Constance Daley's Blog - Posts Tagged "classics"
My Favorite Writer
I studied the Classics at university. I share that in my biography on my webpage and author page on Amazon because I think it's important to know about me. I understand that many people consider the Classics a dull course of study, but they couldn't be more wrong. Sex is everywhere in the Classics. Sex is everywhere in human culture throughout all of history.
I have read of many erotica writers coming to the field from reading the Marquis de Sade, or Pauline Reage, or even Anne Rice. It seems that most smut writers come to the field through other smut writers, through writers of fiction. This was not the case for me. And I didn't come to it through the Classics either. Well, not exactly at least.
My favorite writer, and my personal hero, is Camille Paglia. I admire her for a number of reasons, foremost amongst them that she is not an ideologue. She does not allow politics or culture to force beliefs on her. She evaluates everything in the context of her own belief system and proceeds from there. Reading her books is a fascinating process of discovery because you can never anticipate her opinion on any given subject, but you know it will be intellectually and personally honest.
But the main thing I love about Paglia, the thing that endears her to me so much, is that she has always believed that there is nothing inherently wrong with being sexualized. I don't mean being sexy, I mean being sexualized. She has traced the history of the sexualization of females throughout history and reached the conclusion that there is no inherent disgrace in it.
Growing up, I always wanted to be sexy, even if it was only my own concept of sexy. But the media has waged a war against being sexy. We are taught that fashion magazines are destroying young women by giving them a false image of beauty, that a proper goal for a woman is have a career. We are taught by society that a woman baring her midriff at the mall looks like a slut, and that there is such a thing as a skirt being too short. There isn't. Some women look perfectly fine in the shortest skirt you can imagine, and some do not. Instead of worrying about what others are wearing, we should be worrying about ourselves.
Reading Camille Paglia taught me that nothing a woman wears changes who she is, that clothes can be an expressive commodity. Despite all protestations to the contrary, women in this day and age dress to impress other women, not men. They do this because other women will think badly of them if they don't. Women are oppressing women.
If you go to my website, you will find pictures of me that are probably best described as cheesecake. Some women, upon seeing them, might think badly of me. They might not like me parading my body around. I don't care what these women think. I like my body. I like my looks. I have no problem sharing them with the world. For some reason there are likely those who think it is appropriate for a woman to share her deepest fantasies with the world through writing, but not okay to show a little cleavage. I find that ridiculous. I embrace the idea of sexual personae as Paglia wrote of it, and I like being able to be all of those personae in one. I can be a tramp. I can be a mother. I can be anything and everything.
That is an incredibly valuable lesson to learn.
I have read of many erotica writers coming to the field from reading the Marquis de Sade, or Pauline Reage, or even Anne Rice. It seems that most smut writers come to the field through other smut writers, through writers of fiction. This was not the case for me. And I didn't come to it through the Classics either. Well, not exactly at least.
My favorite writer, and my personal hero, is Camille Paglia. I admire her for a number of reasons, foremost amongst them that she is not an ideologue. She does not allow politics or culture to force beliefs on her. She evaluates everything in the context of her own belief system and proceeds from there. Reading her books is a fascinating process of discovery because you can never anticipate her opinion on any given subject, but you know it will be intellectually and personally honest.
But the main thing I love about Paglia, the thing that endears her to me so much, is that she has always believed that there is nothing inherently wrong with being sexualized. I don't mean being sexy, I mean being sexualized. She has traced the history of the sexualization of females throughout history and reached the conclusion that there is no inherent disgrace in it.
Growing up, I always wanted to be sexy, even if it was only my own concept of sexy. But the media has waged a war against being sexy. We are taught that fashion magazines are destroying young women by giving them a false image of beauty, that a proper goal for a woman is have a career. We are taught by society that a woman baring her midriff at the mall looks like a slut, and that there is such a thing as a skirt being too short. There isn't. Some women look perfectly fine in the shortest skirt you can imagine, and some do not. Instead of worrying about what others are wearing, we should be worrying about ourselves.
Reading Camille Paglia taught me that nothing a woman wears changes who she is, that clothes can be an expressive commodity. Despite all protestations to the contrary, women in this day and age dress to impress other women, not men. They do this because other women will think badly of them if they don't. Women are oppressing women.
If you go to my website, you will find pictures of me that are probably best described as cheesecake. Some women, upon seeing them, might think badly of me. They might not like me parading my body around. I don't care what these women think. I like my body. I like my looks. I have no problem sharing them with the world. For some reason there are likely those who think it is appropriate for a woman to share her deepest fantasies with the world through writing, but not okay to show a little cleavage. I find that ridiculous. I embrace the idea of sexual personae as Paglia wrote of it, and I like being able to be all of those personae in one. I can be a tramp. I can be a mother. I can be anything and everything.
That is an incredibly valuable lesson to learn.
