|
Writing on the Stall
|
|
 America's Whore As Long As You Brought It Up: Confessions of a Coquette by Cleo I was fifteen the first time anyone called me a whore. David M. didn’t put it in exactly those words, but his meaning was amply clear. Actually his description was pretty accurate, but that didn’t keep me from getting really, really pissed off. In fact, the accuracy of his words added to my fury. “Whore” is not a word to be used lightly. We all know there’s kind of a double standard in society: Women are called sluts, whores, hoes, hookers, easy, and loose. Men are called…players…man-whores…gigolos. Obviously the list of epithets for sexually voracious men is shorter, less commonly used, and less offensive. This article is not about this double standard. The last issue featured “whoredom” as at least one of its themes. As a woman, the word “whore” always makes me cringe. I see women and their bodies being exploited for the sake of lust and money, and it disgusts me deeply. But I see something more too…a reflection of myself that troubles me as well. If you met me, the word “prostitute” would probably not spring to your mind. I’m comparatively chaste and modestly dressed. But that’s only part of the story. Here’s the rest of it: sometimes I flirt. Everyone does that, right? I’m fully aware that I’m moderately attractive, and I use it to get what I want. Late to work or to class? No problem, puppy dog eyes coupled with a heartfelt apology will quickly get you off the hook. Need a favor? A sweet voice and a well-planned moistening of the lips will get you exactly what you want. Want a little instant self-esteem? Toss your hair, and shake your ass a little as you walk away. Admiring glances will follow. You have my guarantee on this. I am not known as a notorious flirt. In fact, I’ve been called frigid more than once…today… but I do these things. Girls: let’s face it; we do this. We rail against objectification, but we are all to eager to make ourselves into objects when convenience necessitates. Sometimes it isn’t a question of attraction between two people but one of good business sense. We sell our bodies for a little attention, a little help, a little forgiveness. Maybe this isn’t done consciously. It’s a manipulation so subtle that sometimes neither the seductress nor the seduced realize it’s happening, but it still works. I am not a guy, so I shall not attempt to speak for the other 51% of humanity. I will say that, were you of the male persuasion were honest with yourselves as you read the previous paragraph, bells were probably ringing in your pretty little heads. Maybe you’ve never twitched your hips or wet your lips, but chances are, you have your own little ways of getting what you want from women. There’s been all this controversy over which gender is more downtrodden in modern society. Men emasculated and deprived of their traditional role in society by the empowerment of women—or, as feminist author Susan Faludi put it, “stiffed.” Or women who are persistently treated as sexual objects and lesser humans by their male oppressors. This article makes no attempt to answer that question. In fact, I assert that this is a damn silly argument to be having in the first place, but this is not really the point. Instead, suffice it merely to say that most people, regardless of gender, have, as one preacher’s wife is fond of saying, “gone a-whoring” in at least a few aspects of their lives. In the last issue Irwin talked about his job hawking jewelry as a kind of prostitution. Irwin struck the nail on the head, so to speak. I spent my summer waiting tables in a decidedly mediocre Italian restaurant. This involved pushing (hot and delicious) garlic cheese bread, (ice-cold and refreshing) Coca-Cola, and my own (very pleasant) personality for fatter checks and bigger tips. I traded my sarcastic, dorky personality for a sweet, perky persona. And it worked; I made more money. La-di-fuckin’-da. Having more money is, after all, the meaning of life and is worth whatever sacrifice I might make to my own integrity. What is prostitution, after all, but selling yourself for a few dollars more. It doesn’t stop in the workplace: Compromising your values because others don’t accept them…or you for having them. It’s fair to say that the some of my ideas are a little…unpopular among some groups. Though I may have a bit of a reputation for outspokenness, this hardly takes into consideration all the times I’ve shut my mouth and let things go on that I know are grotesque perversions of what is right. Sometimes it’s just easier to do or say whatever everyone else is doing and saying, no matter how much it may disgust you. Sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world to betray friendships because good Christians/good people/ “in” people/our group just don’t have friends who do those things. We sell out our own values and our own love for people because the values of others say that our love for these people is wrong. Wearing or doing this or that, just because people are saying these are the right things to wear or do. Fashion: Have you ever crammed your feet into uncomfortable shoes, constricted a |
little pudge into an impossibly tight garment, or worn something you don’t really like just because people said it was attractive? Though I am a jeans and tee shirt kind of a girl, I freely admit that sometimes my choice of what to put on the mornings is dictated by some ethereal fashion god or the opinions of others rather than my own quirky taste.
Even better: have you ever planned your whole life around other people’s values? There is an established timeline for appropriate behavior: graduate high school, go to college and graduate, get a job, get married, buy a house and an SUV, have 2.5 kids and a dog/cat/goldfish, spend thousands of dollars to fight aging, kids leave home, buy a sports car, plan your kids weddings and interfere in their lives, retire, go on vacation, learn carpentry and crocheting, sell the house and move to a condo, spend thousands on medical care, move to a “managed care facility,” die. Does this way of doing things sound pleasant and non-restrictive? Great. Enjoy it. As for the rest of us, why are we attempting to live by other people’s timeline or list of acceptable behavior? Are we afraid of not making a good showing at the high school reunion? Or are we afraid that, when our parents are asked about our activities and successes, they will respond in hushed and ashamed tones? Thoreau said most men live lives of quiet desperation. Maybe that’s because most men (people) are conforming someone else’s idea of what their lives should be. This is, at best, an incomplete list. I could mention a thousand other ways in which we sell our selves in hope of achieving some goal—money, acceptance, shallow praise, power, or whatever. You can dress it up how you like: coquetry, fitting in, making a buck, following the rules, but that doesn’t change the nature of the beast. Whoring in all its forms is a betrayal of both our God and ourselves. David M., where ever you are, you were right; more right than you could begin to imagine. I’m a whore. Anticlimacticis- mologically Yours by Cpt. Willard Who doesn't enjoy a good movie? A movie makes you cry, laugh, jump and all that other shit they talk about in the previews. That's why most people go to the movies. I enjoy the inspirational films, the ones that make you feel that incredible attachment to some fictional, paradoxical hero. That vicarious joy is almost more than I can bear sometimes. That's why I watch movies: to get depressed. I watch movies only to realize I am not fit for any fantastic stories of greatness, of achievement. Movies remind me that there is little chance that I will ever leave anything indelible behind. Despair, pure despair is the feeling I get when I watch those movies. Horrible, isn't it? Yet somehow it's more tangible than any church service, more honest than any "heartfelt" speech I was made to listen to. I can't think of a better reason to waste 136 minutes. 
Eyeball Sex a poem by Cleo As an English major I’ve obviously been instructed in the dangers of explicating one’s own work, but I’m not a very good poet, and this isn’t a very good poem (even for me), so I shall explain… This poem began as my bitter diatribe against what I like to term eyeball sex (a term defined in the poem itself), but somewhere along the way it became my outlet for my own uncertainty about just about everything. This is not my callous view of love and marriage; it is my jaded view of certainty. We here at the Stall encourage the questioning of the status quo and maybe even a little healthy cynicism. Though I still believe that is truly the best way to approach life, I have begun to wonder what life might be like without |
