Getting to Know You

3.10.07

Last week's New York Times magazine featured an article about sexual voyeurism on college campuses. Students posing in the nude, simulating sex and sharing erotica now seem as de rigeur as pledging fraternities. What interested me most about the report, though, was the statement that dating now includes meeting someone at a bar, then googling on one's blackberry the person you have just met to find out about them via Myspace or Face Place or some other social search engine. This is very strange to me. You are in the physical presence of someone to whom you feel some sort of attraction or interest (otherwise, why pull out your little PDA) and rather than inquire to the human you are with, you consult the web to find out whether they are a democrat or a green, prefer sushi or salami or have an arrest warrant out on them. Call me old-fashioned, but if I'm that intrigued by someone, I'll at least wait until I get home to look up their bio. The face to face is where we feel the chemistry and that you can never cull from the net.

I'm wondering if we have a generation of youth raised on chat-rooms, text message-ing,i-m-ing, blogging and 24 hour cellphone access who really have little inter-personal skills because they are so used to having a screen between them and the person they are communicating with. Another notice in the article was about how sex is so easily come by with all of our relaxed mores these days. Internet porn and self generated erotica often serve as video wall-paper at young people's parties so there would seem to be little mystery left to this aspect of coupling. Condoms are as easily accessible as shampoo and hook-ing up just another pastime.

So we have generation of horny young people who don't know how to navigate the nuances and vagaries of relationships and romance, yet who can jump into and out of bed with each other as easily as having a cup of coffee. Sex as sport or hobby. But the article also reported, and I have been reading for years now, that this casual attitude towards the whole "friends with benefits" movement leaves everyone, girls especially, feeling untethered, un-fulfilled and confused. There's so much choice on college campuses now that kids don't know what to do, according to one of the co-eds interviewed. How ironic that when all the rules are relaxed, people find it easier to just go home and masturbate. And be photographed doing it.

As a mother of 2 kids, one of whom just now paying attention to the opposite sex, I often think how I wish to counsel them on sexuality. Over the years I have sneaked in various lessons on reproduction and responsiblity in response to their questions or whenever I feel it appropriate to bring the subject up. But I am myself of mixed opinion about the role sex plays now-a-days in relationships, especially as diseaeses run rampant and "safe sex" holds out the promise of fun without the risks. The biologist in me wants to tell them to honor their bodies's signals and understand sex is natural and wonderful and necessary but also risky. The romantic wants to protect their hearts and the hearts of the people they get involved with and hopes they'll curb their urges until they have the maturity with which to deal with all the complexities of sexual congress.

But when do we ever get "mature" when getting sexually involved with someone? How many of us are in mutually sexually satisfying rellationships, no matter what our age? There are no end to articles featuring the sexually "dysfunctional" woman or underserved man, often times married to each other. Some marriages last years and years with either spouse going unsatisfied until one day they walk. What kept them together? Why couldn't they talk until it was too late? Some couples have perfectly matched appetites and others have to negotiate when they have sex or romance or just a few minutes to connect. Relationships change over the years as well with illness, family, finance and life challenges getting in the way of intimacy.

So who's to say a 14 year old with clear motives and needs isn't mature enough to handle what comes so naturally to an adolescent body, when all around them, people of all ages are making "immature" choices in their relationships? Sweden seems to avoid much of the negativity about sexuality by acknowledging its primal role and giving kids information, protection and permission to explore it safely. Is it that simple? Take away the guilt and celebrate safe sex and youth will manage their sexuality in a healthier way than we are now?

I guess it's the romantic or the artist in me that wants it to not be that easy. Or maybe it's really biology that wires us to crave a certain connection with the body we're rubbing up against. For men, sowing their seed freely makes sense on a base, animal level. But for women, on that same level, it's vital to know whose seed has been sown and what investment the sower is making in you and whether he's going to stick around to mow the lawn he's just spawned. And this is where putting a screen in between two mating people makes things mushy. It can create a false sense of knowing someone else, an all too easy intimacy that cannot be real until tested with flesh and sweat and frissons and farts and late night trips to the pharmacy for Pepto-bismal.

If this generation of youth does not learn how to sit with someone and hear the stories that come out of their mouths, look into their eyes as they share the moments that add up to intimacy and hold a hand with sincerity, how can they become lovers in a real world that is not easy, that has sharp points and bad smells and curbs which trip one up? When reality bites, as they say, do they just skedaddle back to MySpace, break up on-line and then crank up the search engine for someone new with a better blog or nicer specs?

I was heartened, however, to read that the erotica being photographed on campus is un-retouched and that the student models are proud of baring their all without Photo-shop. To be unashamed of one's body and one's sexuality is a gift, especially in this guilt ridden and perfection seeking culture. If all of this gadget assisted experimenting with exposure and social intercourse leads us to more comfort with the most driving instinct we humans possess, then I guess it is a good thing. But I admit that I hope when my kids come of sexual age, that it is with a peer group that is better equiped to handle sex and intimacy and relationshps than what I read and hear about now. I think I long for some kind of innocence which seems impossible to retrieve in a culture that blasts us with sex on the one hand but also reminds us of its complications daily, whether it's disease, dysfunction, unplanned pregnancy or unwanted attention and abductions.

I can do my best to model behaviour I hope my kids will value. I can give them the "talks" and the condoms and a safe place to explore their feelings, both physical and emotional. But I cannot give them a world that is simple. I cannot find them well-balanced mates. I cannot prevent mistakes. I cannot make it easy. And there-in lies the wonder and rich-ness of love and desire. For it's the complexities of connections that make a relationship work or not work; it's the different levels of knowing and feeling with and about another that test the bond. If PDA's help get us closer, then so be it; I just hope we all remember to look each other in the eyes now and then and sniff each other out a bit before opening or closing our ever tender hearts.

Barbie vs. Bratz: The Death of Romance?

3.7.07

A recent billboard prompted me to think about this "metrosexual" phenomenon: the idea of men now taking extra care about their looks and fashion, not being gay, but attractive in a way that has been usually associated with women. The Gap ad featured 20-something's looking sweet and lanky, with long hair and quasi feminine features, slightly androgenous. I see these guys all around the neighborhood where I live and the Y, very hip and definitely heterosexual. Sexy but not threatening in any macho kind of way.

I have been thinking about gender roles since a few articles which have looked at teh career savvy Barbie being upstaged by the new doll Bratz who is all about fashion and accoutrements. Bratz are hyper feminine in their features and have no desire to be anything more than desired. They are all the rage with young girls these days. I then think of our pop idols, like Christine Aguillera, Britney, Jessica Simpson and how accentuated their female attributes are and I wonder if this isn't all a back lash to feminism.

I grew up with the 70's movement which put women in padded shoulder suits, corporate boardrooms and space shuttles. We were allowed, and expected, to join the male world and thrive. And we did. But we often did so by adopting male values and mannerisms and politics in order to compete and get ahead in our patriarchal society. So then comes Madonna and Victoria's Secret and Frederick's of Hollywood delivered to your front door.

And artificial insemination, men earning less than their wives, John Bly workshops. Male stars and superheros are no longer the strong silent John Wayne type, but the suave, sensitive kind. So I"m wondering if, with women in control of their reproduction and their paychecks and their remote controls, men are no longer serving teh purpose they used to in relationships? Have couples mutated into co-habiting economic units with traditional gender roles tossed aside in deference to whatever works to propagate teh species? If women can drive fork-lifts and men can nurse, then does it really matter how either dresses, who orgasms first, when the dishes get done and by whom?

Current fashion where I live stresses the reveal of feminine attributes with tight midriff revealing shirts, low slung hip hugging jeans, pelvis arching high heels, super pouty colagen enhanced lips and lots of floofy hair. Men on the other hand wear baggy everything, as if to hide whatever stuff they used to be made of. Women and girls look idealized whereas men look lost.

These fashion shifts coupled with our de-sensitization to sex in the media, in politics, in high school bathrooms, begs the question, whatever happened to dating, to romance, to nuance? it's so easy to hook-up, have friends with benefits, i-chat, text message, e-mail, or match.com one's way to relationship bliss, do we no longer need, or want, the reality of getting to know a person in teh flesh? When so much flesh is so easiliy and quickly revealed do we get distracted by desire or is it really cutting to the chase? Sex is, after all, the twin driver (to power) in all social interactions, so maybe we're just being "real" in this age of instant gratification under the shadow of potential global annihilation by terrorist of globally warmed terra cota landscapes.

I am reading The Well of Loneliness, written in the 1920's, about a young girl learning she is lesbian and how she struggles to find and keep true love. There are no details of her sexual exploration, as authors of that time would be banned for penning anything under a skirt. But the longing, the anguish, the confusion that comes with love and its passionate expression is so beautifully written; the story is timeless. And all the more erotic for what it does not describe.

So women expose more, erect poles in their garages for 'exercise', demand equal pay and sexual gratification and where are men these days? Getting pedicures and highlights and GQ. Is this a shift towards a more feminine society? Will feminine design ever take precedent in politics or will women continue to morph into male paradigms to keep their jobs? As we navigate new roles, can their be any mystery left between the sexes as we share bathrooms and sex manuals and Quicken accounts? With TV baring all, what's left to imagine as newly bonded couples, of any orientation, enter into marriage or unions of convenience? What purpose does romance serve when safe sex can get you where you really want to go, without the effort of dating? If women are as powerful as men, why do we still yearn for our knights on some base level? And why do our skate-boarding dudes still lech after the Britney look alikes.

Barbie had it all, looks, a job, kids and Ken. What do Bratz have? Chinese Laundry shoes, shiny slick lips and attitude. When I see a 50 year old Barbie in the locker room at the Y I feel proud. These truculent 20 year old, snide, sassy mouthed young babes with no manners leave me cold. I may envy their youthful bodies, but not their myopia. At mid-life, I wonder what they will have to be proud of that isn't silicon injected or credit-card purchased. Who will their Ken's be? And will there be anything left to explore, when they've all "been there, done that?"

Al, Agape & Albee

3.1.07

I did something I've never done before this Sunday. I willingly went to church. I haven't had the intention of finding religion or praying or worshipping in any particular way, although many years ago I felt the need for some spirituatl guidance, but chose rather to lie out one night under the vast Virginia sky on the eve of the Harmonic Convergence and swore I heard a voice telling me what to do from the firmament. But I was desparate for a sign back then, and would have stepped on a porcupine and interpreted it as a message to tread more lightly in life. This recent invitation to attend Agape (which means unconditional love) came from a mother I know from school, or rather her co-worker who mentioned that she was a member during a financial management pitch she was giving Michael and me. It was an aside but happened to come on the heels of me reading about The Secret (or the Law of Attraction) and feeling open to whatever the universe and collective unconscious has put in my in-box. So I went and weathered the crowds at this now fashionable non-denominational church since Oprah had interviewed Reverend Michael Beckwith on her show about the new movement. Many young, vibrant, smiling faces, culturally and ethinically mixed gathered in a huge corporate park's meeting hall for a fairly traditional kind of service with a choir, ushers, collection baskets and charismatic preacher. His sermon begs us to be true to oursleves, to not live in boxes of what others expect of us, to listen to our hearts and go forth with open arms and receive. It was warm and I felt I had found a place of kindred souls.

Then Al Gore wins an Oscar for best documentary and suddenly the Right is on his case for using more electricty and fossil fuels to rail against global warming and I am confused. Why are they raining on his parade here, especially after our administration has finally, grudgingly admited that he is actually correct in his concerns about our impact on the environment, a cause he has championed for consistently all of his life. Could it be that he is being feted at a moment when our cronies in DC are being seriously challenged for all of their mistakes and wrong-minded policies in Iraq and elsehwhere? At a time when Iran in rattling nuclear intent and Korea it's own plutonium sabers? Seems that it's much easier to attack someone else for their successes than accept one's own failures.

Last night we saw Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and I was again struck by the message of how dangerous self-revelation can be and how much easier and fun it is to put down our loved ones rather than look inside and speak our own truths. This couple lives a life of lies: Martha's disappointment and disillusionment with George's lack of ambition and inability to fulfill her desire for his professional path to validate her existance is a mask for her own deep despair at never having a child. George's blythely playing along with her harping so that he can avoid looking at his inability to write his great novel. Their invited guests for the evening's alcoholic romp and psychological rape, force their hosts to reveal and acknowledge their absolute need and devotion to each other, under the boozing and brilliant banter.

The need for unconditional love drives us to distraction and destruction. Our fear of abandoment makes us lash out and put down, deny and de-rail. Politics, Art & Religion. All mechanisms by which we try to answer this basic human need we have to control our environments, whether physical, personal or psychological so we can feel safe. And when the other (the state or the spouse) does not answer that need, we ask questions. We manipulate. We machinate. We try to re-shuffle the pieces and make it work. But what we need to do is look within and do interior repairs. We spend billions around the world ostensibly trying to make the world economically or strategically safe, while ignoring our own blights and poverties. Our arrogant altruisms are so thinly veiled it really takes a Borat to wake us up. And then of course we have to slap him with lawsuits because we don't like what he shows us. We have to call Gore a hypocrite because he happens to be right. We go to church to have someone else give us permission to be whoever we are meant to be.

My first "class" at work graduated this week and shared their successes after 6 months at looking at their lives and how they managed to don hundreds of pounds over the years. I don't know how many will carry and use these insights long enough after their surgically induced weight loss to find a new equilibrium with their new selves. The statistics are not too good 4-5 years out. We are so hard-wired to stay with what we are accustomed to. So even with new bodies, their minds may not be changed. I can only hope that somewhere along the way they wake up to a mirror which reflects back their truths. And that they can go out in the world and be met and loved for who they really are. For if we truly know, love and accept ourselves then we are not clawing down others to gain higher ground. We can cultivate our gardens, wherever they lie, on mountain tops, in verdant valleys or fallow fields. We can make mulch, not war.