Now that it’s legal, and I have grown up, I think…maybe. Someday.

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Jane Devin

They hang in my closet as a reminder, a small torment, and something of a life jacket. I wore them when I last fell in love, hard and with almost reckless abandon, several years ago.

There was something about this particular pair of jeans that made me feel less humanly flawed and more invincible. In the smoky lower level of the Metro, where the music played a little softer and the lights stayed dim, these jeans moved me to the dance floor, where Aretha sang “If you want my lovin’ if you really do, don’t bother askin’ baby you know I’m gonna give it to you. . .” . Sheila was particularly beautiful that night, and it was easy to forget everything else, like how I normally don’t dance in public, how chaotic my life was at the time, and how different Sheila and I were in so many ways. Love doesn’t see impediments, but possibilities. Love doesn’t plan for failure, but creates the circumstances for success. So we would dance, and I would inhale the sweet smell of her neck, and forget everything else that wasn’t in the circle of glowing possibilities.

I wore those jeans weeks later when I leaned against the door in her bathroom, conversing as I watched her shave one leg, than the other. She had the sexiest iliotibial tract I’d ever seen, and the strong legs of a dancer. When she laughed, she had a tendency to throw her head back and close her eyes, deepening the hollow between her collarbones. I loved to watch her laugh.

Neither Sheila’s body nor her psyche carried any obvious scar tissue. She was younger than I was, and not just in years. Her eyes were bright with untried ideals. She ran, she played tennis, she skied, she had never smoked, or flirted with drugs. She had never had or raised children. She had never chased after a professional career, or lived outside of Minnesota. She drank herbal tea, and wore vanilla-scented lip gloss. She preferred comedies to dramas, and upbeat pop music to old love-and-lost ballads. Her closets were full of purples, reds, greens and yellows. Her mind wasn’t filled with stories, but with expectations and hopes. She sprung up in the morning, happily ready to experience whatever the day held. There was no hesitancy, no dread, none of the panic and worry that is endemic to those who of us who have beat a path to hell and back so many times we’ve memorized the travel guide.

In the bliss of fresh infatuation, I looked at this bright-eyed, optimistic, and perpetually sensual woman and thought of change. Sheila, like everyone else I’ve ever been with, was not a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” lover. She wanted a life partner. Someone to share her days, nights, and experiences with. And because she lightened my heart and made me laugh – because she was incredibly open – because she made me feel sexy and loved and protective and generous – because she was full of pleasant surprises and kept me guessing – because she didn’t nag at me (much) for my bad habits – I thought of change and possibilities. Maybe, I thought, I don’t need to be so much of a hermit. Maybe I don’t have to write every night of my life. Maybe I can learn to like Saturday evening club-hopping and Sunday afternoons at Home Depot. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me to go jogging after dinner. These things, in exchange for a loving relationship – for all the sparks and fires and afterglows – could not be that bad.

I never considered asking Sheila to bend to my style of life. I’ve never thought of asking someone to be a hermit with me, or to eschew the social scene or ski hill for evenings spent at a desk or weekends spent with books. Somehow I suspect that the answer would be no. I even hope it would be, because I really enjoy the time I spend alone. I am very much a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine, let’s meet after” kind of lover. It seems, though, that not many people share this philosophy, and those who do aren’t generally monogamous. (I would make a lousy polyamorist, not because I have any great moral convictions, but because I really don’t like to share the people or things I love with people I don’t love – and because I have the kind of terrible curiosity that would have to know every single detail – and because, really, although I may not hold onto someone tightly, I do have a possessive streak).

I knew, given the divide between Sheila’s expectations and my life as it existed in reality, that I would have to be the one who changed. For her part, Sheila was naive, but nonetheless brave to take me on. I am, if I haven’t made it clear, not the easiest person to love. I am restless and jaded in so many ways. At turns, I am easygoing or moody. I am overly sensitive to noise, other people’s moods, and environment. My head is often in the clouds. I can talk a mile a minute or be silent for hours. I’m domestic only to the extent of doing what’s required for comfort. I never run out of coffee, but I don’t care if my checkbook is ever balanced. Trucking in practicalities doesn’t come naturally to me, since I so much prefer nearly every other alternative.

Still, there she was. Beautiful, glowing, and willing to love. All I had to do was bend. Expand. Set aside some things, and move forward with others. All I had to do was change.

Incredible months passed before my restless spirit began to bleat and scream steadily. I wanted to write more often. Sheila suggested that I write for one hour everyday, in the morning before I went to work. I wanted time to myself. She didn’t understand why my commute didn’t count. I wanted to skip a concert by her favorite band and suggested she go with a friend instead. Why couldn’t I just go and enjoy doing something she wanted to do? What would her friends think? Didn’t I love her anymore?

As the minor arguments stepped up, it wasn’t hard to pull the cynical piece of self I’d hidden out of reserve. Sheila had known only the smallest slice of a huge world. I would be her “best lover ever” for the time, but I knew that in the future there would be another best ever, and likely (hopefully) it wouldn’t be someone who was as skittish and cynical about commitment as I was.

I began to feel, more and more, like the big bad wolf to Sheila’s innocent Red Riding Hood, and because I loved her, I began to rewrite the story, imagining Sheila at her happiest not with me, but with a nice woman. One who taught grade school and volunteered her holidays at the women’s shelter. Someone who was supremely stable – who saved for yearly vacations to Mexico and used her Costco card to buy sensible things in bulk, like batteries and paper towels. Someone who had a collection of sweat suits for the right reason, and who enjoyed having 50 friends over for a barbeque. Not someone like me, with a penchant for rainy days, musty books, and a reclusive spirit.

We dated for a little under two years, which was just long enough for us to know that we were opposites in too many ways to be compatible, except that I realized it first and most insistently. It was painful in the way that any significant loss is, and more so because I was acutely aware of everything that I was losing. Not just the arguments (which I lost even when I won), but the love of someone who would never consciously seek to hurt me. The love of someone who let me love her, and who never doubted that either of us were deserving of whatever good things came our way. In losing Sheila, I was losing my innocent side – the bright-eyed and better part of me that didn’t see impediments, but possibilities, and that creates the circumstances for success – no matter how hard, how difficult, or how impossible.

We sat together under the trees at Calhoun Lake, my jean covered leg next to her bare one. She wore my favorite pair of sandals, and her nails were painted a pale shade of pink. Her wavy hair fell into curls with the humidity, and a lone ringlet fell over her left cheek. She looked so beautiful that night, lit by the reddish tones of sunset, that I almost stopped the inevitable.

Inside, the spirit continued to scream. Freedom, free, alone, write, be, think, dream. A split occurred, and another part of me screamed back in rebellion. Love, passion, her, companionship, sex, laughter.

Freedom won. And I have had my alone time, a surfeit of dreams, and there are reams of words – millions of words– that I have spent in the last ten years.

I have taken the jeans out of the closet, and with them, me.

The revolution continues.

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But She Won’t Make Love With the Lights On

Posted on 03/28/2008 by Jane Devin

When I close my eyes, I see the dresses and the gowns. The paper dolls and the Barbie dolls; the pretty bows that tied me down. Then I see my face, staring down at my shiny shoes. . .they took me to a place where they gave me pink instead of blue.” – Tina Schlieske, “Paper Dolls,” Monster Album, 1994

My friend Pamela was about four years old, tumbling away happily in her living room, when she found herself shaken from her childhood reverie by her father’s voice. “Cover yourself!” her father shouted. “Young ladies don’t show their underwear to the world.” Her father’s words stung then, leaving Pamela confused and feeling shamed.

Welcome to girlhood, circa 1960′s, when wearing dresses was mandatory, and monkey bars and swings filled the playgrounds – a mean temptation that required creativity and presented us with our first catcalls. “I see London, I see France. . .”. Yes, our underpants were of paramount importance in the scheme of things, inhibiting our movements, stifling our physical expressions, and causing us to worry, at the tender age of five or six, how best to cover up to avoid the shameful display of our undergarments.

Today, only a handful of schools mandate skirts for girls, but the shame factor that’s been part and parcel of girlhood for centuries has lessened only by small degrees.

Biological imperatives aside, the traits attributed to girls are often a source of shame. Sensitivity is mocked as weak. Empathy is often viewed as “girlish” and unfitting for a competitive world. Gentleness is seen as less effective than brutal frankness. Those who have these traits, whether they are male or female, are often seen as less competent than those who have a harder-edged, less sensitive, personality.

In fact, the crux of sexism (and homophobia, racism, and almost every other hateful attitude towards difference) can be summed up in one word: shame. Whatever does not fit into the dominant paradigm must be cast out, ridiculed, and shamed into its submissive place.

We know it, we’ve seen it, but how do we process this information?

“It’s like the McDonald’s story about the woman and the coffee,” my friend Barbara says to me. “What you’re talking about, shame and sexism, becomes a water cooler joke. People hear the stories, but they don’t really understand what’s involved, or how long-term the damages are, and the whole matter ends up being diminished into some yarn about entitlement, with people blaming those who got hurt, and even feeling sorry for the ones who caused the hurt in the first place.”

Being familiar with the case of Stella Lieback, I understood what Barbara was saying. McDonald’s did, in fact, sell coffee at 190-degrees, thirty degrees higher than normal, and capable of burning skin down to the muscle layer in two to seven seconds. Lieback’s injuries required skin grafting and took almost two years to heal. Yet, Lieback’s case is often called up as an example of trivial lawsuits.

“When you talk about the lives of girls, and the shame they learn, and the sexism they face as they grow older, it’s often dismissed, or treated as something we should just get over,” Barbara continues. “It becomes a joke – women seeking some sort of due they don’t deserve, with men being “forced” to play along. And really, so much of what passes as social change or enlightenment is just smoke and mirrors, still. Look at what happened to Anita Hill in the 80′s. Look at how the media treated Hillary Clinton when she showed emotion this year. Women are still being trivialized and ridiculed at every turn.” Barbara, at 56, had excellent parents who encouraged her to excel, but she was not immune from feeling shame about her sex in girlhood.

“There was always the “cross your legs, be a lady” thing,” she says, “but it went so much deeper than that. We could be smart, but we weren’t supposed to act it, because that would be arrogant or unfeminine. On dates, we were advised not to show our appetites, not to laugh too hard, and to let men lead. We were, it seems, always having to act something, instead of merely being ourselves.” Barbara, who has been married for close to thirty years, recalls her first year of marriage with a bittersweet laugh.

“I went to sleep with my makeup on. There was no way I was going to let him see me without ‘my face’ on. . .and no, I didn’t think I was ugly. I just. . .I guess I thought I always had to be as pretty as I could. Weird, huh? The funny thing is, since then he’s always thought I look better without makeup.” Despite her awareness, and the support of her husband, Barbara still struggles with issues of beauty and femininity. She doesn’t feel “right” going to the store without makeup, and feels “naked” without her jewelery.

“The cover-ups,” says Kathy, “that’s what I remember most.” Kathy developed early, sprouting breasts in fourth grade. “Trying to find clothes that covered my bra straps, and getting my bra strap pulled from the back anyway. And oh my God. . .the shaving! The short gym shorts we had to wear, or the bathing suits. I was mortified by the thought that my pubic hair would show, and as mortified by the stubble and the razor burn.” Kathy’s experience points to the fact that the development of girls is more public than that of a boy’s, a situation we both agree is made worse by advertising.

“If you were to listen to all those feminine product commercials as a child, without a good grasp on the facts of biology, you’d think women were these continuously leaking, bleeding, smelly creatures that constantly needed to be on guard against drips and odor. I know that’s how I viewed them and even now, in my forties, all those messages have had an effect.” Combined with schoolyard jokes about girls smelling like fish, Kathy, like many girls experienced an anxiety about her developing body that boys, in general, didn’t and still don’t.

Outside of growing taller and getting deeper voices – both of which are praised in our society – the turn from boyhood to manhood is a relatively quiet and private affair, edged with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Girls, on the other hand, grow their breasts under the watchful eyes of classmates, and grow hair where it is deemed unacceptable.

The faces and bodies of pubescent girls and women, with their “unwanted body hair” and menstrual cycles, are a marketing goldmine. Dozens of magazines exist for the sole purpose of selling them on fashion, cosmetics, perfumes, and beauty products. Between the slick ads, diet tips, and sex advice, there may be an article or two on self-esteem or empowerment, but look where it’s coming from — between pages of size 2 models selling the concept that everything about a woman, from head to toe to attitude, needs to be changed, buffed, dressed up, fixed, or enhanced in order to achieve true beauty, find love, or win acceptance in society.

Pretty is as pretty is marketed. The airbrushed model of womanhood exudes confidence, but this lies in her ability to betray and hide the truth of her humanity. Only in the perfection of this betrayal does she emanate happiness. At size 0-2, she has kept the girl and abandoned the woman. Her straight teeth have been capped or bleached to ultra-whiteness. No stray hairs grow from her waxed figure. Her skin does not wrinkle or dimple – she is a well-manicured, unblemished, soft-skinned, long-lashed, long-legged, full-lipped beauty.

To undo her takes work. To undo the damage, and ease the anxiety the marketing doll has caused, can be a years-long, even a life long, endeavor.

My friend David, after telling me all the reasons he was crazy about his girlfriend, once complained, “but she won’t make love unless the lights are off.” She was witty, brilliant, kind, just an exceptional person, he explained, but she had this hang-up, and he couldn’t understand why, or why his assurances weren’t enough. After all, he told her how beautiful she was all the time.

It was hard to explain to David how all of his words, no matter how personal or strongly felt, were already undone a thousand times over by Cosmo, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie, Massengill, and others – and how the indoctrination into shame that began when we had to learn to navigate the monkey bars without showing our underpants metamorphosed into a shame of our imperfect bodies and our womanly selves.

“Why do women put themselves through all that?” David asked.

We don’t. We don’t “put ourselves through all that” any more than we put ourselves through growth spurts or physical development. Much of the shame we know is not consciously learned, but inherent in the messages given to girls and women from the cradle to the grave.

When the mannequin becomes the model, and the model becomes the treasured icon, what is feminine becomes not only what we fear in its natural state, but what we fear we will never measure up to in its enhanced form. We will never be polished enough, thin enough, fit enough, or perfect enough to earn the fearless confidence of the mannequin-model.

It takes strength and awareness – and a strong desire to grow past shame – to unlearn the lessons and mitigate the damages. To make love in the light of day, knowing we were never meant to be mannequins, but real women – organic, warm, sensual, curvaceous – and of far greater beauty and worth than the social paradigms and mass marketers would have us believe.

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Mothers Don’t Let Your Daughters Read Harlequin

Posted on 03/25/2008 by Jane Devin

I came late into my own sexuality, tumbling into it with all the confusion of a molested and battered child, and the shadowed blinders of a woman who thought her worth, even her ability to survive, was dependent upon making others, namely men, happy.

I never wanted to marry. While other girls were gracefully sashaying their Barbies down the suburban sidewalk aisle, I was dreaming the life of a writer, who had a small beach house overflowing with books, a mahogany desk littered with papers, a warm and tattered gray sweater, and two dogs named Holden and Phoebe. As I grew, so did the dream. I’d have friends, but not so many that they’d interfere with my writing – and I’d have a lover I’d see maybe two or three times a year – but they would be very passionate times, fueled by all the searing love letters we’d write to each other in-between writing Great American Novels.

Funny how things work out. I ended up pregnant and married in my late teens to someone who hated books, dogs, and romantic dreams. As I stood in the Justice of the Peace’s office, eight months pregnant, listening to the vows read by Mildred Pierce (yes, that really was her name), I had something of a breakdown. I began to laugh hysterically and couldn’t stop, a situation which only got worse when Mildred, in a sing-song whisper, sealed our vows with an “Indian blessing” that had something to do with the fruit of loins and a harmonious teepee.

Outside of the birth of my daughter, which was like a beautiful epiphany that reinvented and expanded my heart, the snapshots from 1981-1983 are sad and grainy – full of attempts that never hit the mark, and love that felt wrong and misplaced. I see me standing in the kitchen (wearing a skirt! I hated skirts!) making spring rolls and prime rib, neither of which he would enjoy because the first was too “ethnic” and the second was a waste of money. Me, hiding candy bars in my glove compartment because at 145 pounds, I was too “fat” for his liking. Me, constantly accused of infidelity and being checked on twenty times a day to ensure that I wasn’t fucking one of the neighbors in-between diaper changes, feedings, baths, housecleaning and cooking.

Me, in the midst of some cosmic accident where I ended up married to the enemy, feeling all at once adult and locked into a life of dread and spiritual poverty.

Of course, it ended quickly. The last pretenses were discarded the night he slapped me and threw my typewriter in the outdoor dumpster. I had one of my first freelance writing jobs, and an assignment that was due in the morning. He wanted me to put it away and watch television with him. When I said no, he lost it – and I lost the last of the love, or pretend love, that I had for him. I kept our daughter, and the son that I was two months pregnant with. He skipped out, never saw his daughter again, never met his son, and never paid child support.

It would only be after this, when I realized I was solely responsible for the outcomes of three lives – two of which were totally defenseless and dependent on me – that I was shaken into understanding that I had better learn who I was, and quickly. I could not afford to rent my dreams to the intentions of others, or to pretend my way through an existence with two children.

Sexuality was the reason I got pregnant, and the reason I had married a man I had nothing in common with, and in fact, sexuality had played a huge role in my life since I was first molested over the summer at age 10, when I was sent away by my mother to live with an ex-babysitter and her husband. It was a summer of horrifying and increasingly invasive moves (his) and increasingly creative, evasive tactics (mine), but like many children I stayed silent, fearing my mother would blame me, or that I would not be believed. I also took the molester at his word that he would kill my sisters if I told, so I didn’t. I swallowed the experience, and looked for answers elsewhere – which, in my case, meant books.

Being 10, I didn’t check out proper books on sex and sexuality from the public library – instead I stole them from the “free” book exchange that Washoe County offered in the library entrance. I scoured the jackets looking for any mention of sex, which is how I ended up reading “Last Tango in Paris” under the covers with a flashlight in my fourth grade year.

It’s how I learned that men were brutal and rough, and that women loved them despite, and maybe because of, their brutality. That, according to Harlequin and Harrold Robbins, fear was an aphrodisiac, and a bodice-ripping rape was an exciting and bloodless act that turned a faint-hearted girl into a swooning heroine.

When I was violently raped at 13, and left to lay in a puddle of blood, there was still nobody to talk to – I was alone in a repressive world where obedience to authority figures dominated any other consideration. I had already had my share of troubles earlier in the year for failing to tow the line, including a six-week stint at Wittenburg Hall Juvenile Detention Center, for possession of my sister’s boyfriend’s marijuana (I wouldn’t narc then, but I think it’s safe now). In my sixth week at Wittenburg, my jaw was broken in eighteen places and my teeth shattered by Dana Stevenson’s baseball bat. (She thought I stared at her boyfriend. I didn’t even know who he was, and was unlikely to be staring at boys in any case).

I bled for three days after I was raped. I took a lot of baths. I was afraid to look in the mirror. I was scared of what the wound might look like, and I was afraid it would never heal.

There was no one to talk to, but people talked to me.

Joy Pribyl and Marlene Cain were two girls Galen Miller told of his conquest, which is what the rape was in his 17 year-old mind. He was proud to have pinned me down to a boulder and taken my virginity, and he was proud of the blood, which he told them about, apparently with great relish and in detail.

“Like a stuck pig,” Joy chanted.
“Now you won’t think so much of yourself,” Marlene said.
“Fucking slut.”
“Whore.”
“Crybaby.”
“Loser.”
“You deserved it.”

And I wondered, really, if I did. I wondered if reading all those books – seeking them out like I had and devouring their contents – led Galen to stalk and then rape me. Did having all those words and scenes in my head translate into some signal I was subconsciously emitting?

What was it Tom Jones sang? “A woman wears a certain look when she is on the move, and a man always knows what’s on her mind”. Was I that woman? Was I on the move in some way? Were men only reacting to what I had read and learned and had etched into my mind? Even before the age of 10, wasn’t I thinking about things I shouldn’t have been thinking of? What was wrong with me? What did I do to cause this?

I was thirteen then, but I would be tormented by this major mind-fuck until I was in my mid-twenties.

I thought I was alone. I was not, but it would take me — and so many other women of my generation — years to find each other, and in the process, find ourselves.

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America: Dumbed Down, Fattened Up, Porned Out & Pissed Off

Posted on 01/01/2008 by Jane Devin

Sure, it could be blamed on television or movies. It could also be about fast food, preservatives, and hormone-laden chickens. Maybe it’s violent rap music or video games. Overworked, stressed out adults. Over-scheduled or latchkey kids. The end of stickball and street hockey. Not enough vegetables and too many cans of Coca-Cola.It could be any of those things, or. . .it could that my theory is true, and America is suffering from a collective, nearly all-inclusive depression. Of course, one of the hallmarks of depression is that people who suffer it don’t believe they have it – they invent other reasons for feeling lousy, or are so used to feeling lousy that it almost feels good.

However, an analysis of clinical depression symptoms with the current state of America looks something like this.

Symptoms:

1. Changes in weight. An increased or decreased appetite. Weight gain or weight loss.
2. Impaired thinking and/or concentration. Trouble making decisions.
3. Sleep disturbances. Problems falling asleep or problems waking.
4. Heightened feelings of agitation. Easily annoyed. Irritability, restlessness.
5. Fatigue or sluggishness. Weariness. A lack of physical energy.
6. Depressed mood, with feelings of apathy, helplessness, and hopelessness.
7. Loss of interest in sex, changes in sexual functioning.

America:

1. Growing steadily obese. 64.5% of us are overweight. 1-5% are anorexic or bulimic.
2. America now ranks 20th in the world for education. We are becoming dumber.
3. Sales of sleep-aids like Ambien have skyrocketed. Starbucks has heavily expanded.
4. Road rage. School shootings. We have become more temperamental.
5. Despite a plethora of health clubs, we’re exercising less and eating more fast food.
6. A high voter turnout in America is 54%. 66% of us call in sick when we’re not.
7. Since 1998, Viagra has been one of the most popular drugs in America.

I think a scientific case might be made for my theory of a collective American meltdown in the last decade, but the empirical evidence by itself is overwhelming.

Stolen Childhoods

In 2001, I was at a grocery store when I saw a sweet grandmotherly woman bend over a stroller to coo at an infant and congratulate the mother. The mother quickly jerked the stroller away and said, “I am teaching him NOT to talk to strangers!”. The child was about six months old. Teaching kids the danger of strangers is appropriate, but making them paranoid, fearful, and anxious is not.

The protection of society’s children is warped. Those who most need protection do not get it, and the public is left with harrowing stories of child abuse and murder. Meanwhile, there are far too many over-coddled children whose parents forgo discipline in favor of a “my child can do no wrong” attitude. When their children act out at school, parents are quick to blame the teachers. While teachers aren’t infallible, it does not help that classroom time is often dominated by children with behavior problems. Teachers cite defensive parents and discipline as two of their major struggles.

At the same time, many public schools have eliminated recess, and any chance for children to expend excess energy, in order to fit more learning into the schedule. Children are being saddled with more and more homework, further cutting into a child’s play time. The average backpack of an elementary school child weighs 13.8 pounds. A 2004 study found that over 64% of middle school children report pain from carrying heavy backpacks.

There has been a 500% increase in the number of ADD/ADHD drugs prescribed to children since 1991. An article published by Education World states, “According to the Congressional Testimony of Terrance Woodworth, a deputy director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the number of prescriptions written for methylphenidate has increased by a factor of five since 1991. About 80 percent of the 11 million prescriptions doctors write for that medication each year treat childhood ADHD, he said. In addition, production of Adderall and Dexedrine, also used to treat ADHD, has risen 2,000 percent in nine years.”

Is it really any wonder that America’s children are becoming overweight couch potatoes who are less interested in learning and more interested in the latest video game release? We have stolen childhood away from them at every turn. We need to give it back to them, complete with free time, family time, the outdoors, and discipline.

All the Rage . . . and the Apathy

Rape is the fastest growing crime in the world, with America still in the lead. The statistics are simply staggering, but perhaps none more so than this — only 2% of perpetrators are convicted. Pedophilia is a rising crime that has actually gained proponents in the academic sector.

While people should be enraged by that, and the often light sentences handed out to rapists and child molesters when they are convicted, many choose to expend their energies elsewhere — like on the highway. In 1999, a prominent Twin Cities anesthesiologist beat up a 68 year old female driver for going too slowly. The case was shocking at the time, but road rage has since become more common. Violence and deaths caused by road rage have risen steadily.

According to Wikipedia, in the 90′s, “gangsta rap” hit the mainstream, and by the early 2000′s, rap music became one of the bestselling music genres in America. Bustin’ caps, shooting your ass, bitches, pimps and ho’s were introduced into the American lexicon, and embraced by a newly ghettoized culture of youth and young adults. A 1996-1997 study found that illicit drugs were mentioned in 63% of rap songs, compared to 10% in other genres. Defenders of rap music claim that the lyrics are fueled by reality — if the reality did not exist, then neither would the violent, misogynistic lyrics. While that may have some grain of truth, the vast popularity of rap music does not match up with the reality of most American lives, black or white, which are not dominated by shootings, crack cocaine, pimps and whores.

That such things became popularized, and that psuedo-gangs have hit the suburbs, might be attributed less to the reality of American lives than to the feelings of hopelessness, frustration, and rage many Americans, particularly young people, seem to feel. Of course, there are plenty of people who also feel apathetic — they are either numb to the world outside of themselves, or disbelieve that anything they might do would have an impact. They keep to themselves, away from the polls, and apathetically go along with the dumbing down they get from corporate-sponsored television and newspapers, while they read fewer and fewer books.

Sex: Just Not That Sexy Anymore

Pornography continues to sell, and is becoming more mainstream. Estimates of porn sales in America range from a conservative estimate of $4 billion dollars up to $15 billion. In any event, the porn business has boomed since 1970, when revenue was estimated at a relatively paltry $5-10 million.

We can now order porn into our living rooms with a subscription to cable or an internet connection. Americans no longer have to sneak out to dark theaters to get their fill of naked, copulating others. There’s freedom in that — and some socio-cultural changes that don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

American women, taking their cue from porn stars, have started shaving or waxing their nether regions to baldness or near baldness. The trend has taken personal grooming into spas and salons, where for $30-$100 women can get themselves trimmed to bikini perfection, shape their pubic hair into a thin stripe, or go all-out and get the front to back, totally bald Brazilian.

“I wouldn’t date a woman who didn’t shave down there,” said one blog commenter, “too gross.” Preferable, it seems, is a woman’s return to labial prepubescence.

While all cosmetic surgery is on the rise, labiaplasty — a particularly painful operation which involves the cutting and restructuring of labial tissues to form a “youthful” appearance — has gone from being a secret of porn stars into the mainstream of female consciousness. Vaginal rejuvenation, a procedure that actually may have some medical merit for women who have prolapsed vaginas, has become a a fashion trend, with many women seeking the surgery only to appease the fantasies of their porn-fed boyfriends and husbands. From Women’s e-News:

Ileana Vasquez is a 29 year-old Southern California housewife with four children. She read about vaginal rejuvenation after she saw an ad in a magazine. Her marriage was in trouble and she noted that her husband wasn’t happy with her sexually.

“One time he had a few beers and told me that because I had all our kids and was looser now he didn’t want me as a woman anymore,” Vasquez said. “He did say he was sorry later on but I knew he was telling the truth.”

Vasquez had the surgery and she noted her marriage is back on track and her sex life is good again. “He’s become my sweetheart again,” she said. “He bought me a house and he wants me all the time.”

Anal sex, which was once reported by Kinsey to be engaged in by 9% of the heterosexual population, is now a growing trend. The CDC has reported that 38.2% of straight men and 32.6% of women now engage in backdoor play. The sales of anal “toys” have increased dramatically in the last decade.

So have porn, waxed parts, and Greek-style lovemaking made America any sexier? Not really. An estimated 25% of American adults, a third of women and a fifth of men, have no interest in sex. Up to 33% of our adult population has gone one year or longer without a sexual partner. Viagra sales have continued to rise since Pfizer introduced the drug in 1998.

Fewer people, it seems, feel adequate anymore. Their bodies and parts don’t match the sexualized images porn has brought them, and they turn towards surgery and drugs to “save” them. Where the Kama Sutra of decades past brought eroticism and imagination to millions of bedrooms, today’s porn is selling Americans on picture-perfect vaginas, silicone enhanced breasts, enormous phalluses, and taking it up the ass.

For millions of Americans, sex just isn’t that sexy anymore.

(to be continued).

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