Nostalgia for some secrecy in sexuality

By Eurydice

I didn’t know if this was true until I made the excursions and observed the matter for myself. I’ve read some personal essays about changing expectation of what once remained unquestioned, unscrutinized, and you could say, untouched.

The idea that this nation, that is, America, is over-hyped with sex, and that it would doom teenagers, young and adorable that they are, gave CNN’s Glenn Beck the raison d’etre to devote an entire hour into investigating such. But I couldn’t care any less. This is America. People investigate what they wished, theorize what they must, and conclude what they already suspected.

I couldn’t care any less the news that a series of vulva photos roamed the internet a few months back, created an international sensation, of Britney Spears and Co., that included Paris Hilton and the bunch. I couldn’t care any less that they would make way to teenagers’ e-mailboxes, linked to their MySpace pages, secretly stash under their virtual beds. No, I couldn’t care any less of the idea that some celebrity photos would somehow damned any portion of the population for years to come.

What I cared for, and this gets under the skins, by looking through Britney’s under-shots, I realized the world most popular ex-Pop queen had little to show for. Labia minora, check. Labia majora, check. Unsurprisingly I wasn’t jealous, but pitied. All of those million dollars a year contracts, all of those publicity and talents, there was zero imagination left for Britney’s denuded blooper. There went her flimsy feminine mystique.

If such happened to a lesser character, it would certainly send a woman into therapy and convince her to take up a burqua. But consider the lost effect—the missing piece, so to speak—these co-called Brazilian wax, once reserved highly for porn-starlets and the Hollywood Kingdom, under the garish orange lights, are now reduplicated between giggling school girls. They are now considered as hindrance to the artistic male gaze, going the way of outdated Darwinian, biological artifacts. After all, what good these bushy, mini jungles do if scientists themselves are baffled over functional theories? They are so 60s, so last century, so backward and primitive, so Yoko Ono, so grandma, out of touch with the current. So not Girl-gone-wild.

Eurydice is a contributing writer for Notebook. This article is her first.