The guy I went to prom with called me a waste the day I came out to him. He looked me in the eye and said this with a smile on his face as if it what he were proud of what he just said. This wasn’t the last time something like this had ever been said to me. On multiple occasions I have been called “selfish”, “unfair”, and “a waste” by a number of men because of my sexual orientation. And on every one of these occasions I ask them all the same question, “Why?”. Continue reading
sexuality
Do These Pants Make My Ass Look Bisexual?
Why does what I’m wearing define my sexual orientation? I’m a 22-year old female, and I often change the way I dress, even on a day-to-day basis. I may feel like wearing a tight skirt, heels, make-up, and jewelry and shaving my legs on Monday. On Tuesday I might wear sweatpants and a T-shirt and throw my hair in a messy bun, and on Wednesday I may wear a baggy pair of guy’s jeans with paint stains on them, a tank top, and skater shoes but do my hair in a cute way. I enjoy dressing in any way that makes me feel comfortable, and I usually do.
But recently, I got a girlfriend, and even though I dress the same way I’ve always dressed, with my same unique style I’ve always had, I’ve heard some interesting comments, even from people that I know care about me and aren’t trying to be offensive. But if I’m dressed up (and meet society’s beauty standards) I’ll hear people say things like “Are you really a lesbian?” or “I don’t understand how you’re gay” and when I dress down, or “more like a guy” I hear “You’re such a lesbian.”
And I’m not even a lesbian! I’m bisexual!
I feel as though society often judges people as being gay or straight based on what they’re wearing. A recent conversation with my (straight, male) roommates went like this:
Roommate 1: “What are you wearing?”
Me: “Jeans.”
Roommate 2: “She has a girlfriend, she can wear what she wants.”
Roommate 1: “She’s only half-gay.”
Me: “What does that have to do with it?”
Roommate 1: “Well sometimes you dress like the straight half.”
First off, I consider myself a hundred percent gay and a hundred percent straight, and I hate it when people call me “half gay.” It’s not like I find women attractive half the time; I find attractive PEOPLE attractive ALL the time. Second, how come I can only wear “whatever I want” because I have a girlfriend? It’s not like my girlfriend dresses me. Could I wear girls’ jeans if I was a lesbian? Could I wear guys’ jeans if I was straight? Why are my roommates only saying things now? Don’t the same rules apply now as when I was single? Or am I “more gay” when I have a girlfriend?
It’s also weird to me that clothes can make you look gay (“He’s totally gay, look at his pants.” “I can’t tell if he’s gay or if he just dresses really well…” “She looks like a dyke in those pants.”) or even make you look straight (“Can you believe he’s gay? He dresses so straight!”) but I have never heard of clothes making you look bisexual. If bisexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are all valid sexual orientations, why don’t our clothes make us look bisexual? Where can I buy pants that make me look like I date boys and girls?
Virgin are we?
So I’ll definitely put myself out there I am a virgin and I am 22 years old. And yes I am waiting till marriage. That being said I am tired of the, what seems to me, random depictions of virgins. In the movies usually the virgin is one prophetess or religious deity like in the movies Immortal and Conan the Barbarian. Or people in generally think that all virgins are prudish, stuck up, extra conservative, and hyper religious. It’s as if within the push for the feminist movement that means that have as much sex as you please and make the choice to have sex. What if you do not make that choice are you then against feminism. I thought the whole point of feminism is to respect women and the choices they make with their bodies (themselves). But more so it is lets show the men we can have as much sex as they can. I personally am not interested. It is as self there are two different secs the women who chose to wait and rock purity rings and the women who engage in sexual intercourse looking down on those that don’t. Of course I know that this goes both ways. But I feel as if women need to know that both options are viable and for this to happen sexual education needs to occur. Sex is everywhere and women are constantly being pressured to engage in something they might not be ready to yet. So where is the dialogue for those who want to wait and those who do not.
I think it is equally annoying to have certain body movements legitimatized by bodies who have sex and those that don’t. Just because I can wind and swirl my hips a certain way doesn’t then mean I have sex. Or if I can’t dance for anything doesn’t mean I am a prude. We create so many binary for ourselves that it is difficult to claim to be a feminist is daunting if as a part of that it means you have a body that participates in sexual intercourse. And to add on to that if you are any other ‘color’ than white your body is then hyper sexualized and expected to participate in sex. And if you are not that you are linked to being a prude. And fyi a prude means “a person who is excessively proper or modest in speech, conduct, dress, etc.” It comes from the french word meaning “worthy or respectable women”. But we take words and add our own derogation connotation to them and look down on the people that fit the altered rhetoric of the word. Lets change our words and connotations or words. In thus doing we change the frame of our world.
Everybody Say, “Baby Bump!!!”
Baby, oh, baby, show us a woman who still thinks style has to suffer during pregnancy, and it’s a pretty safe bet that she hasn’t been keeping an eye on red carpet mamas.
Best Dressed Baby Bumps
The quotation above was taken from this slideshow over at youbeauty.com. When I stumbled upon this slideshow, I was pretty shocked. Hollywood portrays its pregnant celebrities in interesting ways. Hollywood is constantly checking female celebrity’s bodies for “baby bumps” at the slightest appearance of a bulge. That one extra cupcake at a party or that extra french fry could potentially be a baby bump. After a celebrity has finally announced an official pregnancy, before or after they are actually ready to announce it, eyes are constantly on the tummy.
Of course, pregnant superstars cannot let their bodies or their fashion sense slide during pregnancy. Their body is still supposed to look like one of a superstar. The only piece of the body allowed to grow is the belly. The rest of the body is still as sexualized as it was before. Red carpet commentators drool over that motherly glow and growing tummy. Even with the growing bump, these women are supposed to dress to make the public comfortable, not themselves. Instead of maternity sweatpants, pregnant stars instead wear maternity gowns that accentuate the bump for all of the world to take part in her pregnancy.
Superstar bodies are constantly on display, even during pregnancy. Talk about the laboring body! I can only imagine how uncomfortable pregnancy is by itself. Adding on paparazzi cameras, heels, a drapey gown, and keeping a stellar body is way too much! Having a body that is constantly on public display, being praised and criticized, must be a big stress on famous women. What do you think?
Between Sexes/ Between Species: The Politics of Isabella Rossellini’s “Green Porno” and “Seduce Me”
Debates over nature and sexuality have become, recently especially, a frequent affair in mainstream U.S. political discourse. U.S. presidential candidate Rick Santorum attracted a wave of controversy from the mainstream center left for his equation of homosexuality with bestiality, the subtext being of course that attraction to one’s own sex is inherently “against nature.” Reproduction-centered sexuality and heterosexual familial relations are, according to adherents of this position, the foundation of a functioning society. Contemporary queer theorists not only take issue with the assumption of a universal “natural” normative sexuality but critique the entire imperative of reproduction and future-oriented sexualities in favor of a politics of immediacy and contingency. Identities exist within a complex social network, and a variety of genders and sexualities emerge from that network. The critical response to people like Santorum rests on the reality of socialization, of complexity, of difference, multitude, and contingency, and diverges from the language of hegemony employed by Santorum to approach the debate from an entirely different epistemological framework.
Isabella Rossellini’s video series, both “Green Porno” and the similar “Seduce Me” cleverly re-opens this discourse, and reinscribes the question of nature in polemic opposition to its appropriation by crusaders for heteronormativity. The video depicts the head of Rossellini in the bodies of various animals, and explores (in a scientifically accurate manner) the ways in which their many bodies do sexuality, and the way the “nature” of a body changes the nature of sexuality. Normative conceptions of sex are, as Rossellini displays, impossible to impose outside of the limited reach of their own discourse and the limited bodily representations they encompass.
Rossellini’s fun, absurd, cleverly stylized and narrated series depicts a variety of modes of animal embodiment and sexuality. The female bedbug’s lack of genitalia, the self-cloning sexuality of the earthworm, parthenogenetic (virgin birthing) insects…Rossellini employs a perverse, ironic perspective, herself appearing as an absurd and disorienting hybrid of animal and narrator. Breaking down these normative relations, which are “by nature” hierarchical, Rossellini brings the viewer into a world of heterogeneity, absurdity, and bodily difference and multiplicity—the absurd world of nature in stark contrast to the hegemonic narratives of monoamorous, heterosexual embodiment parading as self-evident natural law.
The “Green Porno” and “Seduce Me” series can be found at http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/
Unruly Bodies 