The move from what was largely seen as “anti-sex” feminism in the 70’s to “sex-positive” feminism from the 80’s/90’s/now has been wonderful for a lot of women who felt marginalized by feminists who seemed to see sex as part of the problem, but I feel like the culture at large has now embraced on the most superficial parts of that message—the parts that can be twisted and made into ways for selling things to men.

In popular culture, to be a “sex-positive” feminist woman means to practice pole dancing and bedazzle your vagina and totally enjoy mainstream pornography. Which is great—there are many women who are feminists who felt marginalized by mainstream feminist movements that said that porn & sex & things like S&M were the enemy and that a real feminist should avoid those things. But now there is this weird push to make it seem like you aren’t quite feminist/free/fun enough if you aren’t performing your sexuality as much as possible. From the description of this video, it sounds like this girl was embarrassed by not being into this guy videotaping her—she felt like it was somehow her fault if she didn’t want to pout & moan for the camera. The description of her “switching on” to porn-mode after the guy shames her (“loosen up!”) seems so apt and sad to me. I see this all the time in girls’ facebook pictures & whenever I am flipping through reality shows during my infrequent hotel visits (cable!).

…Think about movies & TV—My-So-Called-Life, for example, which had two sexually active teenage girls: one who had sex for all the wrong reasons, and another, the prom-queen-straight-A-student, who didn’t suffer any dire consequences for sex and seemed to be enjoying herself. Angela, the main character, was actually thoughtful about the subject, and pulled in all sorts of directions like everybody is at 15, but the show directly addresses that pressure to perform for boys & makes it clear that sex is only satisfying when the power dynamic isn’t one person demanding and the other person performing. Are there any current tv shows that do this? I don’t really watch much tv, so I might be out of the loop here.

Plus, here is a crappy movie that I love anyway, Reality Bites. Think of the two female characters here, Winona Rider and Jeneane Garafalo. I totally wanted to be these two women when I was 15. Jeneane Garafalo played an actual adult woman who had lots of sex and wore glasses and had tattoos and had awesome bangs & vintage outfits. Winona Ryder was adorable, with her short hair & her wardrobe of sacky dresses & men’s shirts that you would never see in a romantic comedy anymore. If that movie was made now, Jeanine Garafalo would be made to lose thirty pounds and Winona Ryder would have enormous extensions. It’s not a perfect movie (ugh douchy-yet-hot-Ehtan-Hawke-pre-skeletor-face), but it felt so refreshing—these were people who looked like actual people I knew or wanted to know. Maybe I’m too nostalgic about the 90’s, but it felt like a time when things were opening up for women in popular culture in terms of how they could present themselves sexually. They were defining what was “sexy” on their own. It makes me crazy that 20 years after a whole wave of interesting female artists, musicians, and actresses going fairly mainstream, people were still shocked and disgusted when Amanda Palmer had the audacity to not shave her armpits at the Golden Globes. I mean, fucking really—have we regressed so far? There are tons of amazing female musicians, actors, and artists, but you don’t really see them in popular culture very often anymore, I don’t think. I went way off track here.

Anyways, I wish there was space in popular culture for women to by sexy without the problematic power-dynamics of these new definitions of what “embracing your sexuality” means. Damn, this is way longer than I thought it would be. Plus, I could be wrong about everything because I’m old and don’t know what you kids are up to. But I do miss people being able to have flaws.