Liz Everly's Blog, page 80

Take One Pill and Call Him Now: Are We Down with ‘Female Viagra’?

Dr. Feelgood says to call it flibanserin.

Are they still calling it the “female Viagra”? Yes. Is there still way too much hand-wringing and lip-quivering over the very idea of restoring the female sex drive for otherwise healthy women? Yes. But now flibanserin has full FDA approval. Yes! To celebrate, I’m republishing my original post on this groundbreaking drug.

By Alexa Day

My book, Illicit Impulse, is built on a “what if.”

I’d learned about the bonding hormone, oxytocin, which operates in a woman’s brain to create feelings of attachment to her sex partners. That seemed like a massive biological screw job to me. What if a woman didn’t want to feel attachment to her partner? What if she just wanted him for the night or the weekend? What if she wanted to evaluate him solely on his performance between the sheets?

What if she could take a pill to prevent the oxytocin bond from forming?

Well, I’m no scientist. But as a writer, if I can’t make an oxytocin suppressant, I can sure as hell make one up. And in my glorious ego-driven world, I quietly hoped that someone would create the oxytocin suppressant for real and change the world of casual sex forever, and you know, a girl can dream.

Last week’s news that an advisory committee suggested FDA approval for a little pink pill nicknamed “the female Viagra” briefly encouraged me. Western medicine doesn’t have a great track record with regard to women’s sexuality, and I honestly think the FDA would be happier if women would just stop complaining about whatever problems trouble us in bed. So this should be great news, right?

I thought so at first. But now I’m not so sure.

Let’s start with that nickname. I will leave aside my issue with its being derivative — as if we can only understand this within the context of Viagra. Let’s also remember that Viagra is already for women: women have taken it for quite some time to address low sexual desire. My larger concern is that Viagra and flibanserin actually do two totally different things.

Viagra treats erectile dysfunction by addressing the the actual biological architecture of the erection. It treats blood flow to the penis. To my knowledge, Viagra isn’t really about sexual desire — it’s about the ability to act on sexual desire.

Flibanserin treats low sexual desire (hypoactive sexual desire disorder). Vast numbers of women are troubled by the fact that they don’t experience sexual desire as much as they used to — or at all. We have any number of alternatives to address the biological ability to act on sexual desire, some of which are more effective than others. This drug aims to restore desire itself, the intoxicating blend of power and hunger and anticipation, and it can only do so by working with the brain’s chemistry.

If you don’t want to wait on the FDA, there’s always Impulse. Sure, it’s still being tested, but it gets the job done.

I’m not a scientist. You would laugh at my nightmarish welter of research notes for Illicit Impulse. But my presumption is that adjusting neurochemistry to reconstruct desire is more complicated than reconstructing the ability to act on that desire. The FDA’s advisory committee seems to agree, but they’re okay to move ahead anyway.

I think I’m okay with that, too.

I’ve read about the medical professionals who, until now, had nothing to offer patients who lived with low sexual desire. I know that doctors will work with those women to prescribe the drug responsibly. Most importantly, I know that we can only find answers if we move forward.

So I’m cautiously optimistic about this new drug. I just wish the media would stop referring to it as ‘the female Viagra.’

Is this a giant step for womankind? Let us know what’s up (heyo?) in the comments.

And follow Lady Smut. We won’t let you down (ha ha, heyo!).

Sexy Saturday Round-up

Hello, Sexy! Welcome to your Saturday. We’ve been scouring the Internets looking for the best posts to bring to your weekend. Enjoy!

From Liz Everly:

How to Make Me Come (an incredible blog!)

The Right Way to Dominate Your Man

Not Liking Casual Sex

From Elizabeth Shore:

Your breasts are perfectly normal. Who knew!

The unwritten “fat girl” rules – and how one author blew them to smithereens.

Henry Cavill: Super Spy.

From Madeline:

Love me some gingham prints! From WE WOMEN: 30 ways to rock the gingham print trend.

OMG. Horrible people committed to photo-shopping plus sized women.  Blerg!

Have we posted this before? Mindy Kaling guide to killer confidence. 

We are not broken: Asexual people speak out against asexual characters in pop-culture.

Booyah! Two women pass the Army Ranger qualifying course. 

This woman has the world’s most scientifically beautiful face?

 

 

 

 

The Joy of Food Porn

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Food porn. I love the way those two words sound together, and what they represent, both the glossy, mouth-watering food photography worthy of Pinterest or Instagram, and those images’ more literary counterparts. I don’t have as much experience with actually XXX video food porn, but that’s its own niche. Unlike, say, terms like “real estate porn,” which I tend to find a perversion of the word “porn,” I make an exception for “food porn” because I find an undeniable sensualness to it, a link to the reasons we consume erotic materials and food.

I love to write about food in my erotica and assign my students the task. Why? Because food is familiar; we all have to eat, and, like sex, most of us have highly specific preferences about what kinds of food we desire, how we want them prepared, and our preferred locales for eating them. Plus, we use our mouths to eat, and to kiss, and to lick, suck, swallow. Also like sex, we use all our senses when we eat, playing off the visual cues as well as our memories of what it was like to eat a particular food. Food erotica can make us hungry for both sex and our next meal, and combining the two can be taboo, exciting or add a different dimension to our smut.

Food itself is often funny, whether we’re grossed out by someone’s eating habits, intrigued, or simply amazed. Food erotica scenarios abound: the close quarters of a food truck, a vegetarian wooing a carnivore, lovers introducing each other to rare delicacies, comparing pain tolerance in BDSM with how spicy you can take your meals, sneaking food we aren’t “supposed” to eat—I could go on and on. While yes, there are some people who are blasé about food, seeing it as little more than an obligation of sustenance, many others are passionate about their food favorites. Witness the scene in Chef, when Carl Casper, played by Jon Favreau, goes apeshit on a critic who dared to criticize his molten chocolate lava cake, berating him in front of a roomful of diners, which then goes viral on YouTube.

We’re all one Michele Bachmann corn dog photo away from a sexy food moment, intentional or not, if you look at our comestibles in the right light. I mean, if someone wrote good pea guacamole erotica, I’d totally read it, because it’s already a meme that’s been poked fun of umpteen times, but not, to my knowledge, properly fetishized.

I’ve found restaurants to be one of my favorite places to set erotica, again because of the familiarity factor. Plus, eating in a restaurant automatically ups any hint of food play, even the offering of a spoonful of a rich, creamy dessert, a level of exhibitionism you won’t necessarily find at home. I played that up in my story “I’ll Have What She’s Having” in the anthology Exposure, about a woman who’s paid to sit in a restaurant window and eat in a sexy manner, told from the point of view of the restaurant owner who hires her. Who wouldn’t love that job? Here’s a snippet:

What Pam did was eat her meal with more gusto and sex appeal than I’d ever witnessed anyone consume anything. She had a serene glamour to her, and each bite of every single dish was savored obsessively, in the manner of a true foodie, with her eyes closed, her head tilted slightly, like the food was taking her to another planet, or maybe another dimension. She wasn’t so much ignoring Brad as giving every ounce of her attention over to the meal. The chef in me was riveted, and the man in me was very, very aroused.

  I wasn’t the only one staring. Brad, who I’d later meet, eventually gave up on his danish as Pam gave a performance that would’ve gotten Meg Ryan replaced on the set of When Harry Met Sally. Her sleek black bob shimmered in the light playing off her pale skin, her eyes were closed and her head tilted back so we could practically see the food being swallowed. A quick survey of the room proved that many other diners had found their afternoon’s entertainment, right in front of them, at no extra cost.

As a reader, I love food erotica that takes me somewhere new and different, especially with a food—or beverage—I consume every day. That’s why I was eager to devour the new Circlet Press anthology Coffee: Hot, even though science fiction and fantasy erotica are not my usual reading materials (I tend to be too literal-minded to be able to properly indulge other worlds). But as a die hard coffee drinker, I was curious to see the sensual heights these authors took my beloved beverage, and they didn’t disappoint, especially “Dark Roast” by Justin Josh, about a gorlon on a spaceship with magic tentacles that produce a coffee-like liquid that makes the narrator willing to submit to its erotic torments to get it:

It began to lightly spank my ass. I trembled with ecstasy. The pleasure was getting stronger and stronger. I needed a release! But it was in total control. When would it let me come?

  Suddenly it maneuvered me slightly and I felt a tentacle enter my mouth. No, it was one of the boils. It was squirting coffee down my throat. I guzzled the liquid gratefully. It coursed through my entire body, heightening my already dizzying state of bliss.

At the same time, the gorlon began to work my body even harder. I could feel it fucking my ass back and forth, while two tentacles held my hips, rocking them. It kept my cock tightly gripped in its lips, bringing me right to the brink of climax and keeping me captive there.

(I do have to point out that the story has one of the funniest typos I’ve ever seen, which should offer you a powerful reminder of the power of proofreading: “Suddenly I felt it envelope my cock.”)

In my family, amongst my friends, and in my relationship, food is a major topic of discussion. What I’m eating, what I’m planning to eat, new ways to prepare dishes, unusual ingredients, are all daily fodder, which means I’m constantly surrounded by story ideas. One of my favorites, “French Fried,” was inspired by a friend telling me about a scene she witnessed in Paris, of a woman eating french fries from a plate with a flame beneath it to keep them perfectly warm. There was something so charming about that image, to me, so elegant and devoted to the art of the fry, that I turned it the story that appears in Best Lesbian Romance 2012:

“Sit, sil vous plais. Share?” Her English is halting, but lovely, the words striking tones you just don’t hear in the States. I nod, staring at her, soaking her in, from the round arches of her eyebrows, to the fine black pencil lining her brown eyes, the lashes lush, the cheeks rosy. She is staring at me intently, and only breaks the stare to lift a fry with her fingers and hold it out to my lips. “Open,” she says, and I do; I couldn’t have done otherwise.

  The fry is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s warm and perfectly cooked through, salty, with a hint of some kind of spice. But what heats my mouth even more is the way Veronique is looking at me. Her eyes are taking in my entire face, wide, trusting, seeking, and her are red and beautiful. One someone else the color might look overbearing, a vamp on the prowl, but on her it manages to look both innocent and seductive. I’m not afraid of her in the least, nor of her hungry eyes just waiting to devour me like I am doing to the fries. The fork lingers between her perfectly manicured fingers, but she puts it down, then picks up another fry and runs it along my lower lip. I dart out my tongue, teasing the fry, running my tongue up its length, licking the salt off.

I’d venture there’s no food a good writer can’t bring to life in erotica. Our tastes in food are subjective, but the ability to convey why a particular food, whether it’s a beloved dessert, a familiar aphrodisiac or an often-reviled vegetable, turns a character on. Is it the food itself, or the person preparing—or wielding—it? Does the mere sight of that food make the character blush and squirm? In my upcoming anthology Dirty Dates, in my story “Admitting It Is The First Step,” I turn a woman playing up the phallic nature of sausages into a public D/s scene. Food porn has endless possibilities, which is what I most treasure about it.

What foods have you written—or read—about in erotica? Is there any food that’s too out there for you to ever think about in a sexy way?

Amy Schumer Is Dirty Girly Fun

by Madeline Iva

Amy Schumer sprang into my awareness when her show INSIDE AMY SCHUMER was on Hulu.  I was watching it a little at a time, savoring it the way you save your Easter candy, and then suddenly one day all the episodes were bumped up to the subscriber level (i.e. no longer free) Nooooooo! I was horrified.  The next time they made her comedy available for free on Hulu I  gobbled up every available episode like someone binging on chocolate covered potato chips.

She is dirty — so dirty.  Yet there’s definitely a feminist component to what she does.  And this is where her comedy gets so subversive, because I’m not sure most feminists are so totally comfortable with dirty sexy stuff in the same way Amy is. She is all about calling out ugly sexism in our culture.  Yes, it’s still there, and it’s still undeniably mean, and her interest in sex is wound up in it all.

Unlike someone, *cough* Kristen Stewart *cough* who whines about how hard it is to be supremely famous in sexist hollywood and have millions worshipping you, Amy makes yummy lemonade with her Hollywood lemons.  We laugh, are horrified, then shocked, and then we laugh again. Her point of view is so candid, and so female, that her material seems entirely fresh–even though she is merely canvassing the ass-hat hurdles that women have to jump over all the time.

However, Amy is also all about the joke being all on her.  The horrors of L.A.’s superficial super-culture are brought out by her dissecting how grotesque and fat and ugly she feels in the city.  The goes for her interactions with celebrities.  She speaks the chubby-woman’s truth to power about it all.

The other part of her comedian’s axe has to do with her slutty-McSlutty side.  She owns the mistakes she’s committed in the past.  Is it just insecurity that has led her into degrading (yet true and real) situations with men? Who knows.  She doesn’t analyze, she merely shares the moments where she’s left her self-esteem in the toilet, flushed it, and watched it clog up the drain.  I’ve known girls and women who’ve been in similar situations and like a captain going down with the ship, done things that keep them wide awake at night amidst the wreckage of their pride, but of course all these stories are so much fun to hear.  Amy Schumer’s sexual misadventures have that same wince factor and more.  The can’t-look-away-car-crash compelling force of her stories reveal no feminist dogma — she doesn’t slap a coat of pretty on her comedy.  Maybe this is what true stand up comedy is: the shocking and the true delivered with a side of excellent timing.  Joan Rivers laughed at herself, but she seems to have bought the cool-aid.  One always gets the sense with Amy Schumer that when she talks about how she doesn’t fit in with L.A. super skinny’s that it’s really their problem. She will put on the mask and say ‘oh i’m so repulsive and fat’ but we kinda get the impression that she really doesn’t care. We rarely get this kind of comedy via someone like us. By violating every woman-code of politeness and lady-like behavior, she reveals women as the sometimes innocent looking yet blunt and sexually motivated people we really are.

Yet fame has struck her with such massive blinding force, it’s going to be interesting to see how things progress with her career.  A part of me finds it hard to match up the composed and confident celebrity we see in interviews with the sincere female insecurities she marches out for our pleasure.  By wearing these insecurities on her sleeve, perhaps her bravery is what keeps her chin up and her lunch down while she’s being feted across our nation.  She speaks for millions of women who see gender experiences from all sides: the feminist, the girly, the dirty, and the grovelingly insecure. At the same time, she’s willing to shoot arrows into any target that comes along.

All hail Amy! She’s sorta my new hero.

All hail you readers — follow us at Lady Smut and subscribe!

Silver Fox Smackdown: Sam Elliot vs Sean Connery

By Elizabeth Shore

So, there I am, sitting around the table at my weekly critique group, eating chips and jabbering away about who knows what. (We’d not yet begun the critiquing portion of the evening’s festivities). Unexpectedly, Sam Elliot’s name came up and it triggered a respose like Pavlov’s dog. Drooling. Slobbering. We may well have started barking. Every woman emitted a lustful, longing sigh. “He’s soooo hot,” one of my fellow critiquers said, her voice all breathy. “He IS,” another one agreed. “Even if he is, like, eighty years old.”

For the record, Sam’s only 71. But happily for us all, his career is going through a renaissance of sorts. He’s appeared in no less than three indie films this year and one of them, Grandma, which opens Friday, already has some critics clamoring for an Oscar nomination.

A co-worker to whom I’d mentioned my conversation about Sam Elliot called him the “ultimate cowboy.” And ya know, he’s right about that. Sam is definitely the ultimate cowboy. He’s also steamy, smokin’, burn-my-brain-just-thinking-about-him HOT. As a recent New York Times article pointed out, Sam “weakens the knees of female fans.” Despite his septuagenarian status, he’s one fine silver fox, and one after whom – as fellow Lady Smut blogger Rachel Kramer Bussel put it – we ladies are indeed lusting.

Yet try this on for size: when I told my work colleague that a fellow writer declared Sam Elliot has taken over Sean Connery’s place as sexiest senior, the response was nothing less than indignant. “No way!” he exclaimed. “No way can anyone take Sean Connery’s place.” Or … can they?

There’s no doubt Sean Connery turns heads. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2000 and thus officially known as Sir Sean Connery, he oozes sex appeal like a maple tree oozes sap – thick and sweet and delicious. Many say he’s the best 007 ever, and when he was 69 People magazine declared him “Sexiest Man of the Century.” He’s got the looks, the height, and that bone melting brogue. Even now, on the cusp of turning 85 years old, Sir Sean’s got it going on. But hmmm, sexier than Sam? Methinks we’ve got the beginnings of a rumble.

In a way, though, this smackdown is really comparing apples to oranges. Cookies to cake. If you like the cowboy/biker/military type, Sam’s your man. If you prefer polished, dapper, manly sophistication, you probably veer toward Sir Sean. How can we really declare one hotter than the other?

Ah, heck. Who cares if it’s fair! Let the smackdown begin. Sean or Sam? Sam or Sean? Which guy stirs you up and leaves you shaking? State your case below and be sure to follow us at Lady Smut. We love stirring the pot.

 

 

 

Beautiful Scotland

by C. Margery Kempe

I am madly hitting deadlines and packing up to change countries again (alas) so in meanwhile here are some photos to let you see what I’ll be missing.

I’ve Been Had! Book Betrayals: Who’s at Fault?

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

It’s no secret that several of us here at Lady Smut are huge fangrrls of author Cara McKenna. A quick search of our achieves will pop up multiple posts on her and her books. I re-read McKenna’s Hard Time and After Hours this week and, as per usual, as soon as I finished, I immediately wanted to start each one all over again. Instead, given it was already midnight, I downloaded a novella prequel to McKenna’s Desert Dogs romantic suspense series, Drive it Deep. It was a good, relatively quick bite that gave me a taste for the rest of the series…right up until I got to the end.

From here on in, there will be some mild spoilers for Drive it Deep and the Desert Dogs series, a series I have not yet read except for this novella. Carry on at your own risk.

Drive it Deep is about Jeremiah Church, local rancher, and Raina Harper, local bar owner, two people who have known each other their whole lives and have only now, in their early 30s, discovered an electric passion they proceed to explore quite successfully. Friends to lovers is one of my favorite Romancelandia tropes so I happily dove into the sexy story. They fall in love and are momentarily happy, but they have a deep divide that seemingly can’t be conquered: Jeremiah ultimately wants a wife and family to carry on his family’s ranching legacy while Raina has absolutely, 100%, zero interest in ever being a mother. (I’m simplifying things here, but that’s the gist.)

Click image to buy.

But this is a romance novel, so I read on, expecting somewhere along the line to have them find a solution given how much they’d already confessed to loving one another. In general, romance novels come with the expectation that the relationship issues will be resolved by the end into an HEA (happily ever after) or at least an HFN (happily for now). Imagine my surprise when I reached the end of Jeremiah and Raina’s point-of-no-return argument and the novella ended, relationship conflict left unresolved.

OK, I thought. No big deal. I’ll do a quick Amazon search and see which of the novels in the series continues Jeremiah and Raina’s story. Maybe it’s even the one I already have in my TBR pile. Well, I found Raina’s book, Give It All, only, according to the back cover copy, Jeremiah is not her hero.

What the hell?! I invested in these people. I waded through their angst with the expectation that they’d eventually resolve it, perhaps in the midst of some ongoing suspense plot in a full-length novel. I was pissed. It felt like McKenna had jumped up and down on my Kindle for Android shouting “Psyche!” Any desire I had to read Raina’s story immediately dried up. What other carpets might similarly get whipped out from under my proverbial feet? Plus, having established, in great detail, how good Raina and Jeremiah are together, the bar a different hero has to clear to be worthy of Raina’s forever love is high. Like, skyscraper high. Ditto that for Jeremiah.

Honestly? I’m still pissed.

Prequel novellas and/or short stories are often used to set up a series or a full-length novel as they turn what would have been potentially ponderous back story into its own story (often at a lower price point). Roxanne St. Claire’s wrote a (free) short story Taken to the Edge as a prequel to the first novel in her Guardian Angelino’s series, Edge of Sight, that highlighted the first, steamy hookup of the hero and heroine–back story, successfully dramatized. Readers were then able to plunge into the novel already fully vested in seeing these two crazy kids resolve their issues over approximately 100,000 words. Not so the case in Drive it Deep.

Click on image to buy.

And yet, one could reasonably imagine McKenna saying, “why would you think that?” It’s not like she didn’t warn me in the telling. The setup of Raina and Jeremiah’s core conflict is clear and detailed. Neither one of them can budge from their convictions without seriously compromising who they are at their core and no romance love story involves either party betraying themselves for the other. The idea is for them to make each other better, not worse. Ultimately, no matter how much they may love one another, for Raina and Jeremiah to pursue a permanent relationship in spite of their conflict would eventually leave one or both of them deeply unhappy. And yes, hi there real life, sometimes love isn’t enough.  But hel-lo? Romance novel! Gimme the happy, dammit!

McKenna’s apparent bait and switch made me think of Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooter series. In Flashpoint, Brockmann introduced readers to Lawrence Decker and Sophia. (Sidebar: Flashpoint is a great book, part of a wave of fantastic Troubleshooter novels that made it my crack romantic suspense series back in the day.) Undercover in a (fictional) closed Islamic state that’s been struck by a cataclysmic natural disaster, Decker “meets” Sophia through a charged, complicated, sexual interaction loaded with dubious consent and capped by her attempt to kill him. Their immediate situation is resolved by the end of the book, but their emotional conflict continues through at least two more books of the series. Ultimately, both Decker and Sophia’s forever loves are not each other, a “betrayal” I, as a reader, felt deeply having waited for “their book” only to find it was not about them getting together at all. (There’s a deeper discussion to be had here about what an author does or does not “owe” their readers, especially when it comes to series and fan-favorite characters whose story resolution may or may not go as desired. I touched on it a bit in another post featuring the Brockmann book that put me on the breakup path in Which Came First, The Writer or the Reader?)

Brockmann’s response to the significant reader outrage over this development was a puzzled one: Given the circumstances of that first interaction between Decker and Sophia, especially the lack of consent issues that could categorize the occasion as at least rape-adjacent if not full out rape proper, why would any reader have expected them to be each other’s forever love? 

Click on image to buy.

I have to concede this is a good point and apply it to Drive it Deep: Why would I expect Jeremiah and Raina to resolve such a fundamental difference in their life and family goals when those desires were patently in opposition to one another? Because it’s a romance novel! There is an implicit contract between writer and reader in Romancelandia–there *will* be a happy ending of some kind between the hero and heroine. And therein lies the issue: In both McKenna’s novella and Brockmann’s book, the mistake is in assuming these pairings are the hero and heroine (a mistake easily made in Drive it Deep given they are the protagonists of the story). Readers have been trained, especially when it comes to long-term series, to identify sequel bait characters, secondary heroes and heroines primed for their turn at above the title billing. When that expectation isn’t met, well, if hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, imagine an industry almost exclusively made up by female consumers who are all feeling mightily put out. Duck and cover, man. Duck and cover.

Back to Drive it Deep. I still feel like I’ve been had and this has, at least for now, negatively influenced my desire to continue reading about Raina and Jeremiah. (As mentioned above, I broke up with Brockmann years ago, despite my deep, deep love for the [early] Troubleshooter series novels, and this was partially influence by the Decker/Sophia thang.) Yet, the assumptions made were all mine as were the expectations based on 30 years of romance novel-reading experience. McKenna wrote the book she had planned; she always knew Raina and Jeremiah weren’t meant for one another. As a writer, I can see the advantage to setting a ripple through a reader’s expectations, especially when the resolution novel that does presumably give both characters their expected HEA/HFNs is already available. But as a reader and lover of romance novels–well, I’m still pissed.

Have you ever felt “had” by a romance novel or novella where the ending didn’t give you the expected HEA/HFN? Where do you think lies the implicit contract between romance writer and reader for that happy resolution? Is the sense of an author’s bait-and-switch more acceptable in a prequel novella when the character find his/her happy ending in an upcoming novel? Is it really a “betrayal” of reader expectations when the signs of that unexpected ending are retrospectively clearly developed?

Follow Lady Smut. We excel at exceeding expectations.

 

Apocalypse, Nah: Why Dating Will Survive Tinder

 

In MY day, we swiped one of these babies! And we LIKED it!
(This image was made by Loadmaster (David R. Tribble).)

By Alexa Day

I underwent a brief experiment with Tinder some time ago as research for a presentation I made at a Girls’ Night Out event. I’d never been on Tinder before, although I had a decent idea what to expect, and although nothing truly unpleasant happened (by which I mean that I received neither dick pic nor vulgar message), I don’t feel the need to return to Tinder. I don’t have any strong feelings for or against it, I suppose. It just is.

I am aware of confusion regarding the actual purpose of Tinder, though. I don’t understand how it can be confusing. It uses your Facebook profile to put you into the pool of users active at the same time in the same area, and then you swipe right if you’re interested in them and left if you’re not. There’s just not very much to Tinder. How confusing can it possibly be?

I suspect the disconnect lies with people who think of Tinder as a dating app. Don’t misunderstand me — I do know people who are actually dating the people they meet on Tinder. But these success stories do not transform Tinder into a relationship app, unless we are willing to radically redefine the words “dating” and “relationship.”

Vanity Fair recently released an article linking Tinder to the “Dating Apocalypse.” I was intrigued, especially after my thankfully brief experience with Tinder, so I went to check it out.

The story held few surprises. A group of guys brags about the number of Tinder-facilitated hookups they’ve had. Women express their varying degrees of disappointment with the hookups, including a fairly high incidence of erectile dysfunction one might not expect from twentysomething-year-old men. None of it makes Tinder feel like a pleasant experience. Its most successful users are those … well … reptilian guys, and women don’t seem to speak fondly of it at all. Tinder had a bit of a corporate Twitter freakout following the article. I guess they didn’t get the memo about not responding to unfavorable reviews.

But is Tinder responsible for a “Dating Apocalypse”? I have to say no. Tinder cannot be responsible for a “Dating Apocalypse” because Tinder has little to do with dating. To say that Tinder threatens dating is like saying that fast food is a threat to steakhouses.

I think dating is going to survive Tinder for a couple of reasons.

First, I think enough people understand that Tinder is not about dating. Dating is about more than swiping one way or the other as fast as one can. It’s a time-consuming process that involves a surprising amount of intellect and emotion, but people interested in dating don’t mind the investment. Well, not much. In short, people who want to actually date other people are probably seeking out other resources to get that taken care of. At least, I hope they are.

Secondly, I think the people who just want to engage in the venerable sport of Hit It and Quit It are perfectly happy with Tinder and apps like it, so they’re avoiding the dating scene altogether. That’s good news, too. I personally couldn’t get past the whole personal safety/Stranger Danger thing, but I’m not going to get in anyone’s way, either.

In between these two groups of people, however, there lies a third faction of folks who think Tinder is representative of the current state of romantic relationships. Among their concerns about the world of dating: the upsurge in vulgar, sexual, overly familiar texts from people they’ve just met. I understand their worry. How many times can you get a text that invites you to “come over and sit on my face” before you decide something is wrong with the world in general?

Let’s go one question further, though.

Why does this person feel comfortable sending a text inviting a total stranger to “come over and sit on my face”?

Because at some point, a woman responded by coming over to sit on his face.

Put simply, this conduct persists because at some point, it worked.

None of this requires us to buy into that system. If we want dating to continue, all we have to do is continue dating. If we don’t want to get caught up in the cycle of #ByeFelipe messages, all we have to do is be more judicious with our contact info.

The system won’t work perfectly at first. Felipe is going to get through every so often. But with a little persistence and a lot of patience, we can keep our corner of the world safe for dating. Apocalypse never.

How we rid dating of its own particular set of annoyances is another topic entirely.

Are you following Lady Smut? We’ll swipe right for you. Promise.

Sexy Saturday Round Up

Hello Lady Smut Kittens!

Time for another Sexy Saturday Round Up. We’re brushing the sand from our bikinis and tap-taping on our keyboards to find you delicious links for your weekend enjoyment.  Take another sip of that margarita and enjoy…

From Madeline:

Is sex-ed dead? Funny man John Oliver has some issues with our American educational system when it comes to teaching little ones about sex.

Ready? Set? ORGY! A Toronto sex party for the disabled — oh Canada!

WHAT was going on? Sex, death, and an HOA scandal rock Las Vegas — even the FBI had to be called in when things got seriously out of control.

From the Frisky: Ever heard of the “breast nest”? 

From Ask Men: Ten things a guy should know how to do with his tongue.

From Elizabeth Shore:

Sharon Stone: Naked and fabulous.

Carbs and peanut butter and meat – oh my! How to eat like a ballerina.

8 things you must know before getting a bikini wax.

Don’t like sexting? Get over it. Everyone’s doing it.

 

 

Playing Footsie, the fetish and the fun

By Isabelle Drake

Polished nails or bare? Silver toes rings or sparkling jeweled anklets? A graceful high arch? Pretty long toes? Cute short ones? Sexy high heels? Fun flats? You get the idea. When it comes to feet, there is much to consider with many options for preferences. But one thing we can all agree on, feet are intriguing.

According the Wikipedia, the ultimate source on such matters, foot fetishism is “the most common form of sexual fetishism for otherwise non-sexual objects or body parts” and is most commonly a male interest. It’s worth mentioning that a fetish and a kink are not the same thing. Fetishism is the use of an object, “non-sexual” body part or situation to create one’s own sexual arousal. A kink is a practice that goes beyond what is considered “typical” and often has an end goal of enhancing intimacy. And so, it seems to me, a man who enjoys a woman’s feet, ankles, shoes… is not necessarily a foot fetishist. He may just be a guy who thinks women’s feet are…inspiring.

Still, it’s interesting to ponder the question: why is foot fetishism the number one fetish?

Some studies suggest that suggest foot fetishism increases as a result of epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. For example, in the 16th and 19th centuries, Europe experienced significant syphilis epidemics and as a result, there was an increase in sexual attention paid to feet. The same has been said about the US in the 1980’s due to the AIDS epidemic. The increase in all instances was measured by the amount of sexually charged material, be it illustrations, photographs, videos and online chat rooms, available. The theory is, feet are safe, no diseases from foot porn.

Another explanation, this one offered by neurologists, is that feet are nerve-rich body parts. From a practical standpoint, this makes sense. The soles of your feet are responsible for balance; it takes only milliseconds for the nerve endings in your feet to transmit sensory information to your brain. This transmission is necessary and gives your brain the information needed to adjust legs, hips and spine for movement. And so, there is a intuitive association between feet and sensory sensitivity.

When considering the politics of women’s’ feet, many think of the Chinese custom of foot binding. There are current politically charged practices. “Crush freaks” are people with a crush fetish. They become sexually aroused when someone, often a woman, crushes something, typically with her foot. Their interest may include being crushed underfoot themself. No doubt, such practices wander far from the fun, simple aesthetics of a woman with painted toenails in strappy sandals. I mention it to show the complexity of issues related to seemingly simple feet.

My own opinion on why so much attention is paid to feet is that, as I started with, there are a lot of variety possible. A bonus to that variety, you might even be able to get an idea of what’s on someone’s mind by the shoes they’re wearing. Another fun thing about feet, it’s totally possible to look at and comment someone’s footwear without appearing overly forward. Maybe that’s why shoes are popular and common conversation topics.

Your thoughts? Love to hear ’em!

But wait — there’s more…

Sophie Saint Thomas’ article, Advice About Secret Foot Fetishes.
The graphics on this one made me laugh, but could be some useful info: How to Admit to a Foot Fetish.
Check out #footfetish on Twitter. There are a couple more hashtags, but I don’t want to spoil your fun…so I’ll let you find them on your own.
And, of course, there’s always YouTube.