Wanted: male sensuality. Last Seen: Mills & Boon book cover

Today smacking: The loss of the sensual male

I really hope that Justin Timberlake is, in fact, "bringing sexy back", as he claims, and not just teasing us in that velvety rumbling undertone of his. Fact is, there's a great big, vagina-shaped hole to fill in pop music, which is in dire need of some sexual healing from all the lithe-tongued, firm-handed men out there – and JT is a man alone in his mission to do it.

In my second year of university I took a class in writing contemporary to the country in which I studied. My lecturer in the subject was an author with a couple of published novels under his belt and so, I suppose, had some authority on the subject, or could at least warn us away from all the terrible pitfalls of the writing business, thus scaring us off forever and widening the overcrowded profession by a crack so as to forge a little more elbow room for himself (which all the writing lecturers seemed to do; fuckers). He once said something about male sexuality that to this day I can't forget.

Those of us with a twig-and-berry combo and those of us with frilly pink orchids are just altogether different on seemingly every level, and we know this. Thus, it is exceptionally difficult to get inside the mind of the so-called 'opposite' sex in order to write from that point of view. My lecturer – let's call him Philip Whatshisface, since I genuinely can't remember his surname for the life of me – pointed out to us a few of the aspects of the respective genders which we might just miss, in our own research, but which should be considered when writing a character.

One such observation that stuck with me was that we give all the rights to the label 'sexy' to women, and give no such rights to men. We let women be the sensual ones, and we expect little in the sensuality department from men. We portray affection and innate attractiveness and beauty as female traits, leaving most men out – as if it's their birthright to be beaten witless by the ugly stick. Naturally I sat there, my feminist brain catching fire as I mulled over all the ways in which The Patriarchy had brought this about, and worked myself up into a right tizzy in the all of three seconds it took Phil to finish his sentence. But my curiosity was piqued as he went on. It was detrimental, he said, to men more than it was to women. He said there was something of a void where our nation's male sexuality should be.

I was hooked at this point. He was right.

All these words he was bringing out: 'sensuality'; 'sexiness'; 'affection'; they all seemed so, well, female to me – and for the first time I was given pause to see it. To my eyes it was wrong. It was an injustice to our straight men and quite a few gay ones, too. Why should they be conditioned to think that a good sense of sensuality, and familiarity with one's own sexuality was forbidden territory? Why should they be deprived the wonderful feeling of knowing fully the innate sensuality of your own self; using your hands and tongue and teeth and feet and thighs and every part of your body to understand the body of someone else?

Suddenly it was clear to me, too, why sometimes it is so easy to spot a certain type of gay man. It has nothing to do with them trying to act like women, and has everything to do with embracing their raw sexuality, their inner sex kittens (lions?), their unabashed lust – in a way that has usually been reserved for women. There's a certain undeniable freedom we women feel in executing an easy hip swagger, a careful flick of the wrist, a sultry pout. And it seemed our gay men had caught on to it, knowing that they, too, could play. They didn't have to conform to the expectations a straight male has placed on him: to keep his arse puckered, his cards close to his chest, his upper lip as rigid as the cock he thinks is the only representation of his sexuality.

Where was our straight male sensuality, I wondered? We had lost it somewhere, and I, for one, had no idea where to find it. Until now. Justin Timberlake seems to have found it for me.

See, all it takes is one straight man with a falsetto voice and a frame that oozes sex to spontaneously moisten the panties of millions of girls worldwide. And the best part? To do it in the most misogynistic genre of all: R&B. Twenty years we've been listening to rappers waffle on about how many bitches and hos they be playing, and how fun it is to mistreat them (my personal favourite lyric is courtesy of Ludacris: "Move, bitch, get out the way / get out the way, bitch, get out the way." Mmm, eloquent.) and here we have a skinny whiteboy from the Mickey Mouse Club making our hearts all aflutter. How? Well, a cursory look at some of Justin Timberlake's latest lyrics turns up dozens of references to pleasing a woman, doing things how she wants them done, maintaining her desires and, um, using his tongue. A lot.

Halle-fucking-lujah. Finally there's a man out there not so frustrated by the vice grip that restrains his sexuality that he resorts to taking it out on women-in-general through ill-conceived lyrics and film clips consisting of pure tits and arse. Finally there's a man who knows how sexy it is if he can show confidence in exactly how flexible he can be in the sack. Finally there's a man alone who is not afraid to dance a trail of fire across the floor. Finally, this kind of man is popular. And by god, do I hope other men follow suit. The truth is, if they don't follow JT into to the den of awakening sensuality, they're really missing out. Because even if you didn't think you liked the man or his music before, when Justin Timberlake croons at women in his trademark creamy tone, “I'll let you whip me if I misbehave,” we kind of, uh, really want to.

The power of the, uh, power ballad

Today smacking: Boring vocalists.

It has greatly pained me in recent years to hear people bang on about how great the voices of sweet crooners like Norah Jones and Katie Melua and Dido et al are. Sure, I can appreciate their dulcet-toned coquettishness, and that people like their easy-listening appeal, but sweet Pete do they bore me to tears. And I don’t even have functioning tear ducts! Or normal human empathy, for that matter. The Wizard of Oz says he has a heart on back-order for me, but I’m not hopeful. I told him that this crusty walnut in my chest cavity would have to do for now.

But I digress.

I am of the firm opinion that good music expresses a lot of really consuming emotions that absolutely must be belted the hell out. The kinds of emotions where you have to do unnatural things with your facial expression in order to sing about them properly, because the recollections they evoke are really intense, like when you need to take a piss so bad you start consuming your own bottom lip, and you clench your thighs together so tightly they spontaneously petrify and rip the seams of your pants.

If, like Norah Jones or Katie Melua or Dido, you don’t have the kind of voice that can belt those emotions the hell out, then you’re not expressing any emotions I’m remotely interested in hearing you whine on about. Go and write a bowel-voidingly powerful song about real shame and lust and betrayal and loss, and then come back to me when you’ve got inoperable and career-destroying nodules on your vocal chords – and not a minute before.

Not just because Kate Moss's breasts are smaller than mine

Today smacking: Celebrity envy

There’s a punishment I can think of that is worse than death. It’s worse than being thrown down a well full of ravenous rats. Worse than eating semi-decomposed slugs. Worse than finding porno pictures of your parents at a ‘key party’ in the 70’s. Worse than getting stuck in an elevator full of someone else’s egg-fart. Worse than the voice of that guy who does the Cillit Bang adverts on TV. Worse, even, than Kirsten Dunst’s need for a supportive bra, or just any bra at all. No, the worst fate in the world, the one I wouldn’t wish on even my archenemy, even if they had kicked me in the shins and convinced me I was adopted, is the fate of being a really famous celebrity. I wouldn’t wish being Britney Spears on anybody.

I begin to feel distinctly uncomfortable when I flip through crap-filled magazines such as heat or OK! and they’re proclaiming that the latest cool thing to do is to wear what Kate Moss is wearing (because, Oh My God, she’s always SO RIGHT NOW), and eat in the same restaurants where Kate Moss is ‘eating’ (help me, I’m dying of laughter-induced hypoxia), and have the same addled and confused boyfriend that Kate Moss has. Well, OK, nobody’s stupid enough to want to follow that last one. But the point is that in these magazines we’re constantly being told that our tiny little lives are not the least bit as exciting or meaningful as those of the celebrities we worship, and so we go ahead and believe that the only way we’ll ever come close to being as interesting as our favourite famous faces is to emulate them. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, I can’t think of anything worse.

Does anyone out there really think that Lindsay Lohan, Posh Spice, or the ‘Jolie-Pitts’ are having any kind of fun? When I think of what celebrities have to do to stay in the limelight, and remain in the public’s good graces, I shudder. There’s the constant need to look good and wear new clothes, the requirement to do and say interesting things, and the absolute necessity to hide all the parts of your life which could – and would – be construed negatively by the press. It’s no wonder so many celebrities say “Fuck it,” to the idea that they will ever have any privacy or be treated like normal people who have a job to do. (Which most of them are, except Paris Hilton, whose earthly purpose scientists have still yet to determine. Personally I’m convinced she’s an alien masquerading as an heiress in order to conduct a social experiment in how readily the people of earth will accept someone as a celebrity simply because we’re told she’s famous, despite the fact that she does nothing, says nothing, and quite apparently eats nothing. Boy, did we ever show them.)

I don’t wonder at all why some celebs end up embracing their own demises, conceding that any publicity is good publicity. So then we have the ‘flashing our bald genitalia as we get out of cars’, the ‘publicly bouncing in and out of rehab’, the ‘inflammatory statements to the press about other celebrities we’re supposedly having a public tiff with’ – because if you can’t keep the press on your good side, then you might as well make them beg for the bad. And if you’ve got some excellent PR behind you, you can do a Kate Moss and get up to all the seedy shit you want, appear all genuinely apologetic about it after a stint in rehab, and end up with more job prospects than before you let yourself be photographed doing lines when you should have been looking after your young daughter.

Of course, many think that it’s a simple case of, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ To some extent I think that this is true, and I think that in the last few decades anyone trying to become famous would have to be severely brain-damaged not to realise how much of their identity and privacy would be sacrificed in achieving that end. But we forget that celebrities are real people, with real fears and hopes and insecurities – oh, truckloads of insecurities – just like the rest of us plebs. You try having every aspect of your personality and all your decisions and beliefs scrutinised by a catty media who don’t care to analyse the real you; see if it doesn’t drive you to coke-fuelled benders and a slippery shame spiral.

Me, I like that I can say unwholesome and politically incorrect things without the world jumping on my back. I can talk about drugs I’ve done without fear of it turning into next week’s big rehab story. I can go across the street for a litre of milk in my pyjamas and feel safe in the knowledge that the only photographs of me doing so will be taken my pervy neighbours who don’t know how to use the internet yet. I can get drunk with my mates every weekend without heat magazine fearing I’m having a breakdown, and best of all, I can put on a few kilos and run around in ill-fitting underwear and nobody gives a flying rat’s arsehole. Sure, I’m poor as hell, but there’s a lot of comfort in being just another civilian.

So nope, nuh-uh, and nosiree Bob; I wouldn’t wish being Kate Moss on anyone.

When dads became bumbling idiots

Today smacking: the Bumbling Idiot Dad archetype

At risk of turning into the old lady sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch, polishing her shotgun and whistling through the gap where that front tooth should be, muttering, “Back in my day, we used to walk to school uphill both ways, even with a broken leg and tuberculosis, and we were grateful for it!” I must express that I feel there’s a gaping hole where our fathers used to be.

I blame this stupid archetype that came along around fifteen years ago: the Bumbling Idiot Dad. This archetype has single-handedly managed to reduce a generation of fathers to the status of the gum stuck to the bottom of the world’s shoe, and it’s so wrong and destructive that it makes me want to scoop out my eyes with a rusty teaspoon for sheer despair.

It began with Homer Simpson, the lovable but unfathomably stupid foil to the upright responsibility of beleaguered wife Marge. Now, since I grew up on a diet of The Simpsons I can hardly bash it with a clear conscience – and besides, that chip the Fox Network put in my brain will shock my neurones into a catatonic stupor, and I hardly want to be more mind-numbingly boring than I already am. But my horror remains that the character of Homer Simpson inspired a league of Bumbling Idiot Dad characters in our comedy sphere, and it’s ruining our appreciation of the actual father role.

You know the type of character the Bumbling Idiot Dad (BID) is. His head is almost permanently in the clouds, and he often conjures inspired but ultimately stupid schemes in order to achieve his ends, which are always selfish and childish. His wife is tempered and patient and supports him no end, though clearly he doesn’t deserve it since he is partially retarded and frequently on the brink of destroying everything the family holds dear. He gives ill-conceived advice to his 2.3 children, sending them on exploits derived of bad decisions. And all the while we laugh, and we laugh, and we laugh – until we choke on our Doritos and realise our arses are plastered to the couch for the rest of eternity.

The shame is that Homer Simpson was pure comedic perfection, but lesser producers, scriptwriters and networks evidently saw the cash cow that The Simpsons quickly became, and since then we’ve been battered from all sides by an army of poorly-rendered, frustratingly stupid characters all trying to imitate the classic BID. But they completely fail to be even remotely funny or clever. (I’m looking at you, Family Guy: you and your shameless Homer and Marge Simpson rip-off characters. And I’m looking at you, Everybody Loves Raymond: you and your complete mockery of the family unit, and your devaluation of really serious relationship issues, you utter waste of space and air time.)

We are turning fatherhood into a running joke.

I feel sorry for dads in all this, because the BID archetype is just small part of a larger deterioration in our culture of the value of the father role. Fathers these days are too often immediately second-class to mothers just by virtue of their being male. Mothers are given custody of their children often quite unquestioningly in custody disputes. Women are taking the final say in reproduction and how and when the family will expand or not. Don’t misread me: it is essential that women take over the microphone when it comes to what they do with their own bodies. But I cannot see how it is fair that, once there are children in the picture, a supposedly equal parenting relationship will intrinsically give the father’s opinions less voice than the mother’s.
(There’s an expansion of this idea over at Violent Acres, if you’re interested.)

I have raved on about how important I think good parenting is. It’s also important to value what both parents essentially are within the family unit, which is, in a nutshell, really crucial and valuable. It’s destructive and foolish to perpetuate a stereotype that so greatly devalues everything that a father is, can be, and should be. Can you imagine if there was an emerging stereotype in our media of the Bumbling Idiot Mother? Oh, how the feminists would crow!

Speaking of which; there are some who will say it is the rise of feminism which has in large part helped to push this deadbeat dad character in to our entertainment in an effort to Put Down the Man, or whatever it is people seem to think Those Feminists are doing these days. But since true feminism is about equality across genders, and not pushing one gender down for the purpose of advancing the other(s), we can’t say it’s all the feminists’ faults. Sorry, angry mob, you’ll have to douse those torches and put down the pitchforks for now.

I’m blaming, in half part, the laziness of our entertainment vehicles for this. How hard is it to come up with a new and interesting set of characters for a new programme, instead of re-hashing the same old stupid stereotypes time after time? It’s not that hard at all, but the thing is, the TV networks don’t have to. It is we who so gleefully lap up this ridiculous premise that it’s funny to laugh at incompetent parenting. This is where I place the rest of the blame. It’s our stupid faults for tuning in to see how Ray Barone will stick his foot in his mouth this week, thereby turning wife Debra into a screeching harridan, or how Peter Griffin’s latest hair-brained scheme will put his family’s life and income in danger while Lois Griffin sits patiently by.

I really wish we wouldn’t watch this crap when there are so many better-sketched characters out there; characters which are grounded in originality and don’t reek of influences much better than themselves. By supporting and believing this crap, we’re helping to destroy everything that a father should aspire to and be proud to be, and we should be really worried.

You can’t say ‘Vagina’ in the USA

Today smacking: Stupidly ironic censorship

So in recent news, three girls were suspended from a New York high school for using the word ‘vagina’ while reciting the script of popular play, The Vagina Monologues. Hold on to your hats, folks, I think we’re rocketing past the irony barrier at warp speed, and that noise in your ears is the rushing wind of two thousand years of genitalia hysteria.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last ten years, The Vagina Monologues is a play which celebrates real women’s relationships with their vaginas in an attempt to shake off our continuing aversion to talking about it. So why is it that this particular word – ‘vagina’, a perfectly acceptable and medical term – is, to some, equally as unacceptable as the myriad truly offensive ways we have found to describe it? And what’s next on the censorship list? ‘Spleen'? ‘Cornea'? ‘Molar'? Will other famous plays be similarly censored? Instead of Hair, will we be lining up to see Dead Cells that Grow in Keratinous Strands from Follicles in Your Skin on Broadway? Where does the ridiculousness end?

In 2007 it disgusts and appals me that any females – let alone teenage girls in the midst of the thunderstorm of puberty – are still being taught, whether explicitly or otherwise, that their sexual organs are to be treated with a hearty measure of censorship and shame. I realise the many different cultures on our smoggy earth are at varying levels of enlightenment about the power of Our Divine Ladyparts, but surely the USA could at least try not to be completely arse-backwards about it. (Alas, I don’t know why I ever get my hopes up about America spending more than a nanosecond of half-thought on any topic that concerns primarily women before forming a vocal and uneducated opinion about it. I guess I’m just optimistic like that.)

Anyway, in light of the above news article, I’m sending out a big “Fuck you!” to the censor in question at John Jay High School, New York. Fuck you with a big, juicy vagina, all wrapped around your head with vacuum suction and squeezing your skull with the vicelike grip of a thirtysomething single woman practising her PC muscle exercises before her first date in ten months.

So in closing, here is my summary, which I have chosen to present in the style of the Being John Malkovitch infinite recurring vortex, except I’m calling it Vagining Vagina Vaginovitch, and it goes like this:

Vagina? Vagina, vagina. Vagina vagina vagina, vagina vagina. Vagina vagina? Vagina, vagina! Vagina vagina? Vagina.

Yes, I think there’s something we can all learn from that.


Addendum: there’s an older, but related, even more hysterically ridiculous article here.

Public Transport is not for Testicles

Today smacking: public transport and the people who use it

Letters from the Bus, Part One

Dear man sitting behind me on the number 45 bus last Thursday evening,

It’s fucking rude to stare at people. Stop doing it, or you’ll end up having someone write a bitchy blog entry about what an inconsiderate wart-licker you are.

Regards,
The one writing in the notebook you couldn’t tear your eyes away from.


Letters from the Bus, Part Two

Dear little old man with the white hair and earpiece,

You are lovely. I had to tell you repeatedly that it wasn’t necessary to let me have your seat, even though you kept saying that you couldn’t possibly take a seat while a woman was left standing. There should be more nice people like you.

Regards,
The woman whose legs still work just fine.



Letters from the Bus, Part Three

Dear men of the world,

Your balls are not as big as you think.

It is not necessary for you to sit with your legs spread so wide I could comfortably wedge a refrigerator between your thighs. The woman sitting next to you who has to cross her legs or sit at an awkward angle to fit on the seat you’ve half-commandeered through sheer force of belief in your immense package, will thank you for it.

In fact, take a leaf from the book of the little old man above. Respect, yo.

Regards,
Women of the world.

Sexual chemistry and the compulsion to puke

Today smacking: That one guy I dated in the year 2000

Most of the time it’s really obvious when you don’t have chemistry with someone. This is why I became a little flabbergasted the other day when a colleague told me she was unsure whether to continue dating a guy because she wasn’t convinced the chemistry was there. My colleague is about to turn thirty this year, and while she’s not exactly so panicked about settling down that, like Charlotte from Sex and the City, she’s about to marry the next British-descended, emotionally castrated, mama’s-boy socialite who comes her way, she has expressed that she feels a certain sense of urgency; something akin to being strapped to some railroad tracks by a mustachioed maniacal bandit, I suspect. Nothing too pressing.

“So why are you even considering it?” I asked her.

My colleague made an apologetic smile that made me wonder if she keeps her balls most of the time firmly hidden at the bottom of her purse, along with her self-respect and her ‘No Means No’ badge. “Because he’s really, really funny and I quite like him as a friend,” she replied.

“But you said you don’t have the right chemistry there. Do you mean you’re not attracted to him?”

“Well, yeah. Like, I can’t see myself kissing him, let alone…” She couldn’t look at me by this stage, clearly very suddenly becoming aware that what she was saying amounted to lunacy. I suspect she might also have been avoiding my eyes because they were shooting white-hot lasers at her, but I can’t help that; it happens voluntarily when my Disappointment-In-You-o-Meter skyrockets.

“Then what are you doing?” I asked incredulously.

“I just didn’t want to be too picky, you know, because sometimes you can develop feelings for someone.”

“Feelings, maybe. Sexual chemistry? No. Listen, you’re not on Seinfeld here; you’re not rejecting him because his toes are the wrong shape or something stupid like that. Chemistry is the most important thing you could have at this stage! Who has time to dick around waiting to find out?”

Within days my colleague had decided not to follow up on that relationship, much to my approval, but it did indeed give me pause to wonder that if good-looking, sweet women like my colleague who own property and have good jobs find themselves wondering about settling for second-rate around the age of thirty, what the hell are their ugly step-sisters doing? Is every woman who has begun to worry about her romantic prospects so pragmatic about finding someone? 'Well, I don't want to kiss his slobbery mouth, but he does have an upwardly mobile career, and he really gets along with my dog...' Do we no longer lead with our hearts? I despair, I really do; no amount of balancing the ledger of pros and cons of a potential partner can overcome a lack of chemistry.

I am reminded of a fellow I was dating at sixteen. He was nineteen, and used to insist on paying for everything when he took me out, which was often, and this was so novel to me at that age that I dated him for longer than I really should have. We had lovely conversations and connected on a philosophical level, but when we kissed, and when we sat silently on park benches and fed swans together, there was something just slightly amiss.

Obviously, he felt it, too, but being the typically emotionally constipated 19-year-old male, he didn’t quite know how to express it. One day as we were sitting close together in a park, gazing at nothing in particular (and I was feeling a slight buzzing in my soul that I have since learned means things are not altogether peachy) he turned to me with an earnest expression upon his face, and, “So,” he asked casually, “are you feeling comfortable in the silences yet?”

You know how it’s really hip right now to say, when something unsettles you, that you think you just vomited in your mouth a little? Well, I’m pretty sure I actually did. And this was way before it was even remotely funny or cool. Even at sixteen I knew that if you have to ask, you won’t be walking down a flower-strewn aisle to the tune of Shania Twain’s You’re Still the One anytime soon.

So, as soon as I had reasonably convinced myself that I could keep my lunch down on the train journey home, I high-tailed it out of there. My erstwhile date, lucky boy, earned the moniker ‘Puke’ (a super-clever twist on his actual name, durr hurr hurr) and didn’t hear back from me. Because if the thought of going any further with your current date inspires the bile in your gut to develop the desire to defy gravity, then you’ve got chemistry problems that have nothing to do with stomach acids.