Column #3 - Read My Lips

I recently discovered I might be out of touch, socially speaking.

Maybe you know the feeling. It begins in your late 30s or early 40s when you walk into a music store and don’t recognize an alarming number of recording artists’ names. You dismiss this situation with lines like, “Well, if I haven’t heard of them, they probably suck, anyway. No big deal.” A few years later, you’re standing in a grocery check-out line, and you see faces on The Star or The Enquirer that are not only completely unfamiliar to you, but also eerily reminiscent of faces from bygone eras. Same perfect features, same marital mishaps. So you think to yourself, “I see a pattern. They aren’t doing anything new, so I don’t need to concern myself with them.”

And then, you find yourself watching less television. Maybe you’re just too busy or maybe your children have taken over control of the set, but life has pre-empted entertainment for you. When people at social gatherings start dropping the names of the popular reality shows, you express a certain level of disdain, thinking these shows are clearly a fad and will be gone soon enough. No need to fill your overburdened brain with their juvenile episodes and ridiculous characters.

That’s where I was about a month ago—at a happy, comfortable distance from most of popular, ephemeral culture. And then I got a story order from a woman who made me realize that the world of social and sexual behavior has taken a serious turn for the worse.

The woman wanted a story for herself—which was remarkable enough, given how few women spend money on themselves for such an “indulgence”—because some time ago, a man she’d been dating made disparaging remarks about the size of her labia and now, she needed a confidence boost to help her get over it.

She went on to say that ever since this idiot’s comment, she’s been shy and awkward during sex, afraid that every man she sleeps with is disappointed with or disgusted by her genitalia.

She keeps hoping to find a man who will find her “problem” sexy, but so far, she hasn’t. She has even considered labiaplasty.

Apparently, women don’t have enough insecurities about their appearance. We aren’t worried enough about the size of our pores, the length of our nails, the freshness of our breath, the size of our bras, or the pubic hair peeking out of our swimsuits. We don’t agonize sufficiently over mid-afternoon shine, frizzies, jiggling arm fat, or tan lines. We need a new superficial concern, and since every other part of our bodies has already come under fire at some point, the only place left to go is between our legs.

Was this the kind of shift in popular culture I’d been missing when I was watching Seinfeld reruns and listening to Frou Frou CDs? Holy crap. Looks like I have some serious catching up to do.

Throughout my adult sexual life, I have never, ever had the misfortune to find a man with the utter gall, the complete insensitivity, or the unabashed stupidity to find fault with my genitalia. That doesn’t mean my privates are flawless, but in the world of clits, pussies, mons, and lips, I and the men I’ve known have generally regarded variety as charming. I’m not talking freakish growths or equipment that ends up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. I mean the normal and frequently interesting variations among women’s bodies that compel most men to want to see us naked. In fact, it had always been my observation that the vast majority of men were so glad to be getting laid that the proportions or sizes or shapes they’d confront were of little to no consequence.

Has that changed? Are more and more men as well as women striving to achieve an impossible level of genital perfection at the expense of enjoying sex? Then stop the world—I want off.

There was a time—and honestly, it wasn’t long ago—when even the plainest woman could take heart in knowing that when she spread her legs for a lover, she instantly became beautiful. She became sexual. She became desirable not because of what she had but because she offered it to some lucky person.

How did we get to this point, where our most essential sexual organs need to conform to some subjective standard of beauty?

I can’t begin to explain how stunned and furious this client’s request made me. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her that one stupid bastard did not represent all men, and that one ill-considered, unjustified, and unsolicited comment should not determine her view of her body or her sexiness.

I make it a practice never to comment or pass judgment on a client’s custom story request. It’s a private matter and I want them to feel that their erotic fantasies are safe with me. But this time, I couldn’t keep my reaction to myself. I told her that there were indeed men who would find her unique labia attractive and that I was also sure she looked perfectly normal. (I told her this because she’d mentioned she’d had many lovers and only one man had made her feel undesirable.)

What I also wanted to tell her was that not only would she find someone who loved it, but maybe she’d get lucky enough to find a man who didn’t care. Maybe she’d find a man who would love whatever she had because he loved her.

And did this guy have a picture-perfect penis? We’ll never know, but I like to think of him now with oozing sores and inexplicable discolorations. I’d also like to tell him that if he wants to fuck a porn star, he can always invest in items like this for the sterile, manufactured experience he craves.

Are we becoming a culture that will ultimately need to find sexual gratification or confidence through fiction? I sincerely hope not. In the case of this client, I was glad to provide her with a story to make her feel better, but incredibly sad that it was necessary.

Sage.
Custom Erotica Source