Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (5 page)

But it’s not just young women in school who are getting the shaft when it comes to masturbation. Women of all ages are discouraged from taking matters into their own hands. This is not to say that women only masturbate with battery-operated aids, but I think it’s telling that pretty much anything that vibrates (and is therefore fun for the ladies) is outlawed in eight states. Seriously—Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, Alabama, and Colorado all have “anti-erotic massager” laws. Something tells me these states don’t have a similar ban on Lubriderm and
Playboy
.

A woman in Texas was even arrested last year for daring to throw a “Passion Party.”
¹⁵
(Kind of like a Tupperware party, but with naughty stuff.) Arrested! Apparently, in Texas you can sell vibrators, but only if you sell them as “novelties” or “gag gifts.” Selling them in a way that admits their actual role in sex is the illegal part. You know, because girls masturbating should be funny, not real. Then, of course, there are the ladies who don’t partake because they’ve internalized the same sentiment that these bullshit laws enforce. This just makes me sad. Did they fall for the vaginas-are-gross thing? Didn’t they ever get the hand-mirror lesson?

Please, ladies—if this is you—hop to it! Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you any step-by-step instructions; I’ll leave that to the sexperts. I will, however, highly encourage some serious self-loving. Shit, it helps you go to sleep; it helps you know your body and be better in bed; it even motivates you to buy fun vibrators that are neon or shaped like rabbits.
Oh yeah—and it gives you orgasms. Do you really need any more convincing?

I really couldn’t resist writing something about oral sex. Yes, I know it’s just one specific sex act and there are tons more, blah, blah, blah. But there is something about oral sex that really has people all riled up lately (especially when it comes to teen sex). Not to mention that sex is so often talked about in terms of penis/vagina intercourse that folks seem to forget that 1. not everyone is straight, and 2. penetration isn’t the end-all for women when it comes to sex.

There is also something really interesting to me about the different reactions men have to oral sex. There are the guys who love to give it (treat them well) and can’t get enough, guys who will do it as some sort of obligatory rest stop on the way to intercourse, and the guys who are so grossed out by pussy, you have to wonder what went wrong. But what I find particularly interesting about oral is that when it comes to teens and oral sex, it’s always shown as girls who are sucking dick left and right with no reciprocation in sight. This myth is used all the time to highlight how girls are being victimized by the supposedly sexually lax attitude in pop culture.

The truth? A September 2005 sex survey of young women showed that the give-and-take when it comes to going down is pretty much equal between guys and girls.
¹⁶
So there!

It’s not exactly news that pop culture is all sex all the time. But it’s not just “sex”—it’s us girls. Pop culture sex is sugar and spice, tits and ass. Sexuality itself seems to be defined as distinctly female in our culture. After all, while billboards and magazine ads may feature a ripped guy from time to time, it’s mostly women who make up what sexy is supposed to be.

And it’s not just sexy—it’s straight-up sex. Pop culture is becoming increasingly “pornified.”
¹
As pornography becomes more culturally acceptable, and the more we’re inundated with sexual messages—most of which are targeted at younger women—the more hardcore these messages become. Yes, I know, sex sells and always has. But do you think that twenty years ago little girls would be taking
Playboy
pencil
cases to school, or that teen girls would be vying to take their tops off for little more than a moment of “fame”?

Some feminists argue that this increased acceptance of “raunch culture”
²
by young women is detrimental and a kind of faux empowerment—and they certainly make valid points. After all, selling a commercialized sexuality to women—one that’s overwhelmingly targeted toward getting just the guys off—as a way to be “liberated” is pretty lame.

But I think that while the fast-growing focus on sexuality certainly has the potential to be dangerous for young women, it’s not necessarily all bad. What is bad is that young women seem to be confronted with too few choices and too many wagging fingers. Do I think that plucking and waxing, stripping and sucking is inherently feminist? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s inherently wrong or unfeminist either. We’re all trapped by the limiting version of sexuality that’s put out there—a sexuality that caters almost exclusively to men. And we do the best we can. What irks me is the assumption that any decision young women make is wrong or uninformed.

If we don’t approve of the porn culture that tells us our only value is in our ability to be sexy, we’re prudes. If we accept it and embrace it, we’re sluts. There’s no middle ground to be seen. Sound familiar?

What it comes down to is that people don’t trust young women. Sure, we make mistakes. I’ve made plenty. But chastising younger women and telling us that we’re making bad decisions isn’t helpful. What’s important is that we try to understand
why
we’re making the decisions we do and how they’re related to what we see around us. Like, do we
really
want to flash our boobs (and if so, cool), or are we doing it out of some fucked-up desire to please someone else? Just saying.

Obviously, a huge part of all this is what is expected of young women sexually—that’s what pop culture is built on in a tremendous way. And unfortunately, that expectation is kind of like a big old fake orgasm—it’s all performance for the sake of the other person, and it often ends up making the real thing harder to get in the end.

That said, I do have faith that younger women can look at pop culture and analyze it in a way that’s positive. We may not be able to escape the porn/pop culture ridiculousness, but we can try to use it to create a more reality-based sexuality for ourselves.

It’s pretty well established that girls want to be considered hot. I mean, when you’re brought up to think that your hotness
quotient is pretty much your entire worth, that shit becomes pretty damn important. Don’t get me wrong, I think wanting to be desired is a really understandable thing. Who doesn’t want to be wanted? The problem is
who
defines “hot”—and therefore desirability. Hint: It’s not women.

Unattainable beauty standards for women aren’t a new thing. Magazines, TV shows, and movies have been shoving a certain kind of woman down our throats for decades. White, skinny waist, big boobs, long legs, full lips, great hair—a conglomeration of body parts put together to create the “perfect” woman we’re all supposed to be. And if we’re not, we’re scorned. Nothing worse than being the ugly girl, right?

But it’s not just looks that make you “hot”—beauty standards are a whole other conversation. It’s being accessible—to men, in particular. To be truly hot in this never-never land of tits and ass, we have to be constantly available—to be looked at, touched, and fucked. Sounds harsh, I know, but it’s true. We’re only as hot as our willingness to put on a show for guys.

And the “show” is everywhere. In magazines like
Maxim
and
Playboy
. And in the insanity of
Girls Gone Wild,
with teens putting on fake lesbian make-out sessions so guys will think they’re hot. We’re on display—everywhere. We couldn’t escape it if we wanted to. (And maybe some of us don’t. More on this later.)

Hot and available is everywhere.
Maxim
magazine—kind of like
Playboy
with more clothes—is the number-one
best-selling men’s magazine in the nation.
Maxim
not only puts out an annual “hot list” (just in case you forgot how you don’t measure up), but also has a VH1 special and is in talks to start
Maxim
hotels and lounges.

Playboy
is even worse. All you have to do is go to the local mall to see how normalized
Playboy
has become in American culture. Teens buy
Playboy
shirts before they even have boobs. The E! channel has a reality show,
The Girls Next Door,
based on the lives of several
Playboy
Bunnies who are also magazine founder Hugh Hefner’s live-in “girlfriends.” MTV has even featured teenagers getting plastic surgery in order to look like (and be)
Playboy
Bunnies. And again—
Playboy
pencil cases. ’Nuff said.

But there’s probably no better example of Porn Gone Wild in pop culture than the ubiquitous
Girls Gone Wild (GGW)
. What started as voyeuristic porn lite—girls flashing their boobs to cameras during Mardi Gras and spring break—is now an empire. The company that owns
GGW
claims $40 million in yearly sales, and the founder, Joe Francis, has said he’s working on a film,
GGW
ocean cruises, a clothing line, and a restaurant chain (I’m imagining Hooters Gone Wild).

When people think of the way porn culture has oozed into the mainstream in recent years,
Girls Gone Wild
is usually the first thing to come up. After all,
GGW
is where porn meets real life—you don’t have to be a porn star to be in one of its videos. You just have to be willing.

I remember the first time I saw one of
GGW’
s late-night commercials, featuring girls lifting their shirts to reveal
Mardi Gras beads and little else—maybe a
GGW
logo across their nipples. (Classy, right?) This was back when the girls featured were still largely unaware that their images would be used to make up a tit montage. I mean, really, these were girls who were “caught” on camera in a drunken moment—not girls who sought out the camera breasts first. I felt bad for them; I even recognized a couple of girls. I had gone to Tulane University in New Orleans my freshman year of college; my classmates’ getting drunk and flashing on Bourbon Street wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary. And while tourists were around and there were the occasional camera flashes, I don’t think anyone figured their momentary drunk exhibitionism would be forever captured on film to be sold on a mass scale.

But now girls are lining up to be part of
Girls Gone Wild
—flashing their breasts (and more), masturbating, and having girl-on-girl action, all for fifteen minutes of fame and maybe a
Girls Gone Wild
hat or thong. I’m not going to lie—this bothers the shit out of me. I mean, why in the world would you potentially ruin the rest of your life just so—for a minute—some guy thinks you’re hot?

Ariel Levy, who wrote the popular
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture,
argues that a new generation of feminists (ahem) is objectifying ourselves and each other by participating in things like
GGW
.

You see, Levy is part of a group of feminist thinkers who aren’t too pleased with some of the theory coming from younger feminists—some of whom say that things like sex
work or stripping can be empowering, because it’s subversive or because hey, it’s fun. We’re making the choice to participate; therefore, it’s powerful. But Levy says that the joke is on us, and that we’re really just fooling ourselves.

Maybe.

I understand why
GGW
is so controversial (or
Maxim
and
Playboy,
for that matter). And like I said, it really fucking bothers me. But the assumption that
all
girls who enjoy the “show” are stupid or being fooled bothers me just as much. Not to mention that for a lot of women, developing a sexual identity is a process.

In response to Levy’s book, Jennifer Baumgardner, third-wave feminist icon and coauthor of
Manifesta,
brought up a supergood point that I think resonates with a lot of women.

Ain’t that the truth. I’ve had more than a couple of embarrassing moments in my life and sexual history—but isn’t that what makes us who we are? Do we really have to be on point and thinking politics
all
the time? Sometimes doing silly, disempowering, sexually vapid things when you’re young is just part of getting to the good stuff.