#promiscuities

[theprofessorofdesire]

[thestarswillwhisper]

The young girl’s lust for space comes at the same moment her culture tells her that her developing body puts her in danger whenever she roams “too far.” She experiences at once an expansion of her desire for physical freedom and a contraction of her chances of gratifying it. (In fact, child development specialists tell us that, at almost every age, boys have a larger allowable range of movement than girls do.) Because of the new dangers that awaited us in the form of “bad men” of all kinds, we were at once obsessed by physical freedom and fearful of it. We needed space so badly. When we discovered that, if we went with boys, space would open up for us, we found, to our surprise, that we needed boys. And yet boys were part of the danger. Thus, our balance of power with boys was thrown off. This inequity regarding moving fast into the world was the first real lesson I had about the inequities between men and women: We needed boys more than they needed us. We were more scared of them physically than they were of us. If we chose not to go with them, we couldn’t go at all. But they were always free to choose to go without us.

Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities

[theprofessorofdesire]

[theprofessorofdesire]

[somedaymaybeblog]

Promiscuities

I wrote Some Girl (the short film I'm currently producing) in the VCC screenwriting class a couple of years ago, which I always recommend to

[thestarswillwhisper]

Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities

[thestarswillwhisper]

The woman’s sexiness, when it wasn’t a mystery, was often a thing or a single attribute. The message was that we had to be wanted in order to be allowed to want.

Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities

[thestarswillwhisper]

Barbie taught us a lot—sometimes more than we wanted to know. Her posture showed us that being sexual meant being immobile. It meant: walk on your toes, bust out, limbs rigid. Barbie would flash the white of her teeth, cock her head, swivel on her torso, half raise her smooth arm, but she could say nothing. For Barbie had no conceivable character or inner life. Barbie’s breasts and clothes seemed to blunt her personality. In Barbie’s life, events were merely excuses for ensembles. Her story could really go nowhere. Which meant, perhaps, that once we got over the excitement of getting provocatively dressed and then undressed, our story would go nowhere. We were fixated on Barbie, but we also despised her. The secret game in countless American basements and playrooms involved (and still does, I am told) little girls doing bad things to Barbie. Sometimes we would make her take positions that were ludicrous or that looked painful. Other times, we would pop her head off the rounded stump of her neck. While this was a nice, French Revolution sort of vengeance, it also scared us. It was scary because even when you held her body in one hand and her head in the other, nothing seemed much changed. After all, she had been made up of parts to start with. Even when fully assembled, she wasn’t whole. Her hands didn’t grasp, her feet didn’t walk, her face had no expression.

Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities