Dear Sticky,
If you’re interested in multiple casual partners, it’s worth getting past your (Catholic? Jewish? Calvinist? Muslim?)-triggered drama. Having said that, it’s also worth noting trends like Cake (www2.cakenyc.com), a hugely successful lifestyle club that organizes parties for women by capitalizing on promiscuity and exploration as empowerment.
“We want YOU! The hottest generation to step up, speak out and have your voices heard,” the Web site yowls when persuading readers to share stories for their new book. “The Cake Report will redefine the image of female sexuality from the old and tired (enough of this victim crap) to the new and improved (and real!). We know all of you out there are having some mad, hot sexiness and we want to be in on the dishing. With your help, sex will be portrayed with accurate relevancy and kick ass style.” The hottest generation? Mad, hot sexiness? Jesus, who are these blowzy marauders swinging their dildos around and bulldozing men in and out of their beds? Read the fine print and you’ll find out.
While Cake “enables” users to, “be juicy, be real, be yourself,” it also makes sure that by doing so you’re rewarding the company and its affiliates with “a non-exclusive, royalty- free, perpetual, irrevocable and fully sub-licensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute and display such reviews, comments or other content throughout the world in any media.” (I know, I know, at least it’s non-exclusive.)
The two women who run Cake hold degrees in human sexuality and women’s studies (gee, anybody else remember doctors in cigarette ads from the 1940s?) and say they believe “that the next wave of feminism will be our generation of women demanding that sexual empowerment leads to gender equality.”
I too believe this version of sexual empowerment will lead to gender equality, inasmuch as women will have as much opportunity to be sexual consumers as men do. They can explore their sexuality in ways that are both exhilarating and unsettling all the while overlooking the need to articulate their feelings properly because they become convinced that this makes them unappealingly vulnerable. Nope, no more of that old “victim crap,” here’s a whole new brand of victim crap: consumerism masquerading as choice. Actually, not all that new, is it girls?
“The brilliance of Cake is, they’re not really doing anything,” says my friend Stacy, an advertising executive. “They tell the customers that they need to be members if they are liberated, powerful women, and then they tell the consumer to generate material back to them. In making the consumer a member, they enrol them in the success of the company. A member becomes an advocate for your brand in a much more powerful way than a regular consumer because they are identifying themselves personally with the brand.” The kicker? “Anyone who calls them on what they’re doing can be labelled as being against a company that facilitates female sexual freedom.”
Yes, Sticky, I hijacked your question and drove it off in what might seem to be an irrelevant direction. But the intention was for you to think about a few things: number one, this rush to depersonalize sex is often steeped in a whole lot of careful yet heedless profiteering, so keep your eye on that. Number two, you’re shy because like so many of us, you probably weren’t taught to be gentle with yourself and others when it comes to your sexual needs, and these people aren’t helping with that one fucking bit. If this doesn’t explain a few things, get back to me and we’ll have another crack at it.
