Words and Music: Linford Detweiler Are you feelin’ A little desperate Get on your knees And confess it Honey please Don’t second guess it You’re desperate For love Is this just A little fling Or is it about A little bling bling Either way You feel the sting sting You’re desperate For love It might only take a kiss For the plot to take a twist That you hadn’t counted on Just a tiny little minute But eternity will be in it If you turn me on Red wine on my lips Got this black silk slip on my hips The kitchen faucet just drips and drips You’re desperate for love Hear the song here

by Marilyn Hacker For once, I hardly noticed what I ate (salmon and broccoli and Saint-Véran). My elbow twitched like jumping beans; sweat ran into my shirtsleeves. Could I concentrate on anything but your leg against mine under the table? It was difficult, but I impersonated an adult looking at you, and knocking back the wine. Now that we both want to know what we want, now that we both want to know what we know, it still behooves us to know what to do: be circumspect, be generous, be brave, be honest, be together, and behave. At least I didn't get white sauce down my front.

"Turning a human being into a 'thing' is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person." Is Jean Kilbourne 's message empowering to women, or does it harm women by casting them as victims in a vast body-image conspiracy? http://youtu.be/PTlmho_RovY

I first discovered VulvaLoveLovely when I was searching for visuals to use in a workshop I was presenting for women struggling with body shame. I was struck by the idea of wearing a vulva pendant around your neck as a badge of honor -- a way of claiming it and saying, "Look at this amazing beautiful thing! This is me!" I was curious how a unique venture like this began, so I sent Jessica-Marie, the creator of VulvaLoveLovely, a few questions. She was kind enough to respond, and to offer a FREE GIFT to one of my lucky commenters (see below for details). Q. What or who inspired you to create your first vulva pendant? How did that evolve into a business?

A. I love this question. At the age of 14 I experienced a really terrible sexual trauma. It haunted me for years, I treated my body like trash as a punishment to myself. My body was a bad omen. It got to the point that I couldn’t even bear to touch myself to wash off in the shower. I saw a counselor but the problem was that I had displaced all of my fear and shame onto my Vulva and my counselor wasn’t really willing to go there. She never used ‘the V word’ in our sessions and I really needed her to. One day I couldn’t deal any more. I could hardly function and my sex life was terrifying. I have always been an artist and always used art to restructure negative feelings. I figured I would try doing just that and the first Vulva portrait pendant was born. I hated that pendant. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. I kept it on my desk at home so that I would look at it every day. Over time I started noticing things that I liked about it, a curve or a color. Then finally about a month later I was able to look at it for what it was, beautiful and powerful. I was able to look at it and recognize that it wasn’t a bad omen or a black hole. At the time I was in working with a rape crisis center and I wore it in one day. Everyone wanted one and so they all got one. At this point a friend of mine came to visit and saw all of this Vulva art everywhere and suggested I try selling it. At first I thought the idea was crazy but later on I decided I could try it and donate the money I made to the crisis center. Within a week I was getting thank you letters from strangers who had found the site and it just sort of snowballed from there.

Q. Your message is "Love Your Vulva." Why do you think it is so difficult for women to believe that their vulvas are beautiful?

A. Everything we see and hear implies that we shouldn’t believe it. Just the word itself is taboo, which can only suggest there is something inherently wrong with the thing itself. When we start talking about sexual appeal women are told that their Vulva’s need to be a particular shape, color and size. The slang terms that we have for our Vulva’s are predominantly ugly representations: beaver, fish lips, camel toe, bearded clam, meat curtains… you get the idea. With synonyms like these it’s not hard to see why we as a society sub consciously adapt the belief that Vulva’s are ugly. Unlike men women’s Vulva’s are very hard to see, so often times the only point of reference women have is what they see in porn. And what they see is dyed, shaved, airbrushed and sometimes surgically altered. What they see does not occur naturally. So with all of this combined it is very difficult for women to see their Vulva’s as beautiful or even valuable.

Q. Now this is a pet peeve of mine, so bear with me, but why do you sometimes refer to the pieces as "vagina pendants"? It perpetuates misinformation about women's bodies. Vaginas and vulvas are not the same thing.

A. This is a perpetuation of the problem by the problem. The main way we drive traffic to the site is by google search, and 98% of the time people are searching for “Vagina Pendants, or Vagina Art” so our site has to be set up to catch those keywords. Google gives the most weight to title names, then descriptions. This means the only way to catch that traffic is to title the same way people are searching. The way we have tried to find a middle ground, so that we are catching that traffic while informing people that these two words are not the same thing is by alternating title names between vulva and vagina. In the descriptions we also use both, but again because google looks at the descriptions to determine search page ranking we have to use both.

I understand the whole Google search thing, but it is unfortunate that the vagina/vulva confusion persists. If you're reading this and you're not sure what the difference is, remember that the vagina is an internal structure and the vulva is the external area that includes the inner and outer labia, the clitoris, the urethra and the vaginal opening. More on that in a future post. Thanks again Jessica for sharing your story with me! I really appreciate what you do and that you are committed to ethical production and to giving back to worthy causes. You rock! Follow VulvaLoveLovely on Facebook and Twitter. Show your vulva some love! Win a Kick it to Your Yeast Infection vegan soap by leaving a comment below. A winner will be chosen, at random, on October 17, 2011. Be sure to use a legit email so I can notify you if you win.

by James Tate A single apple grew on our tree, which was some kind of miracle because it was a pear tree. We walked around it scratching our heads. "You want to eat it?" I asked my wife. "I'd die first," she replied. We went back into the house. I stood by the kitchen window and stared at it. I thought of Adam and Eve, but I didn't believe in Adam and Eve. My wife said, "If you don't stop staring at that stupid apple I'm going to go out there and eat it." "So go," I said, "but take your clothes off first, go naked." She looked at me as if I were insane, and then she started to undress, and so did I.

I agree with Pat Robertson about something, which surely must be a sign of the end times. I usually don't pay much attention to what he (or TV preachers in general) have to say, but when I heard the uproar earlier this week regarding his answer to the legitimacy of divorcing a partner with Alzheimer's, I surprised myself. The question posed to Robertson was this:

I have a friend whose wife suffers from Alzheimer's. She doesn't even recognize him anymore, and, as you can imagine, the marriage has been rough. My friend has gotten bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he's started seeing another woman. He says that he should be allowed to see other people because his wife as he knows her is gone ... I'm not quite sure what to tell him.

Robertson said it would be OK for this person to divorce their spouse with Alzheimer's in this situation. As long as he made sure that her physical needs were taken care of, his emotional needs could be met elsewhere. And I actually agree with Robertson on this point. The swift reaction to Robertson's bold declaration, however, has been overwhelmingly negative, and I understand why. Any insinuation that a marriage partner should be "disposable" or that when a loved one becomes sick or mentally ill, we should stop caring for them is indefensible. But that's not really what Robertson said. Robertson equated Alzheimer's to "a kind of death," referring to the familiar marital vow "til death us do part." This notion that marriage is a lifelong commitment has been enshrined in our religious and cultural practice since those words, "til death us do part," were written into marriage liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Did you know that in the 1500s the average age of marriage was 25, and the average life expectancy was 35-40? "Til death us do part" meant then — and for hundreds of years (up until the 1900s, when life expectancy grew dramatically because of advances in public health) — about a 10-to-15-year span. I've been married for more than 15 years, and I can tell you it's felt like a lifetime. (Just kidding, honey!) Seriously, though, I'm glad when stories like this make headlines because they give us an opportunity to ask questions and consider what we really think about things like commitment and divorce and end-of-life wishes. And should we even still be vowing to our partners during our wedding ceremonies to be faithful "til death us do part"? As I discussed this with my husband, I told him that I would not want to him to stay married to me if I became incapacitated by Alzheimer's (or any other debilitating disease or condition). Make sure my medical needs are taken care of, yes, but please don't stay married to me if I'm emotionally and mentally incapable of reciprocating. I understand that some people value commitment over all else and will stay married because they want to uphold their vows (and sometimes because the known reality of married life is less scary than the unknown possibilities of life unpartnered). I respect them for living in accordance with their values, but I don't necessarily share them. I do value commitment, and when times have been tough in my own marriage, commitment has helped see us through. However, the commitment I am referring to is not a commitment to a vow I made or a piece of paper I signed in 1995. I am committed to trying my best to being a loving and caring partner, to honor the humanity and spirit of my partner, to creating a healthy relationship built on mutual affection and fondness. That's a commitment I have to make — to myself and to my partner — each and every day. If my husband and I are still together in old age, and if I should succumb to Alzheimer's, and if he would like to visit me each day and snuggle in bed and sing to me (like the man in this ABC News story), then that would be quite alright with me. But should he have made peace with my leaving him, in mind if not in body, then I will understand if he wants to seek out the companionship and affection of another person. I love him enough to let him go, as well. If you have not seen Away from Her, I highly recommend it. - - - Update: It has been brought to my attention by a few folks that although the average life expectancy was low in the 1500s, that was due mainly to a high infant mortality rate. If people lived beyond childhood, they were likely to live long enough to see grandchildren.

by Fleur Adcock Is it the long dry grass that is so erotic, waving about us with hair-fine fronds of straw, with feathery flourishes of seed, inviting us to cling together, fall, roll into it blind and gasping, smothered by stalks and hair, pollen and each other's tongues on our hot faces? Then imagine if the summer rain were to come, heavy drops hissing through the warm air, a sluice on our wet bodies, plastering us with strands of delicious grass; a hum in our ears. We walk a yard apart, talking of literature and of botany. We have known each other, remotely, for nineteen years. [caption id="attachment_3007" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="photo by andrei.vassiliev"][/caption]

Aural sex does not come naturally to many of us, but it's hard to dismiss the erotic power of a well-timed verbal seduction. If "dirty talk" is something you'd like to try, but you're not quite sure how to start, this is a book that walks you through three easy steps. Well, not exactly "easy" because the scary thing about dirty talk is that it means you have to verbalize what you like, what you see, what you want. And most of us women have been taught that "nice girls" don't say that kind of thing out loud. Dr. Ruth Neustifter breaks dirty talk down into three steps: heighten desire with sensual descriptions; seduce with expressions of lust; explore fantasies with trust and openness. I agree with her that the importance of understanding our own unique sensual self cannot be under-rated. Our senses are how we receive and give pleasure, and our ability to own this part of ourself and express it has a direct impact on our sexual satisfaction. Once we know ourselves, then we can share ourself with our partner. Ruth makes a great point that anyone can say "You're so hot. I want you." It is incredibly more seductive to personalize your dirty talk, specifying exactly what is so hot about your partner and exactly what you want. Yes, it may take practice to become fluent in this second language, but why not give it a try? As Ruth says, "when you seduce your lover, you can also seduce yourself at the same time."

"But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes." — Tina Fey (Bossypants)