I have to say yet again how much I love the recently-launched Good Vibes magazine. Really, of all the online sex e-zines, this is my favourite, bar none. It’s intelligent without being too in love with its own literary qualities (the way I sometimes feel about Nerve) but fun, and covers many of the same topics, with the same types of voices, that I look for when I buy books about sexuality.
This month there were some articles that hit home with me – The Good Girl’s Guide to Writing Sex is a great case in point. The author talks about what it’s like to be a sex writer – who you tell, who you don’t, and the reactions you get as you stumble along. I can identify, and it touches on something I’ve been thinking about for a while. What do you tell people when they ask about your hobbies? I’m actually pretty open with most of my friends about this site, but have definitely not told my employer. I showed my mom – once – knowing she’d never know how to get back to the site (Internet? What’s that?). And yet part of me wonders if I chose to do this as a full-time thing rather than an enjoyable hobby, how I would handle my “coming out” to the world. Let’s face it, people (as a completely unfair and generalized whole) are squeamish about sex. Particularly when discussed in graphic detail, and even more so (from my experience) when discussed graphically by a woman.
Another article that resonated with me was Pick a Fold and Fuck It – a discussion about BBW and their sexuality. For a big chunk of highschool and college, I was over 200 pounds. I’m still far from slender today, and carry around some of the ghosts from that time in my life, so I can relate to the horror and the discomfort the author talks about. The general public (again a gross generalization, for which I apologise) sometimes has a hard time envisioning overweight people as sexual beings in their own right. As people who can desire, and be desired.
I was having a conversation with a girlfriend of mine the other day, and we were discussing her love life. It had been time to Meet The Parents, and I’d asked her if her boyfriend’s Dad was attractive. It’s been my experience, overall, that if the parents age attractively, you can generally assume that the children will as well. She laughed and said she hoped that wasn’t the case, or her boyfriend would never want her as she grew older – her mom is short and fat (those are her words, not mine).I stopped dead and looked at her. I asked her what was wrong with that. After a heartbeat or two she realized what she’d said (given that I’m a little titch myself, and walk around in a Rubenesque body) and apologised profusely. But the rub was already there. She just doesn’t think that overweight people – whether a little or a lot – can be desirable. She’s not alone with this. But dammit, half the people in North America, or more, are considered overweight. Does this mean that only the other half can be considered sexually desirable? Is it this 50% and this 50% alone that has sex? Of course not.
But I digress. I was talking about Good Vibes. And there’s good stuff there.
feeling those good vibes
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