Posts by Joan Price
Hollywood Sex Wars: If this is young sex, I’m glad I’m old.
Hollywood Sex Wars is a hideous film. I detest these stereotypes:
- Women are big-breasted lust machines, willing to do whatever it takes to please men as long as money and/or gifts are bestowed in exchange.
- Men are sex-crazed animals who don’t want relationships, just a quick get-in, get-off, get-her-outa-here, tell-the-guys.
If this is young sex, I’m glad I’m old.
The plot is a 14-year-old boy’s wet dream – plenty of nipple shots, obscenities, drugs, and ordinary guys getting the hottest girls. FYI, despite the profusion of bare, jiggling, surgically (or digitally) enhanced breasts, penises are always off-camera, unless you count a couple of dildos.
I can only imagine the effect of the denigration of women’s looks on an impressionable, self-conscious teenage girl. Average-sized breasts are unsexy. Fuller sized bodies are unsexy. Average looks are ugly. The guys are far from dashing, but those who understand the attraction of money and drugs will score anyway. Yecchhh. Both genders are equally degraded.
Typical lines from the movie:
- “We don’t want girlfriends, we want to bang hot chicks.”
- “Although girls want to get fucked and do drugs, you have to trick them into it.”
- “Hone your inner pig.”
- “The women we’re after are money grabbing hos.”
- (One woman to another:) “You like to fuck and party, don’t you? Those are marketable skills, and totally tax-free.”
Ghastly, isn’t it? The girls barter gifts for sex (stripper shoes = a blow job; shoes costing over $500 = he gets laid). The boys learn to use cocaine to attract the hotties. Both genders are equally duplicitous and manipulative.
Shortly into the movie, I wanted to turn it off, write my review based on 15 minutes, and move on to work that didn’t leave the taste of dog poop in my mouth. But I wanted to see Fabio, the only person of our generation who, I discovered close to the end of the film, has ten seconds and one line in the entire movie. Totally not worth it.
The worst moment (of nothing but bad moments) for me as a sex educator is when one boy describes how he cuts a hole in the condom so that it rides up and away as the friction proceeds. By the time she knows, he pretends he’s so big that it broke. This is followed by a brief safe sex warning, which is undermined by everything else in the film. When one girl finds herself pregnant, for example, she hits up maybe a dozen sperm shooters for abortion funds.
Of course one couple falls in love despite the training from their homies, with sweet background music, walks in the park, posing with statues, you get the picture. Equally predictably, their pals manipulate the dissolution of their relationship. I won’t tell you how that ends, because, frankly, who cares?
If more than five people see this despicable, reeking repository of vomit-worthy stereotypes, I’ll have failed in my duty to inform you.
So why am I, a senior sex writer with a reputation to uphold, using my precious time and yours to review this loser film that none of you will ever see (please promise me that)?
Hollywood Sex Wars was a reminder to me that if we’re to have a chance of changing our society’s view of older-age sexuality, we have to counsel young people about theirs. Who better to help young folks put relationships and sexuality in perspective than those of us who have been around the block and figured out our own sexuality and self-image at age 20, 40, 60, and beyond.
Will they want to talk sex with us? Surely not at first, but if we continue to be outgoing, candid, and respectful of ourselves and them (something the movie doesn’t even pretend to do) then we have a chance.
Thank you, Hollywood Sex Wars, for reminding me what we have to fight against.
I’d love to read comments from both my age and much younger. Tell me, have I done more harm than good by giving Hollywood Sex Wars the publicity of my review? Should I have listened to a friend of mine, who said, when I invited him to watch this movie with me:
I want to thank you for the invitation, but after watching the trailer, I decline. And I don’t know that your name should be heard anywhere near this movie.
Older Women Wear Lingerie Revisited
I wrote “Older Women Wear Lingerie” in 2009 about my photo shoot at age 65 with photographer Ruth Lefkowitz. It was a liberating experience, both during the shoot — I had no idea how much fun it would be to disrobe and flaunt my underwear in front of a camera! — and afterwards, when I viewed the photos.
Two years later, I knew I looked older. Grief ages us, and I could see it in my face. I had stopped coloring my hair. My skin was looser, more wrinkly. My thighs and fanny were bigger.
But I felt beautiful, because I’ve really internalized the message I keep communicating to you:
We don’t have to buy into our youth-obsessed society’s view that only young, firm, fertile bodies are sexy and alluring. We are beautiful, handsome, sexy at our age.
That statement is true for you, too, no matter how many wrinkles or extra pounds you see in the mirror. It doesn’t matter.
If you accept yourself, enjoy yourself, and feel sexy within, it will show.
Ready to walk my talk (or pose my talk, more accurately), I approached Ruth about doing a repeat of our photo shoot, with new lingerie, a new attitude, and two more years under my belt — I mean camisole.
She said yes. We did it two weeks ago.
Again, I loved the experience. We laughed, we romped, I posed, she clicked the camera.
I am delighted to share our photos with you today, on my 68th birthday.
If you live in Sonoma County, CA, and would like to talk to Ruth about doing your own lingerie photo shoot, please email me and I’ll forward your email to her.
As always, I welcome your comments! How would you feel about posing in lingerie?
Ruth Lefkowitz is fascinated by how the camera captures spirit, beauty and style in a magical instant. She especially enjoys photographing the female figure–a subject of art through the ages–to create images that capture and preserve a bit of a woman’s inner life. In her day job, Ruth is the chef and owner of Ruthy’s Real Meals, a high quality, organic and locally sourced meal delivery service in Sonoma County, CA.
Thank you, Rae
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| Rae Padilla Francoeur |
“It takes intention to keep movement and sexuality in our lives,” Rae Padilla Francoeur quotes me as saying in her insightful, sensitive, and generous profile, which she titles “Life lessons from a senior sexpert.”
Thank you, Rae, for the most amazing birthday present.
I love how Rae combines three parts of me that define who I am: my commitments to senior sex education, physical fitness, and endless learning. She captured my drive when she wrote about my recent trip to New York City, when I had the pleasure of staying with her and her love Jim,
The only time you weren’t working or making connections with others throughout the city was when I was talking or when you were sleeping.
Rae’s profile is such a heartfelt tribute that I want it read at my memorial service (not soon, please) and printed on a t-shirt.
I expect it would have to be in small print to fit on a t-shirt, especially my petite size, so I’m picturing grey-haired gents putting on their reading glasses and getting close to peer at my chest–a pretty nice fantasy for my 68th birthday today!
Speaking of t-shirts and chests, Rae and Jim gave me this “Naked at Our Age” t-shirt. At the time I took this photo, I was sitting outside a coffee shop in Ventura, CA, where I was visiting to present two workshops. I discovered that three men were staring at me. Flattered, I smiled and they looked away. Later I realized they were probably just trying to figure out what I meant by the message on my shirt.
If you’re not familiar with Rae’s work, I encourage you to read her erotic memoir, Free Fall: A Late-in-Life Love Affair. I reviewed Free Fall in 2010 before I knew Rae personally. Our admiration of each other’s work led to a strong friendship.
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| Rae, Joan, and Jim Hicks |
Older women wear lingerie
10/23/2011 update: My goodness, two years after I originally wrote this post on 10/11/09, it continues to be the most often read! Hmmm. Ruth and I are actually planning an update — a new photo shoot this week, results to be posted as soon as they’re ready. My reasons are maybe the opposite of what you might think: No, I’m not fixing to show off a youthful body. Rather, I’ve aged a lot in the past two years, have stopped coloring my hair, and want to celebrate my authentic self by re-doing this photo shoot. Yes, I’m nervous. Of course I am. But if I keep insisting that we should stand up for what’s real at this age and celebrate our aging process, then I have to walk (or pose) my talk .
“I’m photographing real women in lingerie,” Ruth Lefkowitz of Ruthy’s Real Meals told me. “Would you be willing to model?”
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The wonderful people at HerRoom
Ruth was exuberant about what she called my “curves,” and when I expressed alarm that the sags, folds, and puckers would come to light, she reassured me that she was there to capture the beauty in real women. 
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Lingerie provided by HerRoom Lingerie We Buy For Ourselves
