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.

Newsflash: Britney Spears found to be human

Today smacking: An insensitive media

So, Britney Spears shaved her own head, which according to psychologists who have never met her, may or may not be symptomatic of a full-scale breakdown.

In light of that, I was going to write this whole diatribe about how ashamed the media should be of itself for turning Britney’s obvious difficulties into such amusement. But then I realised I couldn’t really be angry at a media that is just doing exactly what we expect it to do, as fucked up as that is, and as disgusted and nauseated as it makes me.

I feel nothing but sorry for the poor girl. Never mind that she has the paparazzi on her back all the time, or that the whole world is interested in her private life, or that she just split from her husband, or that her career may never recover: what I feel is the most salient issue here is that she just gave birth to her second child. How could anyone possibly feel normal in her situation? Even in a stable, loving relationship with financial security and family for support, a new mother can find herself beset by feelings of incompetence and depression at the very best of times. With some help this, in some cases, will be diagnosed as postpartum depression, after which a new mother can hopefully get all the support and understanding she needs. Poor Britney has no hope of psychological stability with the hounds of fame nipping at her heels. The world seems to have forgotten that the girl's body is surely still in the grip of the after-effects of pregnancy, and it will be a while yet before even her body – let alone her life – feels normal.

So I am championing Britney Spears, the mother and the human, whom none of us really knows, and whom I suspect doesn’t really know herself. I sincerely hope she gets all the help she needs and finds herself on the sunny side of the street, with the world at her feet, sometime soon.