Sex – Three Guineas

October 14, 2013October 15, 2013

Millennial Dating Tip #1: Don’t Date Yourself

Millennial courtship is markedly different from that social ritual previous generations called dating—and not just because of the advent of smartphones and Snapchat. We’re basically the first generation in which men and women weren’t raised to believe that the opposite sex was some separate species only to be approached during peak mating season. Regardless of your chromosomes, if you grew up in a middle-class home in the 90s, then you probably have quite a bit in common with most other middle-class 90s kids—male or female. We were all forced to play soccer. We all thought oversized pants were fierce. And we’ve all seen at least ten episodes of Saved by the Bell (and at least two episodes of Saved by the Bell: The College Years). So the old When Harry Met Sally cliché about the impossibility of male-female friendships is no longer self-evident—except when it is.

Because all of this commonality and friendship often leads to a whole lot of confusion that really wasn’t an issue when heterosexual men and women had nothing in common except intercourse. You now have all kinds of blurry relationships. You have a work boyfriend, who you flirt with from 9-6 but rarely see outside the office. You have a straight male friend who shares your love of Girls. And you probably have a significant other with whom you watch Mad Men and mock congressional Republicans. So what differentiates these relationships? Not much. Except sex, of course. But the blurred boundaries invite a whole lot of questions about why it is you’re screwing one of these guys and not the other two. Continue reading “Millennial Dating Tip #1: Don’t Date Yourself”

October 2, 2013

Let’s Not Just Talk About Sex

Remember when Hannah Horvath’s manuscript was rejected because no one cares about female friendship? Her editor told her that she should instead write a book called A Year on My Back featuring tales of bad sex with college kids. So that’s exactly what came to mind when I saw that Periel Aschenbrand had published a book called On My Knees. It’s pretty much the same title. And then Salon published a chapter of the book wherein the buxom young memoirist talks about wanting to screw that legendary bag of douche known as Phillip Roth. And, I was like, yay male fantasy? Now, I’m very pro-sex. In fact, I’m pro-promiscuous sex. So I’m completely in favor of women writing about their sexual adventures with as much detail and aplomb as generations of literary manwhores. But when I look at a shelf of recent female memoirs and every single one is about either sex, eating, or walking, I can’t help but wonder if women are allowed to write about anything that’s not a basic bodily function.

But then I actually read Aschenbrand’s book—in about two hours because it’s REALLY short—and I realized that it’s not just about sex. In fact, there’s almost no actual sex in this book—unless you count her unfortunate encounter with a hairy Canadian who ejaculates on her couch (i.e., the worst type of Canadian). The book’s title isn’t even a BJ reference. It’s the universe that brings her to her knees after she endures a particularly rough breakup. So this isn’t a tale of lusty conquest so much as an account of one woman getting her shit together—with the help of her emotionally-scarred friend and her pushy mother. Point being, this is basically a book about female relationships marketed as Tropic of Cancer. Point being, publishing is the worst. Continue reading “Let’s Not Just Talk About Sex”

August 7, 2013August 29, 2013

Dear Grown Men, Leave One Direction Fans Alone!

Photo credit: ONE News — Image credit: ONE News

Imagine the most offensive phrase a 30-something journalist could use to describe a tween girl. Whatever you’re thinking couldn’t possibly be worse than “knicker wetting banshee” because a term worse than “knicker wetting banshee” doesn’t exist. But this is what British GQ thinks of One Direction fans—who, we should remember, are a bunch of little girls.

While much has been written about the vicious Twitter war instigated by British GQ’s cover story on the reigning kings of tween pop, the coverage mostly treats their young fans as, at best, insipid fools and, at worst, dangerous, high-pitched estrogen zombies. No one asks whether all this screaming has a purpose. No one asks if the ritual of pop idolatry may actually be important for these young girls. And they should because it actually is. I know this because I was once a 13-year-old girl. And I was an intense fan. And even a pack of smug GQ editors couldn’t have ripped that Leonardo DiCaprio calendar out of my cold, dead hands.

Continue reading “Dear Grown Men, Leave One Direction Fans Alone!”

February 27, 2013October 23, 2013

Sleeping it Off

While discussing the now infamous Girls episode “One Man’s Trash” with a group of 23-year-old girls who currently live in Bushwick, I heard the following critiques: the episode seemed out of place, it wasn’t funny, it felt like a slap in the face to an audience who really wants to hear Shoshanna say a few funny lines about emogees. Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of 30, I feel that I can confidently say that these girls are simply wrong. The episode is distinct both structurally and tonally from the rest of the series, but this distinction is meant to startle the audience—to wake us up.

The episode opens with Hannah and Ray standing near a sign that reads “Don’t Ever Sleep Again.” As we follow them inside the coffee shop, Ray quickly gets into a screaming match with pretty, pretty Patrick Wilson over trash that hasn’t been put in its proper place. These two narrative signposts—sleep and trash—mark Hannah’s descent into a fantasy world of comfort and maturity before she returns to her discontented young adulthood. I’m not taking part in the is-Hannah-hot-enough-to-sleep with-Patrick-Wilson debate because (a) it’s stupid and (b) it also fails to take into account the way in which Wilson represents uncomplicated beauty—the type of beauty Hannah has previously resisted. To write Josh (I’m sorry, Joshua) off as a perfect brownstone ken doll is to miss the larger point that the attractive life he represents is ultimately revealed to be as hollow as Hannah’s claims that she is special because she is able to “feel so much.” On both sides of the 24/42 divide, we find loneliness, vulnerability, and a sense that something nameless is missing. Hannah tries a bit harder to name it but ultimately ends up taking out the trash and walking away. Continue reading “Sleeping it Off”

April 18, 2012August 29, 2013

Unsatisfied Girls, Nervous Dudes

Lena Dunham’s interview in Salon makes me have a little more faith in the direction of Girls if only because she focuses less on the “I’m-too-good-for-a-job” hipster dilemma and more on what it’s actually like to be a sexually active young woman in New York City. All we good sex-positive feminists often feel uncomfortable even mentioning some of the negative aspects of contemporary sexuality for fear it will make us seem man-hating or prudish. Also, ”social scientists” love to cling to these details to argue it would be better if we all went back to guarding our hymenical treasures until marriage. Therefore, I’m impressed that Dunham is willing to handle the complex, sticky (sometimes literally) problem of young women being sexual, wanting to have sex, but also finding themselves continually used sexually in ways that are not particularly satisfying and sometimes hurtful and borderline rapey. Unfortunately, even though women are now much more willing to talk about cum in their faces or whether or not to include said face in a sext, many still find it difficult to express their own needs for fear of losing a guy or even seeming like a killjoy. We still have a long, long way to go until women are getting the enjoyable sex they deserve, and this show seems like it could be one small, awkward step in the right direction. Also, she won me over by referencing the eternal Jordan Catalano/Brian Krakow dilemma.