "distressed" by these symptoms, he explains. In other words, it's only a problem if you think it's a problem. An interesting paradox arises: Does the act of defining hypoactive sexual desire disorder play a part in creating and reinforcing the condition?
Critics argue that the "distress stems not from within the individual but from the infliction of societal standards, from the culture’s disapproval and aversion." To make this point, Bergner invokes "icons in heat" like "the model with swollen red lips gazing out with molten need from the billboard." From the libidinous lass selling cologne, aftershave, or [insert any product under the sun] to the exaggerated moans of porno flicks, we fetishize enthusiastic female availability. On a day-to-day basis, that degree of spontaneous chest-heaving -- not to mention multiple orgasms at the touch of a (cough) button -- isn't realistic, generally. By those standards, most women would feel "deficient."
There's an important distinction to make here, though: We fetishize eager female availability, but not self-directed female desire. When we talk about sex "icons in heat," we're specifically talking about women who are prone and receptive. Culturally, truly libidinous women are not only treated as unsexy, they're considered abnormal. They're fucking scary! Maybe for some women it isn't that they feel a lack of sexual desire, per se, but an absence of a particular type of desire they think they're supposed to have. (Nowhere in the article is masturbation mentioned, by the way.)
Lori Brotto is the 34-year-old psychologist tasked with defining hypoactive sexual desire disorder for the next D.S.M., and she's aware of the sticky issues. She has proposed adding the symptom of not being "receptive to a partner’s attempts to initiate" to the criteria for diagnosis -- which only raises the additional issue of the role a woman's partner plays. Brotto would also like to do away with the word "desire" altogether: She's consciously moving away from a "male" model for sexual desire toward her colleague Rosemary Basson's "Sexual Response Cycle," which characterizes female desire as coming after arousal. Basson argues that women often commit to the idea of sex and display a "willingness to be receptive" to their partners' advances. Only after foreplay gets a woman aroused does she become hungry with desire, says Basson.
The "male" and "female" model seem pretty interchangeable to me. In a long-term sexual relationship people often take turns being receptive to each other's advances. Sometimes you've had a crap day at the office and you're just not into it -- until your lovah touches you just like so. That isn't a strictly male or female thing -- it's just a human thing. On a similar note, both sexes are under pressure to perform in very different ways, and when there is all that play-acting going on, it's no surprise that some are left unsatisfied -- not to mention unenthusiastic about a repeat performance.
The truth is female sexuality isn't easily categorized into "normal" and "abnormal" -- it's variable and idiosyncratic. There is no definitive all-purpose map; the best we've got is a caricature. As is often the case with such things, many women will look at this sketch and exclaim: That doesn't look like me at all!
British researchers, having reviewed the existing literature on cosmetic labioplasty (surgery to reduce the size of a woman's labia), have concluded that it risks "impairing sexual sensitivity and satisfaction," much as female circumcision does; that not enough long-term research has been done on it; and that "counseling and support" might be more appropriate alternatives for women who seek surgery because they believe their vulvas aren't pretty enough. Moreover, says the report's author Lih-Mei Liao, aggressively marketing the surgery exacerbates one of the problems it's meant to correct. "Advertisements promote labial surgery as easy answers to women's insecurities about their genital appearances -- insecurities that are fuelled by the very advertisements that prescribe a homogenised, pre-pubescent genital appearance standard for all women." (I'm envisioning the ladyparts version of a Latisse commercial here: "For inadequate or more than enough labia.")
Unsurprisingly, Douglas McGeorge, past president of the the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, told the BBC he thinks the concern is "over the top. Essentially this is just about removing a bit of loose flesh, leaving behind an elegant-looking labia with minimum scarring." Oh, well if that's all it is! I mean, obviously, if you want to be taken seriously at a job interview or get a decent table at a hot restaurant, you can't just show up with inelegant-looking labia. Adds McGeorge, "Lads' mags are looked at by girlfriends, and make them think more about the way they look. We live in times where we are much more open about our bodies -- and changing them -- and labioplasty is simply a part of this." By "this," you mean "a painfully sexist culture that encourages debilitating body shame," right? Because otherwise, you might want to think that one through a little more.
On the other hand, there are women out there who really do need genital reconstruction. Amanda Hess at The Sexist shares the stories of two of those, women who didn't just have "more than enough labia" but serious post-pregnancy complications described by one as "My vagina is falling out of my body!" (Actually, it was her uterus. Also, for the record, that woman had labioplasty while she was at it and reports that it "was brutal. All of 'Dr. 90210''s patients who say it doesn't hurt are lying. I'd rather get my teeth pulled out than do that again!") But after all that suffering, both women describe their new equipment as A) equivalent to a virginal young woman's and B) therefore incredibly desirable. Allison Henry, who nearly bled to death more than once: "We just had a cocktail party to celebrate me feeling healthy. And I do have the vagina of a 13-year-old virgin, with a perfect labia, as a bonus." MomLogic guest blogger Sara: "So now I'm on the mend, with a teenage-sized vagina ... The way things are at present, no man's apparatus, even of the Fisher Price variety, could ever fit down there. Still, I'll try to write a follow up report when it happens. That is, if my husband and I ever leave the bedroom again!"
To recap: These two women suffered severe trauma to their reproductive organs, but the big silver lining is that they now have vaginas reminiscent of girls too young to consent to sex. It's what every man wants, without the pesky statutory rape charges -- lucky hubbies! Sara even jokes (I hope) that her husband bought her cheerleader costumes to go with the new model. Look, I'm all for making inappropriate wisecracks about horrifying things, and any woman who has ever had to say or even think the words "my vagina is falling out of my body" has earned the right to be seriously inappropriate, but what the hell? Neither of you squicked yourself out, writing that? Hess puts it best: "I'm happy for you. I am. You went through some bad shit, and now your vagina is back inside your body, and I think that's wonderful. But I never, ever, ever, ever again want to have to think about a grown woman having a 'the vagina of a 13-year-old virgin.' That's some messed up heebie-jeebies shit."
And it's the same messed-up shit that drives perfectly healthy women to pay someone to cut into their genitals for purely aesthetic reasons. Oh wait, I'm sorry, did I say "messed-up shit"? I meant openness about our bodies. Now that our culture is much less repressive, we've learned important information that used to be hidden away -- like that pubic hair is disgusting (on a woman), which means we must wax it all off to avoid offending our sexual partners, after which we might just discover our vulvas are kind of funny-looking and thus require surgery to give us the "elegant labia" of ... children. Such progress we've made! Why, if people had never broken the silence, we'd all still be walking around assuming adult-looking vaginas are perfectly fine! Instead, we've completely eliminated all that old-fashioned shame about our bodies and backward thinking about sexuality. Whew.
The once-scandalous celebrity sex tape took its fatal jump over the shark this week, after gay-marriage-opposing, famously breast-implanted author and Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean confirmed the existence of a naughty tape of herself.
The tape came to light last week, when TMZ.com reported that the dethroned Miss California abruptly dropped her suit against pageant officials after a video of the self-described "prude" enjoying a little solo pleasure emerged. TMZ reported today that Miss Prejean's mother has been treated to a viewing of this private tape -- she was allegedly present when California pageant officials trotted out their proverbial ace in the hole.
Flogging her book "Still Standing" on the "Today" show this morning, Prejean brushed off the term "sex tape." She described the footage as "me by myself, there was no one else with me. I was not having sex," failing to consider that "me by myself" qualifies as sex for roughly 80 percent of the Internet population.
The news of Prejean's one-woman show comes the same week Jennifer Lopez hit her ex-husband with a fat $10 million lawsuit over his attempts to peddle footage from their 1997 honeymoon and Colin Farrell's antics with a Playboy model have resurfaced. In a world where Fred Durst has a sex tape, is there anybody left who doesn't?
Kids, back in the day, a sex tape used to mean something. There was expensive equipment to set up and hide, cassettes to load, storyboards to be drawn. It was a big freaking deal when Rob Lowe had a romp with underage girls or Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee enjoyed connubial bliss (if that's what you call it). Sex in front of a camera was still considered something porn stars did, and breaking that barrier was exciting -- and blurry.
Today, anybody can just aim the phone at the interesting bits and upload the results before they even finish. So much for our happy ending.
The celebrity sex tape -- as well as its close kin, the much forwarded naked snapshot -- started veering toward that fabled shark tank in June of 2004. That's when "1 Night in Paris" made its Web debut. Unlike other stars who'd been caught knocking boots, Paris Hilton didn't adopt a demeanor of scandalized abasement when her video emerged. Instead, she shrugged it off with the same bored lack of interest she'd displayed during her coital performance. Her career didn't suffer. Her fame didn't abate. On the contrary -- it skyrocketed.
In the ensuing years, compromising footage of the quasi-famous has become as commonplace as conspiracy theorists at a town meeting. And amazingly, it's proved an effective way of giving Hollywood has-beens a jolt of, well, exposure. Are you a Dirty Sanchez-dispensing, former "Saved by the Bell" cast member? Are you a man whose most famous role is playing a character called "McSteamy"? Smoke a little weed, head for the hot tub and don't forget to invite a friend. (Sweeps week crossovers await! ) Is your last name "Kardashian"? That and a little raw footage can get you your own perfume line. Excuse me, I have to go roll my eyes and yawn in an exaggerated manner now.
With each new revelation of a dirty video lurking in a famous closet, the shock at the genre itself dies a little more. Had honeymoon movies of J.Lo emerged when she married her ex in 1997, it might have been a cause célèbre. Now? Big whoop. The explicit sex tape and the compromising photo are no longer potential career ruiners, nor are they the hallmark of a wild, anything-goes character -- not when so many of us, famous and not, have been there and done that. It's a fair assumption that if there aren't explicit images of you floating around somewhere, you may not have a sex life. Or a phone.
While it's easy to enjoy a moment of delectable schadenfreude watching right-wing sweetheart Carrie Prejean, who says in her new memoir that "We should earn respect and admiration for our hearts, not for showing skin to look sexy," tell Meredith Vieira about "the biggest mistake of my life," it shouldn't really come as any surprise. Prejean may be a smug, backward-thinking idiot, but she's not the whore of Babylon. So when Prejean kvetched on the "Today" show that "nothing is private," she may have sounded whiny -- but she wasn't wrong. Some people learn it in more public and embarrassing ways than others, of course (like having your mom and some lawyers watch the footage you made for her boyfriend). But what Prejean did isn't different from anything many, many people are doing in their homes and hotels and dorms right this minute, alone or with a friend or two. Deviants, perverts, married couples, teenagers and "normal, churchgoing" folks like Carrie Prejean -- we are all sexual beings, and we don't need to send our images to the Fotomat for processing anymore. Stuff's bound to happen. Prejean wanted to be Miss USA. Turns out she's everywoman after all.
Duke University researchers are looking for female students to attend a sex toy party, "engage in sexually explicit conversation" with other young ladies and, if they so desire, buy some titillating playthings at a great discount-- all in the name of science. Wait a sec, no, make that "were looking," past tense -- all of the participant spots have filled up rather quickly. Fancy that.
Know who else has responded to the study just as feverishly? A religious leader on campus, whose blood pressure has risen for an entirely different reason: He's pissed. Father Joe Vetter, director of the Duke Catholic Center, said: "I think it can give the impression that the university is endorsing behavior that I don't think the university should endorse." God forbid the university allow its researchers to issue an open call for women -- that's right, adult women -- who are interested in attending a sex toy party to help further the study of sex. No one's being forced into a sex den filled with vibrating silicone and rubber. Women are volunteering to check out some naughty novelty items and, both before and after, speak openly with researchers about their attitudes toward sex.
The school's vice president for public affairs, Michael Schoenfeld, bless him, has issued an utterly rational response to Vetter's public outrage: "Not all research will make people comfortable," he said. "In fact, there's a lot of things, there are a lot of questions, there are a lot of issues that are studied at a university that make people uncomfortable. That's how we get an understanding of things like ethics [and] behavior." Science -- not always politically correct!
Vetter is under the impression, although he doesn't say why and researchers have remained mum on the topic, that the study is driven by a "concern about promiscuity on campus." He seems to believe that the study is looking at sex toys as an alternative to partnered sex. If you think a man like Vetter would celebrate such an goal, you're wrong. While he is "concerned about promiscuity," he's more concerned that "these students are in this developmental phase," he told The News & Observer. "I don't think it's a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don't think that promotes relationships."
I'm 99.9 percent sure the researchers aren't asking young women to "just sit around and masturbate." But you gotta love the apocalyptic fear of sexuality on display here; the assumption seems to be that self-pleasuring women will lock themselves in their rooms with no more motivation to relate to the opposite sex.
Fry It Up: Top Chef Las Vegas Episode 13 -- Final Four
Conversation Snips from Car Ride to Staples