Overthinking the Magic Bra

Sandra and I were shopping for bras in what is still called--in this day and age!-- the "Intimates" department when I saw it: the Maidenform Women's Ultimate Push Up Bra

Have you seen this thing? "Add two cup sizes!" it promises, as well it should, since it seems to contain a small throw pillow's worth of padding in each cup. The bra was pretty ridiculous, really, so we gave it its proper mockery then continued with the special hell that is bra-shopping. [Oh, men, you don't even know! The egregious misstocking, the deciphering of strange terms (is "demi" good or bad?) and the hideous also-rans (I'm talking to you, green pin-striped push-up bra.) It's enough to drive you to the smelling salts, quite honestly.]

After some time (hours? days?) I had gathered a few bras that appeared that they might work (though "gathered" is not nearly a strong enough term for the savage, skillful foraging it took.) Though oddly, as though guided by some sort of unseen force, I kept finding myself circling back to the Ultimate bra. "Oh look," I thought to myself, with a forced casualness that didn't fool me one bit. "It's that ridiculous bra again." In a jump of logic that remains unclear to me even now, I concluded, "Well, may as well try it on."

I did, and well....DAMN! I had huge boobs, insanely inflated porno boobs, boobs that could not be tamed by man nor bra. My bosom, as they say in the romance novels, was swollen. My cups runnethed over. I was like the chick in this photo modeling the bra in question, but...more. Way more. My boobs were so huge, I was unclear on which side of the sexy/comically large divide they fell. "Sandra!" I called to the other dressing rooms. "You must come in here and behold my giant boobs." She looked. "Damn!" she said (as well she should.)

"I don't know...I look...different," I said, hoping Sandra, who knows about such feminine matters, would tell me whether to get it or not. Sandra took charge immediately. "Well, girl, I look different when I'm not wearing make-up--that doesn't mean I don't wear it, " she said definitively. "You Are Getting That Bra."

So I got it. And it sat, unused, in its preternatural perkiness on my dresser. I put it on only two times. Once to show Leah and once to show my husband. "Look at my boobs!" I said. Leah looked. My husband looked. "Damn!" they said.

I liked it. Kind of. I think. I don't know. The bra was becoming... problematic. I just couldn't bring myself to wear it. Was it indeed sexy, or was it just too damn big, borderline silly? Would I feel comfortable showing up to my usual haunts with my suddenly gigantic rack? (It should be noted that I already have a pretty smokin' D cup, but the difference with the magic bra was noticeable, way noticeable.) What if someone started flirting with me just because of my big fake boobs? Would I be irked that they were into something I didn't actually possess? Hey, my eyes are up here, Mr. Big Boob Lover.

And what if you were still dating and wearing this bra? The padding was so flippin' thick--would you even notice when things had gone to, as we used to say, second base? And what about a "home run"? As you flung your bra to the floor, so would go your boobs, piled there on the carpet, still waiting perkily at attention. (Warning: never do your real boobs look so dreadfully inadequate than after taking off the magic bra.)

The magic bra was causing me to overthink. I mean, not that I control the direction of society with my bra choices, but did I really want to be promoting this as what a women's chest should look like? By wearing the bra, in some small--albeit, incredibly busty--way, I would be raising the bar of what a woman's chest was supposed to look like. If my D-cup needed enhancement, what about my C, B and A-cup sisters? Would they be forced to don a completely fabricated chest, similar to those boys' superhero costumes with the build-in foam muscles? Would we one day just all don our blonde-haired, big-boobed, sweetly smiling full-body foam costumes, completely covering our unworthy, misshaped, shameful selves? No, by jingo! I would not be a part of it!

I found the tags and the receipt for the bra. I had to return it--for the Good of Society.

But first I tried it on one more time.

Damn.

xoxo
jill

Addendum: Btw, if you, like some of the commenters below, wish to play your part in bringing down society, you can get the thing--it's full of lies, I tell you!--at a department store like Kohl's or order it via In Bed With Married Women through the link above:

Diagnosis: A Case of Femaleness

I look GOOD. Damn good.

In the past few days, I've hit a perfect storm of media consumption that has spun me into a feminist spiral. So if you're not into wild-eyed ranting, please avert your eyes.

It all started with a friggin' Campfire girl meeting. A high school girl showed a short film she'd made on body image, then in a halting, nervous voice told about her struggles with an eating disorder. By the end, every mother there was in tears. In tears! Because we totally got it. We all had our thing--too fat, too thin, hair too weird, butt too little, butt too big, etc...--that made us so horribly not right.

The next night, I watched a Netflix doc called "Orgasm Inc." It was about how in the past few years, pharmaceutical companies, along with willing shills in the medical community, have popularized the "disease" of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). (Not to be confused with FTD, which provides human females with unattractive flower arrangements).

"I think there is dissatisfaction and perhaps disinterest among a lot of women, but that doesn't mean they have a disease," said Dr. Sandra Leiblum, professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in "Myth of female impotence 'created'" in the BBC News.

Word.

I'm not arguing that some women don't have sexual problems that could be improved medically, but a lot of the FDS "symptoms" are just the way women are. Yes, women can take a long time to come, yes, women can take awhile to get aroused (note: FTD flowers will not speed arousal time), and, yes, women get pissed at their mates which, yeah, fucking does affect desire.

In this study of FDS among women in Lower Egypt:  Marital disharmony, 'hate' and unfavourable socio-economic circumstances were the most common aggravating factors (28.1%) for sexual dysfunction among the participants, followed by pregnancy-related events.

I'm not a doctor, but as far as I know, there is not a pill for curing "unfavourable socio-economic circumstances" and the like. (Although if there were, I would so fucking take it.)

One middle-aged women in Orgasm, Inc., ("middle-aged" = older than me) volunteered to be a guinea pig in some freaky-ass experimental procedure in which electrodes were inserted into her back. Into her back, as in under her skin. Did I mention that this was a totally untested procedure by, for all she knew, a completely iffy doctor?

The implants did nothing for her besides causing her to kick her left leg at random times. (This new trick, while novel and exciting, did not help her sex life.) The creepy invasive procedure did nothing to cure her "problem" which was--oh, dear god--inability to come during intercourse. Not inability to have an orgasm. Not inability to come if someone paid a whit of attention to her clit. No, this woman, raised on the notion that women's sexuality is just like men's--stick in it, pull it out, repeat til orgasm--believed that if she couldn't come from penetration alone, she was "ill."

I so wish she could have read an article like this from RH Reality Check which took special care to state in the very biggest and boldest of fonts:

The majority of women -- according to most studies, at least 70% -- do not and will not reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse or vagina-only stimulation (like "fingering" that's only about vaginal insertion) only.

So yeah, a little testosterone might help you out a bit (I said might--even this isn't certain), but seems to me the best way to alleviate FSD would be to spend a little time on arousal, make sure the female parts that feel pleasure are actually the parts that get stimulated (did I really just have to fucking write that sentence?)...plus a bunch of boring stuff like providing favorable economic conditions for the ladies and whatnot.

What is that? You have more sexual problems, you say? You've suddenly realized that your vag is not completely normal as you'd thought for years and years, but, in fact, hideously ugly and in need of surgical intervention. Don't worry, my ugly little freak, Vaginal Rejuvenation (i.e. plastic surgery for your vag) will fix any and all labia deemed unsightly.

What's sightly and what is not? Well, the highly lucrative Genital Mutilation Vaginal Rejuvenation centers that have popped up in the last few years (Hey....isn't that about the same time you started becoming displeased with your own vag? *shrugs* Weird.) have to find some way to keep the ladies coming in so currently they've determined that "too long" labia are "out." If you go ahead and get them shortened, I sure hope that long labia don't come into vogue because then you'll be bumming, huh?! (See also: The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss).

Check out these before and after Gential Muti Vaginal Rejuvenation photos from one place "helping" women.

Seriously!!!??? Not only did this chick not realize that she had a perfectly fine vag (I think it's a good one, actually, don't you?) but she actually thought it was so heinous that it required surgery--surgery!--to "correct". (Expensive surgery too. When I googled "vaginal rejuvenation" for you, the sponsored link offered a raffle for $1000 off. If they're offering $1000 off, you know that $%$# ain't cheap. Although I have to admit that the concept of a vag. rejuvenation raffle is sort of appealing in its utter wrongness. Coming soon...penile bleaching cake walk.)

Okay.

I would hope that we women would all come to our fucking senses and just...stop it. Realize how totally fine we are and get on with more important things (see above: taking time with and enjoying arousal). At the very least, I can think of about 6 million better ways to spend our time and money than getting friggin' surgery.

However, as it looks now, I think that the only things that's changing is that more men are buying into this crap too with their pec implants, ED drugs, and the like.

My big wish is that one day someone will be lying on an operating table, legs open wide as they watch a surgeon walking toward them eyeing their groin and wielding some sharp pointy thing and the patient ("patient" = "regular person misled by fucked up societal norms") will think, "What the fucking hell am I doing?!?"

And, O, they shall Rise Up and Spread their Enlightenment among the people, who shall toss aside their sense of shame and unworthiness, and be free to rush forth into the forest where they shall fuck freely and joyfully under the dense green canopy of the trees. (Note: future scenario includes ecological renewal, elimination of STDs, and men and women with true knowledge of each other's sexualities. Void where prohibited by law.)

xoxo
jill

P.S. Meanwhile, just yesterday, I paid $45 for a tube of cream that promises to even out skin tone. One of the ingredients "might cause mercury poisoning."

Fuck.

(photo source)

Why I Watch Gay Porn

[note:  I wrote this post in 2011 and it's what converted me to gay porn. Wonder if I agree with anything I wrote?* Also check out my new AlterNet article on my Doc Johnson sex toy factory tour!]

Dear reader Anonymous was slogging through the dangerous back waters of the blog and stumbled across What Is Feminist Porn Anyway?, a post in which I was all hepped up on an artsy porn film, Matinee** because the actors not only seemed to be enjoying sex, but also each other. Wrote Anonymous:

What you qualify here as feminist porn seems to describe quite closely a gay male art/porn film I just saw a preview of. I just think that the thing with most straight porn is that it eroticizes a socially-established power imbalance, ie, I'm a male, I'm gonna stick it into you and you better "ohyeahfuckyeah" enjoy it. Here's the excerpt if the possibility of seeing two guys fucking doesn't turn you off.

I dutifully looked at the link Anon sent, but for the life of me, couldn't find the film. I did however see a frighteningly elongated male nipple, which kind of scared me..

However, I aim to please, so I went to another porn site and watched some gay (male) porn. The first film had two Spanish young men, frolicking about in a big white bed like two little puppies. They were smiling and completely adorable, like those two dudes in Y Tu Mama Tambien, and though they were speaking in Spanish, it was easy to get the idea. I mean, I think we can all figure out what "pene" means.  (hint: not the tubular pasta, though you are on track with the tubular idea.) The film was fun and actually kind of sweet, as porn goes.

The second film was good, too. The plot (the short version): two football players sneak away to the locker room and get it on. The plot (the long version): well....actually that's pretty much the whole story. There were all the usual sexual gymnastics, close-up shots of thrusting genitals, lengthy pene sucking scene, etc... but somehow it was just better than the usual "I'm gonna stick it into you and you better 'ohyeahfuckyeah' enjoy it" mainstream straight porn.

I tried to figure out why, and came up with this list. (Yes, I realize there's nothing like quantifying art in list form to drain it of all its magic, but I think it's interesting/possibly instructive to see how changing just a few tiny details could make porn way more accessible to women, or at least this woman.)

So what made it better was:

1.  The receiver of the pene sucking took a moment, looked down at his sucker, and said, "I've been thinking about this for a long time." "Mmmmm, me too," murmured sucker. BAM! Two lines, and you've got yourself some backstory, and you've indicated that suckee likes sucker at least kinda, and vice versa. I know it's beyond girly of me, but I want the participants to like each other. This is why, if I were a gay man (not to be confused with "If I Were a Rich Man," from Fiddler on the Roof), I would not frequent glory holes.

(Glory holes = holes in the wall of a public place, like a restroom, through which anonymous people--not necessary our dear Anonymous above--insert their genitals, hoping the person in the other stall services them sexually. Unless the person in the other stall is me, in which case I'd shout, "Gah!?!" possibly tossing one of those disposable seat liners over the organ, for sanitary purposes. And I would not want to be confronted with anonymous genitals, I need to know whose genitals they are, why there were there, ad nauseum. I'd peek through the hole and ruin the whole damn thing, possibly putting an eye out in the process.

2.  The lovers would occasionally glance nervously toward the locker room door, making sure no one was coming in. And presto, Suspense! Stakes raised! Forbidden love!

3.  At one point, the two characters looked at each other eagerly and hungrily like, "I am so going to ravish you, you delicious creature." This brief moment established that the characters wanted to be there, were enjoying themselves and had some degree of respect for each other.

I know all of this sounds horribly tedious and un-pornlike. I mean, *yawn*...respect, liking each other, a story...who cares? Get on with the boning! But those things are what make it sexy to me. Or at least something recognizable as human sexual interaction.

The whole "I'm gonna stick it into you and you better 'ohyeahfuckyeah' enjoy it" thing (which, btw, is a GENIUS description, Anonymous) is not recognizable as sex to me. I mean, yeah, they're doing it and all, but it's just so...mean, and dead-eyed and passionless. The men seem like they hate the women and the women, well, who the fuck are these women?

Margaret Cho says that growing up she searched for Asian women in the media to identify with and only came up with the "Here's your ancient Chinese secret" lady from Calgon ads. That sucks, but at least that Calgon lady seemed kind of smart and knew a thing or two about laundry. The chicks in porn, who, presumably, I as a women am supposed to identify with, are...well, some sort of sub-genre of women who are completely foreign to me. Who do you know who gets lured into a car and within 25 seconds is showing her boobs and fingering herself, while giggling inanely? Who wishes to have some hairless blank-eyed frat dude ordering them to suck his dick faster, like some sort of bulging-eyed piston?

And who actually thinks that...

Ugh, listen to me, is it getting too Feminist in here? I'd better open a window and let some air in.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if mainstream porn wants to be a touch more appealing to women (meaning, me) it wouldn't hurt to add some humanity, a smidgen of sensuality, and ditch completely the portrayal of women as dim-witted, creepy, "ohyeahfuckyeah"-ing, fully poseable sex toys. I really don't think the porn maker's give a rat's ass, but I'm putting it out there nonetheless.

Whatever the case, I'm done ranting for today. Maybe.

Tell me what you're into these days.

xoxox
jill

*Sure.
** When I proofread this, I realized I had misspelled the name of the art porn film "Matinee" as "Manatee," which would indeed be a new take on porn.

photo source 

More Nudie Pics Coming. Lesson Not Learned.

Wendy Rose, as Object

I pretty much hate any advice anyone gives me, particularly unsolicited advice. Especially non-praise unsolicited advice.*

That is why I was highly displeased to receive this message from someone named Amy: "Yet another example of drawing in readers with a picture of an objectified woman for an article on sex."

Wow, I could almost hear her judgmental sigh. "Yet another....  SIGH."

After ruminating of a variety of bitchy replies, I finally settled on something more conciliatory:  "Well, I am a woman and I chose it because it spoke to me. Or maybe that's what The Man wants me to think... Anyway thanks for your opinion, Amy."

If you hear any implied snippiness in that last sentence, well, that's because it was there. 

The picture in question was this:

It accompanied a post on a sexless marriage ("Having No Intimacy for 23 Years is Killing Me"). I chose the photo because I liked the visual idea of someone having to store their sexuality away in a box. Also I totally wanted to oppress women.  

Anyway, to her credit, Amy ignored my snippy tone and sent along this note and photo: "I thought you might be interested in this image I created to illustrate the phenomenon I was describing. Food for thought... :)"

(For the record, if you start at the upper left hand corner of the pictures of the women and go clockwise, I've used photos 1 and 3 on this blog.)

I get what she's saying and respect her for questioning what we do and fighting the power and all that, but for me, it wasn't as simple as objectifying women to draw in readers. At least I don't think so. I'm certainly willing to have that conversation. Let me explain and you can decide if I've got Stockholm Syndrome and don't realize it. (Please frame all comments in the form of praise, see above.)

My first point would be that--at least according to sexuality studies--women actually don't respond sexuality to photos of half-clothed hunks. They may say they do, but the goings-on in their vaginas tell a different story. What makes women wet are photos of said men only with a visible hard-on, plus pretty much any other hard-coreish visuals including men giving men blow jobs, women with women, people jerking off, straight-on hetero fucking, even monkeys mating. In other words, everything but the shirtless dude photos. So there's that. 

When I pick a photo a naked woman for this blog it's because I think it is beautiful or evocative or sexy. Generally I am seeing a part of myself in the woman in her pose of rapture or submission or power or bad-assery. I am not thinking "Leer at this lady" but more "Behold this sexuality!" Which, in my mind, is different. It's about owning or claiming or just simply witnessing the desire or adondon or pain or transcendence of that particular sexual moment.

My Muse in this matter was (and is) Wendy Rose, she of Church of the Victorian Cult. Wendy was (and is) the sexiest woman I have ever met in my life. She is gorgeous, for one, like a edgier Ann Margaret, with crazy tousled red hair, insane lips, legs, boobs, all of it. But what is really sexy about her is her crazy-ass brain. She is whip-smart and funny, but operates at a poetic vibrational frequency slightly too wild for Earthbound reality.

Wendy Rose

Here's an excerpt from her Facebook post the other day:  "It's not a rocket science or a mermaids nest or a falling light from the sky or a sphere up there...It's my birth right. A dash of fiction and a dose of truth. It's all living somewhere deep and deeper down inside of you." See? I don't know what the fuck it means, but I love it.

Wendy has impeccable taste in music and fashion and art. When she lived in the apartment above me in LA, her apartment was filled with candles, exotic scents, and possibly one too many cats. But what struck me is that she had surrounded herself with beauty, particularly art depicting the female form.  

To me, it certainly didn't seem like the art was there to do the apartment equivalent of drawing in readers. It was more a celebration of women and sex and beauty. By surrounding herself with these images, Wendy Rose was claiming their power for herself and enhancing and enriching her own sexiness with their silent aura. 

On her Church of the Victorian Cult Facebook page, Wendy Rose is still creating her world of beauty and poetry, madness and inspiration with midnight scribblings and images like this:

I fucking love this! And, it's probably not wise or flattering to admit this--but I can completely identify with the chick (there I go again--oppressive language!) in this photo. I have existed in that psychic/emotional space. I see this and feel it and claim it. This is a Truth and I celebrate it. Huzzah, motherfuckers! 

So yeah, more naked chicks coming. Lesson not learned.

xoxoxo
jill

* I recently took the Martin Seligman "signature strengths" test and my lowest strength--aka "weakness"--was humility. Which, in my opinion, is clearly the best weakness to have. If you want, go over to Seligman's Authentic Happiness/Positive Psychology site and take the test. Long, but interesting and revealing.

Addendum 8/28:  Please see Amy Luna Maderino's response in the comments section.

Addendum 7/13/16:  Rerun for Miss Wendy Rose who is doing some cancer ass-kicking. I'm mad for the woman.  

(Male female image comparison chart by Amy Luna Maderino)

Real Sex Lives: Betty Fokker, "Even I, schooled in feminist thought and the rejection of fat-hating bullshit, wonder why he would ever WANT to fuck me"

(You have arrived in the midst of a grand celebration in which we're running IBWMW's all-time favorite Real Sex Lives.)

Today's guest post comes courtesy of the lovely Betty Fokker, penner of The Stay-at-Home Feminist Mom. (The slogan on her blog-- and just one of the many reasons I love her so--is: Don't try to oppress me with your patriarchal values. It will not go well for you.) 

Betty is hilarious, smart, and takes my breath away with her adept cussing. She is also fat. Oh, don't worry, she'd tell you the same thing herself.  

Now normally, Betty is well aware of how smoking hot she is, and rails against the whole stinkin' fat-hating society, but in the following post, dear Betty briefly succumbs to self doubt. Here she's talking about fat, but I think a lot of chicks could say the same thing about their stupid straight and/or curly hair, freaky pointy ears, or whatever.

(An aside: It took me like an hour to find a decent image (above left) to convey the concept of sexy zaftig womanliness. By contrast, it took me .00000004 seconds to find an image to convey the idea of "lady with big boobies.")

I also like her post because not only does Betty use the term "asshat" with typical aplomb, but she also lays down this sentence: "Even when I walk out of the shower and he pops a boner that you could club a baby seal with, I still wonder if he likes what he sees."

Here now, ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Betty Fokker:

Turns out that almost 1/3 of the women of Britain feel that they are too fat to have sex, and that (strangely!) has a negative effect on their libido. Imagine, if you will, the concept that you loathe your physical self so much you don’t feel you should have sex since some poor male (or female, since the Fokker doesn’t care one way or another who shares your bed. I am not an asshat.) would have to look at your nekkid flesh, and touch your smooshy body. I don’t have to image, considering the fact every time my Sweet Babou wants to tear up the sheets doing a nekkid waltz, I am surprised and bewildered.

Even I, schooled in feminist thought and the rejection of fat-hating bullshit, wonder why he would ever WANT to fuck me. I’m fat, therefore I am undesirable.

I have always, in my heart, operated under the assumption that he loves me so much he is willing to make the sweaty pretzel with me despite the fact I am repulsive to look upon. Moreover, I see that love as a sign of his quality as a superior human, not as a function of my worth. I just feel lucky. Like a lottery winner, not someone who invented the next-big-thing in computers and got rich from my efforts.

I was a well-loved and petted preschooler, so I always had the hope, maybe even the assumption, that I would be a lottery-winner in love one day. After all, I had been loved, so it wasn’t beyond the realm of reality. But as all the cultural messages of my ‘ugliness’ because of my obesity hammered at me for years, I assumed it would be one of those miraculous events – like a reverse beauty and the beast. I dreamed that one day a man would love me in spite of my hideous outward appearance. Which is better than the idea that I would never be loved, I guess, but is still all kinds of Fokked up.

Maybe I would have been more sanguine that Sweet Babou desired me is he had been a chubby-chaser. Then it would have made sense to me why he wanted me. But no, his prior girlfriends could be used to skewer cocktail hors d'oeuvres. So I have always believed, on some level, that loving me was a great sacrifice on his part, done because his heart was pure. All the rumpy-pumpy since we met has failed to convince me otherwise. Even when I walk out of the shower and he pops a boner that you could club a baby seal to death with, I still wonder if he likes what he sees.

This is not what I want to feel. I want to believe, as well as understand, that my fat does not devalue me. I do not believe it devalues others, but I cannot shake that feeling about myself. It makes me all the more determined, as a woman and a mother and a feminist, to fight fat-haters on every front, since this is horrible and I don’t want my daughters or any other woman to ever think of themselves as less because their body is more. Fat–hate and discrimination is BULLSHIT, y’all.

But I still wonder if he secretly thinks I’m yucky.

*****

See also: My Wife's Body by An Anonymous Husband, in which a husband examines this phenomenon from the male point of view.

xoxo
jill

(image source: http://lacontessa.tumblr.com/post/907275831/tamara-de-lempicka-le-modele-1925)