The Fear Girls

May 21 2012

Author: Nusha, Guys, Inner Beauty, physical appearance, Pornography, Sex, Society

Girls: Post-Sex and the City

Nusha

As I have stated before in one of my previous articles, I love TV. I was raised by it and continue my relationship with it to this day. Spending more time searching for great new shows than with my actual friends or trying to find a boyfriend.

One show that I started following is HBO’s new and controversial series, Girls. Created by Lena Dunham (director, writer and star of indie dramedy Tiny Furniture), the show follows four twenty-something girls living in New York City, attempting to attain the dream set up for them by Sex and the City. The main character, Hannah (played by Dunham), is a struggling writer who, after two years of support from her parents, has been cut off and now has to deal with the very real struggle of finding a job and paying the bills in one of the most expensive cities in America. Not to mention she also has to deal with an unaffectionate boyfriend, sexual harassment in the workplace, an STD, writing her book, and the general woes that come with going through a pre-life crisis.

One of the more noted aspects of the show is the incredibly uncomfortable sex scenes Dunham sets up for her characters. Jessa hooks up with a stranger in a bathroom stall only to have the guy discover she is on her period. Shoshanna, still a virgin, gets eaten out for the first time, the camera focusing on her tightly wound face. The most awkward one by far is the opening scene in episode two, titled “Vagina Problems.” Hannah is in bed with her boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver), humping away and role-playing. Watching these two have sex is weird enough considering how uncoordinated Hannah is and the fact that Adam can’t keep their scenarios straight, and doesn’t seem to care about it either. During their role-play, first they meet at a party, then out on the street, until Hannah is inexplicably an eleven-year-old junkie prostitute.

Again, the show gets a lot of comparisons to Sex and the City. Like SatC, Girls centers around the friendship of its four female characters: Hannah, Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet). They confide in each other, offer advice despite their lack of life expertise, share beds, showers, bathroom time, and offer general support no matter the circumstances. Also like SatC, Girls has frank discussions about sex.

What was so radical about Sex and the City when it first aired was the fact that these women—independent and successful—were speaking so openly and, at times, graphically, about their sex lives. The show made it okay for women to talk about sex without being chastised for it or for being referred to as “whorish” for admitting to enjoying sex. It was the Golden Girls for the 90s/early 2000s where the women were stylish, powerful, and sexually in charge.

Obviously, my issues with Sex and the City are not so different from most critics of the show—the characters were too concerned with finding a man and fulfilled too many female stereotypes. But my main issue with it is more personal. Admittedly, having watched a handful of episodes growing up, the show did make me more comfortable discussing sex, but it also added the pressure of having to be good at it. The women of SatC are thin, beautiful, and sexually confident women who know how to please a man. I feel this does not reflect who I am.

At the risk of offering too much information, I am not good at sex. I shy away from men’s attention towards me. I tense up at the slightest gesture towards any private area on my body. I don’t know how to give a proper hand-job. The first time I tried to give a blow-job, I kept accidentally biting the poor guy. I am far from being any kind of sex goddess.

Back when I was with my boyfriend, he asked me once to pose nude for him for his illustration project. The poster he was drawing called for a sexy female figure–poised and happy. Though we had already slept together, I still wasn’t ready to stand confidently naked in front of him, and knowing that his classmates were going to see this too didn’t help. Still, I agreed to do it out of my affection towards him, and with a compromise that I could keep on my jeans since they were form fitting, and that I could keep on my bra. He sat on his bed sketching away while I stood in the middle of his room trying to suck in as much of my stomach as I could and angeling my thighs to give him their skinniest profile. He tried to ease my discomfort, every now and then coming up from his sketchbook and telling me how beautiful and sexy I was, but all I could do was try to eye his paper to see how big he had made my waist. Even afterwards when we made love, I could only believe that he was doing it out of pity because there was no way the girl standing before him, stiff and bloated, was a woman that was able to turn him on.

This is why watching the sex scenes on Girls are such a relief to me. As painful as it is to watch Dunham’s character attempt to text her boyfriend a gawky topless photo of herself, she is a character I can sympathize with. Just like Hannah–and the majority of girls for that matter–I do have the desire to be desirable, but when I do end up in the bedroom, I feel myself coming up short. As much as I attempt to be that sexually adventurous woman, in the end, I feel like a little girl trying to wear her mother’s shoes. Every moan, every dirty word that comes out of my mouth is forced out, disappointing myself for being so disingenuous. The best I can be is loving and affectionate, but not sexy. Whether it is right or wrong for me to forge this aspect of myself, I am grateful that there is a show out there that communicates my experience so honestly that it is painful and embarrassing to watch.

Tagged girls, HBO Girls, pornographic sex, Sex and the City, Sexuality, talking dirty

May 18 2012

Call for artists!

Starting in June The Fear Girls are working on putting together a weekly column about female artists. If you are a female artist and would like to be featured, we encourage you to submit your work, be it a short story, painting, poem, drawing, photography or any other kind of art. Along with your work, please include an artist’s statement, bio, or description of your piece. We look forward to hearing from you!

May 14 2012

Why The “Beast” Will Never Be Tamed

Edison

The idea of something powerful at your command is an attractive concept, as can be observed in children playing with Pokémon or in adults playing with firearms. More specifically, the idea of a person by your side who has potential to defend you (or at least carries some air of authority or strength) is a sexy concept for a lot of women. There’s something primal about the urge to feel safe and protected by a significant other. Hence the “Taming of the Beast” phenomenon that is so prevalent in pop culture and is a core aspect of any romance plot nowadays.

There are many facets of the Twilight novels that seem to be carefully psychologically constructed to appeal to girls. Obviously, the ladies will swoon for an attractive man who is devoted and swears literally undying love. But much more importantly, Edward was a vampire, a deadly weapon that was only loyal to the main character Bella, even if he had the capacity to kill anything that moved. Jacob was a werewolf completely devoted to her as well, although he could take down an adult stag for a snack. The appeal to this core desire is something I can trace back to watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast; the beast was a thug, a big hairy brute, who could exude testosterone even while saying something as innocuous as “Will you join me for dinner?” What led Belle on in her attempts to humanize him was that within that hulking exterior there was a shred of empathy and kindness. Oh, but the kindness was reserved for her, of course. None was wasted on his dining staff, or Belle’s dad for that matter. Yes, he did change towards the end into her Prince Charming, but is that supposed to make Belle feel vindicated for all the times he was an ass to her?

We all know girls who have dated certain gents because they were attracted to his “bad boy” attributes. Some will even admit to it, and whenever I talk to one of them the first thing they say is, “Well yes, he is a bit of a dick. But he’s really nice to me!” Maybe this is a very primal part of women’s psyches evolutionarily speaking, a part of our “reptile brain” as a species. I also think that it’s time for all of us to move on now that we are aware of this phenomenon; many guys aren’t getting the full picture when they see a desirable woman walking hand in hand with the kind of guy whom you might expect to shoulder you off the sidewalk and grunt, “ ‘Scuse me, bro.” When a male like the aforementioned specimen is a dick to those around him, other guys don’t make the distinction of “Oh I get it, he’s only nice to her, that’s how the sexy mojo works!” Guys assume that not only is it okay to be rude and macho all the time, but ladies like it when you’re a little sharp with them. The problem is that taming a man’s inner beast for oneself (also known as being “pussy whipped”) is very desirable from a woman’s perspective but is seen as the most emasculating thing in the world from the male cultural perspective. As long as we don’t see eye-to-eye on that crucial fact, we’ll have a world full of women who wonder why their “bad boy” isn’t being their own personal Prince Charming, and a world full of men who think that being a bit of an ass is a desirable quality.

The image of an “ideal” man or woman is never simply a construct of the opposite sex, to be used as a tool to control that other gender to its own ends. There’s no mass collusion going on here, neither gender is to blame for this; but now that it is acknowledged as a problem, we’re responsible for creating a culture that better reflects us as thoughtful individuals. As a male, I can be the change I want to see by refusing to submit to the idiocy of the whole “Taming of the Beast” phenomenon, since I’ve observed the vast disconnect between what men and women want from it. As a woman, you can also be the change by dating guys who are nice to people in general, not just those whom you expect to make an exception for you.

Tagged bad boys, beauty and the beast, twilight, undying love, what women want

May 07 2012

1 Comment

creative work, poetry

Zoe Claster’s ‘Nostalgic State’

A little while ago we posted an interview with poet Zoe Claster. (Check that one out here ‘be a gentleman, and call me sometime’) This week, we are graced with another poem of her’s. Enjoy!

Nostalgic State

by Zoe Claster

A momentary rain

Fell over a city

That we once

Played in together

So many summers ago

And the warm memories

That might only captivate

A small child

Desperate for that which

Heightens the senses

And fuels the imagination

Flooded out of me

And danced about in the streets

Likes ghosts on vacation

And that sensation

Quickly faded away

Into a light drizzle

And I was left alone

Staring up at the sky

And thinking of you

How I’ve often thought

About writing you postcards

Something tastefully tacky

And a little sentimental

I would ask you how you’ve been

After all these years

And all those tears

And if it’s still okay

To cry

After the procession

Has gone by

While others have moved on

I still wait

Hoping that this will be the day

That you arrive

To embrace me

With the familiar shine

Of your smile

That for awhile

Was beginning to dim

From my nostalgic state

And I hate

That you left

Before I knew better

Not to take you for granted

So that you

Might hear my thoughts

And give me direction

MIght remind me

Of the family I never knew

Who threw

Plastic pelicans at the fridge

How my mother would laugh

And how my father

Lived for her laughter

And not her expense account

Make me forget

That they both

Have grown bitter with age

And that their rage

Blinds them

From what truly matters

As they say

“Someday

You’ll forgive us”

I would I could tell you

All the feelings

I could barely convey

And all the ideas

I haven’t thought of yet

But my curse

Is that you

Who brought wonder to my world

And taught me how to dream

Can’t enter my thoughts

Without the stinging

Pain of remorse

And I force myself

To keep my cool

Afraid that if I slip

I may interrupt my train of thought

And erupt

In the middle of a crowded street

And throw a tantrum

Like an infantile child

Wishing that her mommy

Would just come home!

I often wonder

Where you’ve run off to

If you can hear my voice

If you can see me

While you’re enjoying

The infinite

And exquisit pleasures

Of the unknown

And the ideal

But most of all:

I hope that you are somewhere

And that you can still

Feel the whimsy of the city

That we once played in together

So many summers ago

And think of me.

Tagged nostalgic, poetry, Zoe Claster

Apr 30 2012

4 Comments

Author: Chloe, Beauty, Extreme Haters, Gender Bias, Guys, Health, Opinion, physical appearance, Romance, Sex, Society

‘women’s magazines’

Chloe

Nearly every woman I know will occasionally purchase what is known as a “woman’s magazine.” Some of us have subscriptions, eagerly awaiting the monthly arrival of those glossy, perfumed pages. Some of us buy them as a means to mindlessly pass an hour or two, perhaps feeling a twinge of embarrassment at the check-out stand as we fork over five dollars and anticipate reading all about “This Spring’s To-Die-For Wedges.” Myself, I fall into the latter category. To me, buying these publications is akin to devouring an enormous, freshly glazed apple fritter: it may be sinfully indulgent – perhaps so much so as to become nauseating – but once it’s over with, all I seem to be able to think about is the circumference of my thighs.

I’m not saying that this kind of behavior is something one should feel guilty about; much like cramming your face full of fried dough, picking up a Cosmopolitan or a Vogue here and there is just fine on occasion, so long as one is able to maintain a certain level of perspective while doing so. The reality of it is this: these magazines embody everything that we as intelligent, empowered women consciously fight against on a daily basis. They cater to the idea that women should value appearance over substance, please our partner before pleasing ourselves, and that the best way to achieve fulfillment in life is to make sure that our cleavage is displayed with just the right amount of visibility that we avoid being branded as “slutty” while maintaining enough sex appeal to keep us from being viewed as “butch.”

These are, of course, categories that women rarely intentionally apply to one another; rather, they are two ends of a spectrum that have been almost entirely crafted by men, and nurtured by the American media to a point that it becomes ingrained in our heads that we must remain steadfastly in the center, with just the right amount of blush on our cheeks. These contradicting dualities run rampant throughout women’s magazines. On one page, a bold headline proclaims that the author has discovered the very best new way to Trim That Excess Belly Fat By Swimsuit Season!, while another tells the story of a sad, young woman and her battle with Anorexia and Bulimia: Silent Killers. Towards the front, an article may detail the Top Ten Ways To Drive Your Man Wild, while in the back lies a piece on the importance of Putting Yourself First: A Woman’s Guide To Being Single…And FABULOUS! The articles are maddeningly incongruous, confusing and generally fail to serve much of a purpose beyond informing us what shade of nail polish will provide the proper balance of edgy and chic.

Within these same, slippery sheets of paper, we are bombarded with opinions, pictures, and examples of how to be perfectly, “effortlessly” feminine, all laid out in the authoritative form of printed media. As any woman knows, being conventionally feminine is anything but effortless. Hence, the advertisements for hair removal products, creams that claim to banish cellulite, and styling tools that promise to deliver sultry locks, free of frizz. What they are selling is unattainable; like it or not, beneath our perfumes, lotions, waxes, and dyes, we are the same, hairy, smelly, aging mammals as our male counterparts.

But it is not the average, twenty-something and up woman that is the most affected by these images and articles. It is the teenage girl who scans the page of Jeans To Fit Any Body Type yet fails to find her own, it is the middle schooler who finds a role model in the likes of the Kardashian sisters and their vapid, materialistic drivel, simply because they are portrayed as the definition of beauty, albeit completely void of character, and it is the young adolescent who sees food as an enemy, gobbling up any advice she can get on how to shed just a few pesky pounds, while keeping a mental note of every evil little calorie that she consumes. These are the girls that we all were, in some form or another, and that some of us still are.

There is no escaping the media and its influences, so instead we must remember to pace ourselves. Though it may at times be fun to turn the rational brain down for a while and amuse ourselves with color swatches and hair tutorials, these fluffy periodicals are the jelly donuts of literature; if we allow ourselves to consume them with too much frequency, we will become intellectually lethargic, driven by a need to refuel our damaged confidence with another dose of sugary garbage. In short, the next time you find yourself turning that first page, make sure you’ve fed your self esteem for the day, and remember that junk food is nothing without that grain of salt.

Tagged confidence, health and beauty, junk food, magazines, self-esteem, women's magazines