today's epiphany

Warning: this post concerns some upsetting imagery, heh, and may be somewhat disjointed, because I don't really have time to shape it properly. I just need to get the thoughts on electronic paper before they're gone.

I was lying in bed early this morning pondering why the Johnny Rotten Nipplegate image Tripleindemnity placed in my head required so much brain bleach to remove. (WTF do you think about when you're awake way early because of the time change?) Let me be clear about this: I may be a prude, but I don't particularly want to see anyone, male or female, young or old, pretty or nonpretty, pinching their own nipples on network TV, or really, anywhere. It's just not an exhibition I personally need to be a part of. But part of the true revulsion that occurred in my poor squicked psyche was due to Tripleindemnity's description of Mr Rotten as old, bloated, fat, and in need of dentistry as he pinched his own nipples on network TV. That behavior, as aesthetically upsetting as it is, is far less aesthetically upsetting when it's done by young slinky heroin-addicted punks than by their decrepit 30 year older selves.

So. You know (or you should, peasants) my birthday will soon be upon us. It's one of those birthdays with a five in it, which is almost as horrifying as a birthday with a 0 on the end. And you know, if you've been following along, that I've been having pangs about growing older. Part of it has been wrapped up in the certainty that I am losing my looks, which somewhat confused me, since it's not as if I was ever one of those women who was beautiful, and therefore had her whole identity invested in that. I was cute and, for a brief period in my midtwenties, I was pretty. But mostly, I was, well, fairly sexalicious.

And my epiphany, which god knows, is so simple that I feel like a moron for not being able to put my finger on it sooner, is that what my identity is wrapped up in is being a sexual person. Sexually desirable, if not pretty, and possessed of a strong sex drive, even when I'm not acting upon it, and just, yeah, a sexual person. Someone who may or may not be reading this blog entry and who may or may not remember making the comment, once looked over and said to me, "You just exude sexuality," and I did, when he was around, anyway, and it was one of the nicest, sincerest compliments I ever got. And the second part of the epiphany is that I have internalized at a gut level--though I reject it on an intellectual level--the prevailing cultural idea that exuding sexuality is at best vaguely ridiculous and at worst fucking gross when you are no longer the young, pretty, slinky thing you once were. And if an important part of my self-identity is vaguely ridiculous or fucking gross, where am I?

Seriously, we all know there was a point at which scrawny ugly but sexalicious Mick Jagger screwing everything that crossed his path slipped from admirable to ewww. And, I think I may have mentioned here or elsewhere, Paula Deen, cooking show host and inventor of the best. cake. ever., is pilloried all over the internet for her bawdy Southern grandma persona because it just squicks people out no end that a fat (if exquisitely well-groomed and very attractive) old woman still likes sex and likes to talk about it, joke about it, and flirt. I guess the only way to be a socially acceptable sexalicious old person is to be completely discreet about it and never let any of it out except behind closed doors with whatever partner you've managed to snag with, I dunno, your other admirable qualities.

I'm not fucking ready for that.

So, yeah, I remain resentful of aging. Goddamn it.

(Old women should probably stop swearing so much too, huh?)

xoxo