There is a general understanding surrounding sex on this campus concerning who comes and who doesn’t. Maybe it spans beyond this small campus, but we’ll limit our scientific study and broad generalizations to Dartmouth. The understanding involves straight sex, a man, a woman, and one orgasm. But whose orgasm?

The man’s orgasm. Sorry for being biased, but the male orgasm is so damn unmysterious and, dare I say it, boring. As my XY chromosomed friend informed me when I asked him to describe his orgasm to me, you just pump and then climax. Boom.

Booooooorrrrriiinnnnngggg. So back to the situation described above, imagine this sex session: his penis enters her vagina, sashays back and forth a bit, hopefully she likes the feeling, and then he cums. On a scale from 1 to 10, how normal would you rate this interaction? I’d give it a resounding 9.5 for normality, with that extra 0.5 accounting for any errors in my data collection and processing (told you this was scientific).

I don’t want to say anything sacrilegious about sex in a sex column, but that type of sex, the sex that revolves solely around the man splooging, is just as boring to me as the actual male orgasm. And yet, this idea about sex seems completely normal, and even expected, especially within the bounds of the straight “hookup culture” at Dartmouth. It is when we reverse it that people become somewhat uncomfortable. Let us imagine instead that as sexual shenanigans get heavy between a male and female, it is she who comes first! She is tired, perhaps he is too, and they fall asleep, her cervix still wet from the recent orgasm. The next time these two hook up, she again comes first, and he does not. Repeat indefinitely and sprinkle in some orgasms for the male every now and then.

That’d seem weird right? For many women, the vagina’s biological refractory period after orgasm is about zero seconds, a sizable contrast to its counterpart, the dick. So for these vaginas, this situation of one-sided orgasms is perhaps a little far-fetched, but hopefully you have followed along with my thought experiment anyways. It certainly makes me gnash my teeth knowing that many couples out there have fallen into the lonely-male-orgasm hole. Maybe I have penis envy, maybe I’m just bitter that my orgasm isn’t usually the first priority with a partner, whatever. There’s one thing that keeps me going through the cold nights and unfulfilled horniness: the female orgasm.

I think I had a seizure. The intense release of muscle tension caused one thigh to cramp up. My ears were ringing afterwards and I was light-headed, dizzy, and weak. The next day I noticed mysterious general muscle soreness, as if I had worked out or something. Some external places in the vaginal region were sensitive to the touch and seemed almost bruised.

It’s ok, no one beat me up. The blame for my ailments rests completely on his dick and my two fingers. Perhaps I should be nicer and expand “dick” to “male Dartmouth student,” since his penis was particularly nice and not necessarily directly interchangeable with another one. Whatever—this man/dick gave me a 10 second orgasm.

A lot can happen in 10 seconds, especially if within the next 10 seconds after the initial 10 seconds, you cum again. Multiple female orgasms, fuck yeah.

If sex is generally hailed as a good painkiller by medical experts, then I’m gonna say that the female orgasm is straight up Oxycontin, which explains my ignorance of all the injuries sustained. One typical horny day I was lying in my bathtub masturbating, and forgetting that the tub was porcelain and I was not, I managed to bruise my lower back for a week. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I’ve made a note to stop by Walmart and buy some kind of waterproof geriatric shower cushioning next time I’m on a trip to un-dun. While my back healed, masturbation helped with the pain. Maybe you can see how this might turn into a vicious cycle.

I want to say one more thing before this column ends and you realize you have 40 papers to write by tomorrow and zero time to stick your hands down your pants. When the post-finals sex comes around, think about that female orgasm yo. Here’s one nice way to achieve female orgasm with a male partner for those beginners out there. Rated super easy. Necessary active participants: 2. Assume missionary position and vaginal penetration, with the male raised on both arms so that the female can reach down and stimulate her clit. The male then thrusts according to female direction. This appears to be the key for most women, the combination of vaginal and clitoral stimulation. You each take care of one job– pretty efficient!

Everyone deserves a bust/squirt now and then, from the XX to the XY. If you find yourself in a one-orgasm, two-person situation, do your best to change it! Only you can prevent unrequited orgasms.

Sexy Spring has sprung. Photo courtesy of Robert S. Donovan, Flickr

Spring sex. There’s nothing like it. For some reason, every single animate being in the world just wants to fuck. It’s on the minds of everyone walking across the green, all those people shedding clothes and tousling hair. In the winter you only wanted someone in your bed to keep you warm, but now it’s spring and you… just… want… to… fuck.

It’s a new season, and new beginnings for relationships. Who doesn’t like new relationships? I recently had crème brûlée for the first time at Murphy’s with my new boyfriend, and it was delicious, just like him. Cracking through the hard sugar caramel to get to the creamy white insides seemed too coincidentally similar to a blowjob served on a dessert platter.

I hadn’t given a blowjob in a very long time.

I was kept off my knees from a general distaste of sweaty hair, tired tongue and jaw muscles, and the texture of semen. But people had started to notice, like my boyfriend, when he mentioned as a sidenote that I must not really like sucking cock. It also came up in a conversation with a gay friend, one of a few men who actually know the truth about BJ’s: it is better to receive than to give.

Well, it was time I added something new to my routine, in the spirit of spring: the blowjob. How would I incorporate it ? Is a blowjob something you do before sex? In the morning? The shower? Public locations? Just while chilling in the room? I was looking for the perfect moment to break it out.

The other new thing on my list to try this spring was the Dartmouth Seven. Since the closest I’d come to any of the Seven was the cemetery (which isn’t even one of the Seven), it was time to think about incorporating the Seven into my sex too. So there they were—the blowjob and the Seven. I hadn’t connected them consciously, but I would soon.

We sit in the 1902 room, which is, of course, the place with the most stress and spring horniness on this campus, creating a potent mixture of sexual tension. Therefore it feels very appropriate when the boyfriend slides over a piece of scrap paper: “I’m horny.”

“Quick,” I write, “before it’s 2 a.m.!” The truth dawns on him. Yes, yes my friend, we are going to have sex in the stacks. We saunter out of the room with the knowledge that we are about to get some heavy on our minds. Twenty disapproving glances at the loudness and disruptive quality of our footsteps come our way, but we don’t notice.

We descend into the stacks and find a dead-end dark row in the back of the second basement’s appendix. I step up onto the first set of shelves after he pulls my shorts off, my back leveraged against the wall, a perfect angle to fuck. But wait! We have no condom! He confesses that he might soon blow his load; it can’t go in me, and it can’t go on the books.

He comes in my mouth. Crème brûlée.

Cum—the elixir of spring, just as keystone light was the elixir of winter. It flows across campus and people are seen swimming through it on beautiful spring morning walks of shame. That’s another great, new feeling on campus—the idea that the weather might be warm enough to walk home disheveled at 7 a.m. Listen to the birds calling. Wasn’t that great sex last night right next to the open window and the flowering trees outside!? Fuck me!

Sexy spring will make you do crazy things, as my previously mentioned friend can attest to. After looking across the drunken haze of a basement, he spots a hot little piece of meat who was eyeing him too. A couple winks later, and feeling drunk off of spring lust, he marches straight up to the man and starts making out.
“It was intense,” he reports.

Hello readers, this is SEX, and hopefully will appear regularly in future DFP issues. If not, then forgive me; I’m probably just not getting any ass at the moment and am feeling bitter about it. For the first appearance of SEX, the column, I’d like to talk about the Sexperts. Many of us have experienced something that has to do with the Sexperts, whether it was a special freshmen floor meeting about sex, the Sex Fair, or the “Consensual sex is hot” summer event.

The Sexperts are great, but don’t listen to a word they say.

The last time I went to a Sexperts meeting, my Freshman fall, I was gently reminded that giving a blow job was not actually about blowing anything. Then we got to pass around some anal beads and other toys. Because of you, S’perts, I got to hold anal beads, something that I might not have done in real life. For that I thank you.
It just seemed quite a big jump to make, from pointers for the uninitiated blower all the way to anal beads. Institutionalizing sex can make a one-shop stop for all things sexually-oriented, but it is overlooking one key sex point:

“[Sex] is many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting [sex] is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that is which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.” (The Half-Blood Prince, 153)

What does this mean? It means that, like Harry Potter, the only way you are going to survive sex is to have a group of loyal friends by your side, not an institution. After all, Dartmouth is Hogwarts (and Disneyland, but I’ll deal with that in a different issue.)

Let’s make a hypothetical situation. I want to start masturbating, but I’m confused and scared as to what I might find down there and what exactly I’m supposed to do. I contact the Sexperts, who then refer me to a Sexperts mentor. This mentor proceeds to tell me some general information like: make sure you are relaxed, in a comfortable place, maybe get some lube and a mirror, just go slowly and gently, caress your clit with two fingers, etc. I then ask my friend for some masturbation advice. She goes into graphic detail, waxes poetic about her powerful personal orgasm just last night, then lends me her (thoroughly sanitized) bullet. Sexperts do not offer a lending library of sex toys. Friend-1, Sexperts-0.

Since Sexperts have had 24 hours of training in general sexual knowledge, including “pleasure-based sexuality,” then they know about sex… right? They officially have, what I like to call “Google-based knowledge”. As in, JFGI, “just fucking Google it.” The third Google hit on “female masturbation techniques” is clitical.com, which I found extremely helpful. It also features erotic stories to get you in the mood, a service that Sexperts does not offer. So maybe you’re wondering about BDSM and butt plugs. I would recommend urbandictionary.com. Internet-1, Sexperts-0.

Don’t get me wrong, I happen to be sitting next to a Sexpert right now, and he knows a lot about sex. I would never demean his vast knowledge by saying that Google is better than him. My point is that sex institutions will never be able to tell you about sex in all of its finest subtleties. If you’d like to know whether olive oil can be used as lube in conjunction with a latex condom (no, it can’t), and you are too lazy to JFGI, then Sexperts will provide you with the correct answer. But if you are having a little difficulty having sex with your girl due to your massive penis and her small cervix, or you’re curious and want to know more about the intricacies of gay sex, then you shouldn’t listen to a word Sexperts has to say. If you want to hold some sex toys and practice putting a condom on a dildo, then Sexperts has some great programming for that. But if you need advice on how to introduce the subject of sex toys to your boy toy, don’t listen to a word they say.

So, reader, next time you’re in Collis and notice the subtle smell of strawberry lube emanating from Commonground and pass straight by the condom fairy inviting you in, don’t feel bad. You’re not missing anything. Just go home, fuck around on Google, and have some pillow talk with your roommate. Trust me.

Recently, Apple has been heading in a much more “lady-friendly” direction if you know what I mean [insert iPad joke here]. Now, Winkpass Creations has developed an application that allows women to track their menstrual cycle via their iPhones. That’s right—we have entered into the age of the aptly named iPeriod “period-tracker.”

This detailed application affords the user a multitude of services—it generates the average length of one’s cycle and the estimated start date of one’s period. Cutesy hearts and flowers mark important dates on the calendar, such as the start and end of the ovulation cycle.

In fact, the application itself is dominated by pink and purple hues, as if to alert the user that iPeriod is indeed intended for those of the female persuasion; nothing says “menstruation!” like magenta and cartoon fauna.

Despite the fact that iPeriod’s presentation seems to lend itself to the Bratz-doll set, it does provide useful services for women hoping to get pregnant—the notifications of the days of ovulation are particularly helpful. The app also allows the user to record “flow,” “mood,” “appetite,” “cramps,” “breast tenderness” and “headaches.” As a result, iPeriod can effectively predict the time, duration, and severity of one’s next period.

iPregnancy on the other hand is designed to—you guessed it—track the details of one’s pregnancy. As such, it seems like a natural extension of iPeriod. The app allows users to track the exact age of the fetus (“Baby Heidi is now 24 weeks 5 days”), and the amount of time remaining until the due date. It also records the fetus’ approximate length and weight, provides a baby name generator, and tracks the user’s OB appointments, among other things.

But despite these apps’ apparent utility, there is something inherently creepy about them. Maybe this derives from the fact that technology is encroaching upon something as intimate as one’s menstrual cycle and pregnancy.

Perhaps it also adds certain sterility to these two natural processes in a way that is generally disturbing. Aren’t women supposed to be earth-goddesses in tune with the natural rhythms of the world? However, women’s health has often benefited from technological advancements—I’d venture a guess that few women would call for pre-1900 gynecology.
Maybe it has more to do with the name? There is something so hilariously nonchalant about an app called iPeriod. Or maybe it’s that the emphasis on the micromanaging one’s life has progressed to a farcical point—that menstruation and pregnancy must be managed by an iPhone.

Vajazzling. [vuh-jaz-ling]— the art of applying hundreds of Swarovski crystals to the area immediately around a woman’s vulva. It’s a new, invisible fashion fad conceived by Completely Bare Spa in New York City, and it’s gaining ground among top celebrities—most notably Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hewitt described her experience with the trend on Lopez Tonight, where she said vajazzling was “great” and helped her get over an unpleasant break-up.

Vajazzling is a simple process. You go to one of Completely Bare’s spas, get your long, curly pubes removed by way of bikini wax, have one of their specialized technicians superglue a bunch of sparkly rhinestones to your pussy, and voilà! Your unattractive twat shines like a disco ball from 1976! In fact, it’s so simple that you can even do it at home. Completely Bare Spa sells vajazzling kits online, so no need to travel all the way to New York to get your pussy BeDazzled!

Now I may be old-fashioned, but in the olden days, vaginas looked like vaginas, not gaudy jewelry. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for a woman’s right to what goes in, out, and on her body (vaginal flatulence excluded). But extravagant though it may be, vajazzling is just another way to demean women and tell them their beavers and mud flaps are hideous. It’s a slap in the face to the body acceptance movement.

Where are the true vagina lovers out there, the muff-divers who don’t require overpriced crystals to lick pussy? Surely not at that spa, purchasing over-the-top Austrian bling-bling for their hairy beavers.

Completely Bare as of yet doesn’t sell crystallized tattoos for penises, and I’ll admit that the idea of shimmering scrotums isn’t as attractive as glittering vaginas.

But in a world where you can put tacky jewels on just about anything, why not? Why stop with genitals? You can bedazzle your dog, your boring professor, even the Venus de Milo!
The point being, ladies: your fur pie is beautiful and you don’t need tawdry embellishments to make it, or anything else, attractive. You don’t need to vajazzle like J. Love to feel good. A nice, thick dildo will suffice.

Vagina Monologues performers at Dartmouth prepare for the big performance backstage. Much practice goes into preparing for each showing of the Monologues. Photograph by Amy Gu.

We don’t like talking about it, and the more we avoid the word, the more power it has over us, to the point where it has become almost taboo: VAGINA.

My vagina, your vagina, everyone’s vagina. You can’t escape vaginas. They’re everywhere—and guess what? There are more vaginas on campus then there are penises (male/female student ratio: 49%/51%). Yes, it’s a reproductive sexual organ, but it’s more than that; it’s powerful, it’s a force, it’s womanhood, it’s sexuality, it’s the source of mind-blowing pleasure.

And yet, the fact remains that most people think it’s gross to talk about vaginas. Discussion of the organ has been relegated to 9th grade sex ed classes taught by some queasy gym teacher who isn’t any more comfortable talking about vaginas than he is about nuclear physics. Maybe this sense of unease comes from the word itself. “Vagina” sounds so severe, like an infectious disease, even an STD, one that can only be handled with thick, clinically sterilized rubber gloves. Or maybe the issue isn’t necessarily vagina anxiety. Maybe we are so dumbfounded by our overly sensationalized interactions where we freely talk about Snooki’s trampages on the Jersey Shore, that we shy away from talking about the power of female sexuality that vaginas embody.

But a revolution is stirring, reclaiming vaginas on campus. Yeah, you guessed it:
The Vagina Monologues.

Behind the Scenes of The Vagina Monologues

As a performer in The Monologues, I was apprehensive before our first meeting, not knowing what to expect from rehearsals or from the performance itself. I discovered that the personal development of self-awareness within each performer is as important as the impact The Monologues will have on the audience during the performance. When we gathered for the first time, the cast broke the ice by sitting in a big circle that consisted of 60 women while each of us answered the question, “If your vagina could talk, what would it say?”

After having considered this question deeply, our rehearsals have become more involved explorations of our own sexuality; we question ourselves and each other, wondering who we are and what our vaginas mean to us. We challenge the patriarchal constructions that say we must shave the hair “down there,” that we must submit to the male definitions of our sexuality, that we must accept the sexual and psychological deprecation of ourselves and our sisters. We deconstruct the notion of violence and violence against women. During rehearsals, we not only practice our lines, but we also begin a dialogue, a dialogue that cannot be silenced because our world cannot afford to ignore it.

Why Guys Should Watch The Vagina Monologues

Naturally, women go to The Vagina Monologues and are inspired because the conversation directly pertains to them, but the male demographic, not surprisingly, has always been more reluctant. Truthfully, if our powerful enactment of a new femininity is to make any changes in reality, it is essential that just as many men are present at the performance as women. As the Director of The Vagina Monologues, Aviva Johnson ‘10, said in our interview, “Guys need to get more comfortable with girls talking about their private parts.” Though The Monologues support and are supported by sexuality from multiple perspectives, including the relationships between gay, lesbian, transgendered individuals, men are integral in encouraging women in their exploration of sexuality in heterosexual relationships.

Aviva continues, “If girls are trying to take more ownership over their sexuality, they need to feel like their new version of treating their sexuality is not threatening or offensive. So it’s really important for guys to understand and even encourage women to be vocal.”

One awesome side effect of this process of reclaiming female sexuality is that more lines of communication will open, and sex will just be better for both men and women. Aviva reiterates this point, “It’s important for men to understand that they shouldn’t take their sexual cues from porn. Porn is often made without a realistic interpretation of a woman’s self-awareness. I think that sexual culture will be healthier if guys are encouraging and appreciative and expect women to be communicative about their sexuality.”

However, communicating about sex is not the only important issue. The mission of The Vagina Monologues is to raise consciousness and money in an effort to end violence against women. Since both men and women are perpetrators and victims of violence, both men and women are equally important in ending it. As Aviva said, “Guys are instrumental in this fight. We need them on our side. This can’t be a man-hating war. That will not work!”

The Value of the Experience of The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues are not just monologues that constitute a play. It is an experience in which you, as a cast member or as an audience member, are engaged. It is a conversation between the cast and audience about female sexuality, but it is also a conversation between the cast, audience, and victims of sexual abuse about violence against women.

Aviva calls The Monologues an “awakening.” She envisions this awakening as a truly interactive experience in which the audience experiences “enlightenment as the actresses themselves experience powerful feelings by being able to transmit the messages [of the victims of violence]. Hopefully both the audience and the cast leave the show feeling like they’re breaking new ground, like they’re pioneering, like they’re breaking down taboos about violence against women and female sexuality.”

Cast members have also referred to The Monologues as an experience, one that is both educational and liberating. Cast member Bernadette Reyes ’10 recounts her experience, “I did it last year… The experience overall was just really liberating. I can definitely see the change from when I did it then to when I did it now. I’d never talked about my vagina before. I never really desired to talk about it. I hated the word vagina; I thought it was a little gross. It’s a genuine, liberating experience. And so now I’m doing “Cunt” [a Vagina Monologue], and I can’t even describe how excited I am. There’s something incredibly empowering about that, and being able to do that, and being around other women who are doing that.”

Another cast member, Ana Bowens ‘12, stresses the impact The Monologues will have on our campus, saying, “I think that The Vagina Monologues are going to be a force on campus that is unprecedented because it such a group of strong powerful women who are all determined to make people listen, and so everyone on campus should come see The Vagina Monologues not because you have a vagina, but because everyone should learn… about the power of the vagina and what a powerful force it can be.”

The video, “A Young Girl’s Life,” by Rachel Simmons plays out like a real-life Mean Girls. However, unlike the hit 2004 movie featuring Lindsay Lohan, Simmons’ film explores the real life experiences of high school and middle school girls dealing with bullying that make having a “Burn Book” look like good, clean innocent fun.

The film explores bullying which has reached new levels with the advent of technology. Some of the accounts are utterly horrifying. One segment details the story of Libby who at fourteen years old, suffered from cyber-bullying. This method of bullying—which occurs via the internet or text message—is becoming more prevalent. After being friends with a certain group of “popular” girls for many years, Libby’s best friend turned on her and started sending her text messages that read: “You’re a bitch and you’re a slut and you don’t get that…. get some fucking balls and take a look in the mirror.” These texts continued for months.

One read: “fuck you skanky ass bitch, go stuff your bra and go throw up and apply your pro active, not like any of that helps you though. You’re still the ugliest hoe I know and you are a bitch about it too. F you. Get over yourself and your lack of a life xoxo.” Despite the frequency and cruelty of texts like these, Simmons explains that only five percent seek the help of an adult in these bullying situations.
However, bullying is not only verbal—physical fighting between girls is another type of bullying that teenage girls participate in daily.

Carla, a sixteen year old who grew up in a rough part of Boston, is the leader of a “crew”, a quasi-gang that consists of a group of friends. The groups’ interactions with other girls and other crews often escalate to a situation that sometimes spiral out of control. Fighting is their “problem solver” and a regular way of life for Carla and her closest friends—the goal is to be tough.

When most of the time fights, no one calls the police—a common cultural belief is that fights between girls are not as violent as those between boys. Because society views girls as docile creatures unaccustomed to physical violence, their fighting is often ignored. But even after the physical level of fighting, the bullying persists via text messages and the Internet.

Carla even explains that she never knew why she hated certain girls. It was not until a mentor started to work with Carla that she realized that it’s “not cute” to beat other girls as a way to resolves issues.

The documentary also deals with self-acceptance. Simmons met with a group of youngsters who are a part of “Take a Second Look”, a group whose aim is to address the struggles young girls face and how the media influences their self-image. In a segment, Simmons had the members view the music video, “When I Grow Up,” by the Pussycats Dolls and then asked the girls, “What did you think of that video? What is the message?”

The responses were mostly positive—many explained that they liked the video, and it made them want to be famous and appear as the women on screen.

The video does show off the female physique but is extremely tame compared to most music videos. The message encourages young girls to have sexy and flawless (i.e. unrealistic) bodies. Unsurprisingly, the girls expressed bafflement at why they looked different from the bodies featured on screen. When it comes to body image, there is always an emphasis on what needs to be changed or adjusted to fit the unrealistic mold of perfection that the media perpetuates.

Ana Lu, a young girl interviewed, is constantly confronted with the fact that society rejects people of her size. For example, when she went to buy a dress for her Quinceañera, she spent hours trying to find dresses that would fit. Ana Lu has ostensibly absorbed the message that she is somehow unfit for this society. She thinks about her weight fifty percent of the time, explaining: “Everything I do revolves around my weight.” Her experience has literally and emotionally been cut down to size, to the point where Ana Lu feels that she loves herself some days, while others days she hates herself.

Whose responsibility is it to help teenagers reject the images thrown at them through music videos and pop culture? Who can encourage young girls to have a positive self-image?

Parents and other mentors play a primary role in teaching young girls that the images in the media and the façade presented to them is an unrealistic, consumer culture ideal. Parents can teach their daughters how to handle the stresses of being a young girl and how to not fall into the trap that the American media so effectively establishes.

Girls need to know that they can have mentors and that there is more to life than bullying and fighting. Carla got out of the fighting scene because of Meva, a mentor, who works for a Boston police center that identifies girls involved in violence before they get in serious trouble. Meva has shown Carla how to be a better person and helped her to realize the risks she faces if she continues fighting.

We need to tell our daughters that they are beautiful and the beauty we speak of comes from the inside. If young girls learn to love themselves first, they will not resort to bullying and fighting.

Sonia, another teenage girl in the video, sums up the challenge young girls face in America and explains what she now knows: “I think that the hardest thing for a girl throughout her whole life is just being able to believe in herself and to never let anybody bring her down, no matter what.” I hope to see more young girls realize this. At the end of her senior year, Sonia said, “the best thing about being a girl is that we can do anything. I feel that nobody can stop us. We are like wonder
woman.” This sense of empowerment can be fostered and sustained through parenting and mentorship.

Every girl can grow up to be a healthy and happy woman, but having someone there to tell a young teen that she is important makes all the difference in the world. Once a young girl gets through middle and high school, she can probably tackle any battle that comes her way, with a supportive role model in her life. Young girls, tomorrow’s women, have endless potential. Just be sure to remind them of the strength they carry inside themselves; they will listen.

Precious is so hot right now. It’s our Obama-era Brokeback Mountain, the mainstream movie of the year that made mainstream audiences feel incredibly informed and liberal. Basically, Precious is Oscar bait. This awards season, the faces of director Lee Daniels and stars Mo’Nique and Gabourey Sidibe (all Oscar nominees for the film) are plastered all over our televisions and Crackberrys. But the accompanying articles seem not to concentrate on the stars’ performances, but rather on their physiques. Specifically, their bellies. And their leg hair. Wait, Mo’Nique doesn’t shave?! Stop the presses!

Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, the film Precious chronicles the life of the sixteen-year-old title character, an African-American girl growing up in 1980s Harlem. Precious can barely read or write. Her father has impregnated her twice. Her mother beats her regularly with a frying pan, forces her to cook pigs’ feet, and openly seethes at her daughter for “stealing” her husband by bearing his children.

Precious’ most miraculous attribute is her ability to craft an identity for herself and persevere despite great adversity. Surprisingly, the focus of this epic tale of human survival is not touted by the media as such. Why not? Because Precious is fat. Okay, Precious might be obese. But from the way the film is publicized, one would think that she explodes at the end or gets fatally trapped on a chair lift while skiing. In the movie, however, Precious’ weight is the least of her worries. Gabourey Sidibe, the actress who plays the titular character, had a brusque response to the media’s obsession with her character’s weight: “It’s like, she’s fat. Well fucking A. She’s already having a hard life. So what, if she was skinny, would this story be any the less heartfelt or daunting? That’s not the story. That’s not the point.”

The media’s focus on Precious’ weight, to the point of excluding the film’s primary themes of racism and sexism in our society, demonstrates its elitism—as if thinness, a characteristic prized by the white intelligentsia, could somehow have saved Precious from her trials. The media implies that obesity is a fate that is completely preventable under her circumstances, somehow implying that being fat is a completely different issue from race or class, and that Precious somehow contributed to her own suffering.

Members of the press often confuse Sidibe for her character. In interviews, reporters have remarked at how astonishingly confident and articulate the 26-year old actress is. You know, in real life. Implied is the assumption that Sidibe wouldn’t have any other personality than that of the rape and domestic abuse victim she portrayed in Precious. Sidibe, a Harlem native and former psychology major at The City College of New York, doesn’t have a lot of patience for this misunderstanding. She asserts, “They try to paint the picture that I was this downtrodden, ugly girl who was unpopular in school and in life, and then I got this role and now I’m awesome. But the truth is that I’ve been awesome, and then I got this role.”

When a makeup artist on a New York Magazine photo shoot gushed that Sidibe looked “totally opposite to [her] character,” Sidibe replied simply, “Thanks. I’m actually…not her.” And it’s true. Sidibe is SO not her. She professes to have multiple boyfriends and occasionally refers to herself in the third person. She’s a total diva. Yeah, newsflash: she’s an actress. Frankly, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows that movies aren’t real and that this woman is, in fact, acting. But does the press assume Sidibe should be inarticulate and meek because of her race? Surely, we’re past that as a country…Obama is Prez! No, it’s because Sidibe is actually Precious’ size. Do we as a society therefore believe that being fat is a shameful sin?

And then there’s Mo’Nique. Already a stand-up icon, the comic actress gave a transcendentally brutal performance as Precious’ abusive mother Mary. The woman could’ve schooled Stanislavski himself on method acting in this role. And yet, all anyone can talk about is Mo’Nique’s love of fried shrimp. And her ballsy demeanor. And the fact that she frequently parades her unshaven legs around red carpets. According to jezebel.com, Mo’Nique said on the View that “her unshaven legs are ‘real legs’ and the rest of us have just bought into some strange social convention that they aren’t attractive or that men won’t desire us if we don’t keep up with the Joneses.”

Mo’Nique’s point is valid and gives the rest of us pause to consider the lengths we go to in order to remove unwanted hair from our bodies. So why is an Oscar nominee discussing her leg hair on The View? Would Barbara Walters ask Tom Cruise if he wears lifts (he does) or Nicholas Cage if he wears hair plugs (he does) on national television? Dubious. Yet Mo’Nique’s leg hair is newsworthy. In fact, the New York Daily News devoted a 363-word article specifically to the topic. Reporters also seem to relish describing what Mo’Nique eats during the course of their interviews. Does the New York Times really need to relay that Mo’Nique requested “three orders of jumbo buffalo shrimp to go” at lunch? We get it. Mo’Nique is fat. But she is also a visionary who doesn’t subscribe to Hollywood by molding her career to satiate its desires. She lives in Atlanta where she films her talk show, “The Mo’Nique Show,” daily. She and her husband manage her career autonomously. She chose to do Precious as a means of raising awareness for victims of domestic abuse, a tragedy she has experienced herself.

Mo’Nique now plans to continue performing primarily stand-up because it makes her happy. And she isn’t planning on pimping herself out on carpets and talk shows this season to campaign for the Oscar. Mo’Nique thinks that her performance should speak for itself, saying, “President Barack Obama had to campaign because he had something to prove: that he could do it. Well, the performance is on the screen. So at what point am I still trying to prove something?” These are the words of a truly confident actress, one who knows that she absolutely deserves the award, and that she’ll probably get it. And she sure as hell won’t be nicking herself in the shower anytime soon.

In Precious, Mary internalizes what she reads as society’s hatred of her—white people oppress her, no one thinks she deserves an education, and her man loses sexual interest in her—and projects this hatred onto her only daughter. This is the great tragedy of the film, that Mary brings about Precious’ suffering because her own is so profound that she sees no hope of alleviating it. Precious is a story of black oppression, but, more universally, it is a story of female oppression.

Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique exude quite clearly that they love their physical beings and themselves, demonstrating that black women and overweight women in America have come to reject society’s prejudices. However, our media is lagging behind them. Yeah, they are saying, we are ready to appreciate racial minorities now. But we still have a long way to go before we can consider ourselves truly liberal in our judgments of individuals who may choose to shave, wax, or go native.

So far, we have been living blindly to the truth. In our comfortable lives, we have ignored the global holocaust occurring today—backed by the same motivations and underpinnings behind the first holocaust of the Nazis. In fact, it’s also Communist, of the Marx and Engels brand. It’s a global conspiracy.

It’s something that leads us to deny the worldwide eradication of humanity, also known as abortion. Yes, abortion. Did you know that abortionists drag babies—fully viable babies—and drown them in distilled water, crush their heads, and chop them up for parts to use in cosmetic surgery for women? This neo-Communist plot to destroy the world is known as radical feminism. This new world order is known as the Global Gynarchia. See the evil upon the unnaturally youthful faces of women, powered by baby guts.

Or at least that’s what FathersForLife.org would have us believe. Loading this website is like stepping into an alternate universe. Though obviously a pro-life website, it goes beyond simply talking about abortion (which is apparently thinning humanity and will eventually lead to our destruction, as the Communists wanted). It details a world where men are actually oppressed by the new elite, the feminist conspiracy. Children are beaten to death with impunity by their capricious overlord mothers.

And fathers are the last line of hope for humanity but the tendrils of the feminist movement are slowly leeching their vitality. In this world, it is a battle of good against evil—the patriarchy against the evil arachnid-like Gynarchia. Sadly, it is a battle we have already lost. Fathers For Life is meant as a time capsule for future generations. The Gynarchia has already won. Like a black widow spider, it has gobbled up good ‘ol patriarchy and fatherhood, with mayonnaise on the side.
Its absurdity makes this story told by Fathers For Life rather entertaining.

Uncharacteristically (though part of the narrative), the website also details the plight of the Jews and how the feminist and euthanasia movements are an extension of Nazism and Communism (putting aside, for a moment, that those philosophies aren’t on the best of terms with one another). Euthanasia and assisted suicide has, according to Fathers For Life, had a far more nefarious goal—to eradicate the Jews, since half of the 12 million individuals put down have been Jews. As much skepticism as these types of stories must instill in casual, mainstream readers, there is something that this website shares in common with many websites and books on any radical fringe, especially modern radical conservatism—a clever weave of truth and half-truth.

Within a strange mix of factually dubious article citations, we read the puzzling assertion that two-thirds of child abuse is committed by women. Men have an instinct to protect women and children, thus leaving the destructive abuse suffered by children to be committed by women. We also read that Margaret Sanger, one of the early champions of birth control, was actually a proponent of eugenics who drew the admiration of Hitler—damning, according to Fathers For Life, since her organization eventually became Planned Parenthood, which is perpetrating her legacy to this day.

Is Fathers For Life right? According to Medicine Net, a site referred by the National Institute of Health, women do commit 61% of child abuse. A quick historical check reveals that Margaret Sanger really was a proponent of eugenics!

Of course, the truth is always a bit more complicated than a short series of “gotchas.”

While 61% of recorded child abuse is in fact committed by women, the vast majority of that abuse is actually neglect (which is also technically classified under abuse). Most violent, physical abuse is still committed by men. And although neglect can easily be deadly in the case of children, it doesn’t quite paint the same picture of vindictive, violent mothers that Fathers for Life tries to convey.

Additionally, while Margaret Sanger was indeed a proponent of eugenics, there are more than a few differences between her and Hitler. Besides the fact that most Americans and Europeans at the time were actually in favor of eugenics to some extent, Sanger was quite vocal against violent extermination of individuals and was horrified by news of Nazi Germany’s actions—quite different from Sanger and Hitler supposedly becoming the best of friends and creating a strange lovechild of nazi-feminism. Sanger, despite having widely inappropriate views by today’s standards, actually had a somewhat compassionate vision in mind, considering that she saw birth control as helping poor women out of poverty—even if it was alongside a view that it might be able to prevent the mixing of the white race with inferior Asian and “other” races.

The truth behind Fathers For Life’s half-truths becomes quite apparent with the full context, but the danger is in an incomplete picture that incorporates a few germs of truth within a wider net of wild-eyed conspiracy. Although I doubt that more than a few would fully accept everything that the site proposes, I can see it as all-too-likely that some will. Upon realizing that these previously outlandish-sounding factoids are “true,” they will begin thinking about the validity of other assertions that the site also makes.

Maybe not the blip about feminists with baby guts as cosmetic injections, but perhaps some of the assertions that legal abortion is twenty-five times more dangerous than illegal abortion have some truth to them. Maybe there is something to the claim that abortion causes breast cancer. And maybe there is something to this view that we should stop abortions because they are morally reprehensible. But that slant shifts the issue away from the woman, even if the casual reader rejects the evil “redfem” picture the site paints.

Fathers For Life may not gain many converts anytime soon, but it does illustrate an increasing tendency of these sorts of websites and books to mix surprising true facts within their untruths, which may lead the uncritical observer to lend credence to a far wider body of twisted facts and straight up lies. And that ultimately is the danger, either with these extreme-fringe anti-feminist sites, or more commonly, the anti-evolution movement.

By seizing upon personal flaws of the founders of feminism, birth control, or evolution, these groups cast a sinister shadow on everything else these individuals touched. This includes a few cherrypicked shock factoids that may be construed as true, slowly breaking down readers’ skepticism and wedging a foot in the door for more radical sentiments.

Ultimately, these types of tactics have brought many of the myths about abortion (and again, the other popular target, evolution) from the minds of raving extremists into the mouths of the mainstream. And that, in the end, is what is terrifying about sites like Fathers For Life.

Ralph Lauren faced a scandal when it printed a heavily photoshopped ad in which the model’s waist is inhumanely small. Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bohemiancoast/3989301705/

Advertisements are meant to attract consumers. Unfortunately, reaching that goal sometimes means employing means that are less-than-ethical.

One example comes from the longstanding practice of using the ideal of female perfection as a marketing tool. At some point, in the arms race to fabricate the most “perfect” woman, technology has been recruited to take over where nature left off.

In today’s advertisements, the use of Photoshop has become standard practice—no matter how far from reality the products of this digital manipulation may be. Or, on that note, how much harm these unrealistic portrayals of women may cause to young girls already bombarded with ads and expectations about make-up, diets, and what they “should be.”

There have been attempts to curb the potentially dangerous effects of these retouched images. Valérie Boyer, a member of the French parliament, has proposed a law against digitally retouched photographs featuring models. She argues that in order to combat eating disorders and negative body images, advertisers should place a warning label onto retouched photographs. In a world where some people will do just about anything to be perfect, Boyer wants to bring light to the old ugly truth that the ideal is ultimately unattainable.

Jo Swinson, a British member of Parliament, also supports the idea of a warning label and has suggested a similar proposal be enacted in Britain. In an interview with the New York Times, she argues that the highly doctored images convince people, especially young women, “to believe in realities that very often do not exist.” With the rising popularity of pro-anorexia websites, some believe that these warning labels may help people with self-acceptance and help individuals understand that this airbrushed perfection does not exist no matter your size. Swinson’s law proposes that violators who do not use a warning label face fines of up to $55,000 or about 50% of the advertisement’s cost.

The last two decades have ushered in a generation of models that have progressively gotten thinner—sometimes past any sort of reasonable limit.

Robin Derrick, creator director of British Vogue, told the New York Times, “I spent the first ten years of my career making girls look thinner. I’ve spent the last ten making them look larger.” It’s difficult to change this dangerous mentality when there are major fashion industry figures that vocally support having very thin bodies. Karl Lagerfeld, head designer and creative director of Chanel, recently said, “No one wants to see curvy women.”

Last summer, I worked at New York Fashion Week, mostly to get a taste of a world I knew nothing about. When the first model sauntered down the runway next to me, I felt like an obese midget gorilla. Within five minutes, I was surrounded by twenty girls with legs that went on for miles and had pencil-thin bodies that I thought were supposed to be one-in-a-million. The countless models packed in Bryant Park were all the same—rail thin and with the clichéd cigarettes in their hands. But up close, I saw that their hollowed faces were quite different from the poreless images so realistically illustrated in magazines.

Models, too, were well versed in the languages of wrinkles, blemishes, back fat, cellulite, and other imperfections. Of course, they were far from what “normal” people look like, but they were still human. Admittedly, even after that experience, I still sometimes view advertisements and editorials with a naïve eye, thinking that what I’m seeing is real—but at least now I’m a little bit more aware of the reality hidden behind layers and hours of retouching. However, most of the rest of the world is not, which is why Boyer and Swinson believe this law should be enacted.

However, even if put into effect, such a law would still be limited in its ability to effect a change in public perception. Sticking a warning label next to a photo can clarify that the image is not natural, but its power remains. People may realize that images have been altered but fail to appreciate how distant this digital perfection is from reality—leading them to believe this airbrushed perfection is still somehow possible.

Tall and skinny models are the norm in fashion. Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/1460697324/.

Sephora now sells a real-life airbrushing tool called “Temptu,” marketed as “the brains behind most of the A-list work you see—the picture-perfect faces on the silver screen, the immaculate high-fashion shots.” Why airbrush? “You don’t have to be a model or celebrity to achieve that light-reflecting, flawless look you see on the big screen or in glossy magazines…see why this Airbrushing sensation is your Mr. Right…”

Why wouldn’t you want to look flawless and find the man (or woman) of your dreams? All for a couple hundred dollars! Many, including myself, have been lured at one time or another by the prospect of becoming the aesthetically perfect person, ignoring—or perhaps accepting—the notion that our true self just isn’t good enough.

As terrible as it may be to delude young minds of a seemingly attainable beauty, self-perception is an internal matter outside the controls of warning labels. The concept of beauty has always been idealized—from Raphael to today’s Photoshop—and many long for that elusive prize of aesthetic perfection.

V Magazine recently did a feature on a typical thin model and a “plus-sized” model wearing the same clothes in similar poses. For the most part, neither looked more remarkable than the other, but that was probably because those photos were visibly retouched to make both models look slim and flattering. Sure, the plus-sized model was a bit plumper but with the retouching, she didn’t look that much different from the thinner model.

In 2009, Ralph Lauren ran a campaign featuring a model whose body was clearly retouched—her waist was just about as wide as her head—and received scathing public criticism for the obvious distortion. They later apologized for the photograph but ended up firing the model, on the basis that she was unable to “meet the obligations under her contract with [Ralph Lauren].” The model, Filippa Hamilton, claims that she was fired because she was too fat for the company’s image.

It’s a bit disturbing when an obviously thin woman isn’t thin enough to meet a major label’s standards. The unsurprising result of this industry pressure is that models, already supernaturally slender, must try even harder to lose weight in order to match some sort of fantasy ideal.

Warning labels may bring light to the problem of anorexia and poor self-image, but ultimately it’s an issue that lies with society’s willingness, or unwillingness, to accept what is natural as what is beautiful—or at least decent. Although it would be interesting to see what kind of effects these labels have on consumers, it seems that these labels would be mere band-aids to a bigger problem that is far more difficult to solve.

After all, what good are labels when it is society itself that demand a standard of perfection that is beyond what can be real? Labels can only tell young girls that the images aren’t real. It doesn’t stop them from seeing the images as what they should become.