metaphortunate | this one is for my bitches with a fat ass in the fucking club

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this one is for my bitches with a fat ass in the fucking club

I've been trying to expand my musical horizons lately: break out of my rut, not be that person who only likes the stuff they liked when they were 17. I mean, I will always love me some butt rock, but why stagnate? So I've been trying different things, on the child feeding principle that you have to try things three or four times before you really know if you like them.

It turns out I enjoy opera! Quite a bit! I guess that's not so surprising considering how much I have always loved prog metal. And I have started listening to country, and discovered that there is a lot to like. One thing about country that especially speaks to me these days: there's a lot of country songs about kids and childrearing. Everything from the sentimentality of "There Goes My Life" or "He Didn't Have To Be" to the bitter humor of "One's On The Way".

And I have also been listening to hip-hop, and before anyone brings up the ~misogyny~ of hip-hop let me tell you a little story about Ray LaMontagne. Because Spotify served me up a Ray LaMontagne song on my country radio - Spotify, by the way, is fantastic if you want to listen to new music! - a quiet, beautiful song called "Like Rock and Roll & Radio" that I immediately fell wildly in love with. I must hear more of this, I thought. So I pulled up the album, started from the beginning, and on the first song the singer expresses his intent to beat his ex-girlfriend like he says her father should have. Your sensitive white people folk music, ladies and gentlemen! It turns out that I am completely used to a certain level of misogyny in my music, that I just grimly live with, and staying under that level, well, it's not hard. Plenty of rap music turns out to easily clear that bar.

But because I'm sort of off sausage fests these days anyway, I went looking for female hip hop artists, and that's what I've been listening to lately. And I've learned a couple of things.

One:
I can get into Angel Haze's flow or Rah Digga's energy as much as I like, but I can never, ever, ever sing along with any of their music. And some of that shit is catchy! This is a problem! This is worse than the time I found myself singing "Uncle Fucker" under my breath at work! And it is, to me, a KEEP OUT sign placed all over the music.

For which I do not in any way blame the artists, mind you: considering that the entire history of music in America is the history of black people coming up with musical forms and white people coming up with ways to take them over and make money off of them, if I were a talented black MC, I would spraypaint THIS IS OUR SHIT, EVERYONE ELSE KEEP OUT all over my work in any way possible.

And, again, I'm totally used to spending all my time playing in other people's sandboxes. For example. Prog metal. Completely infested by the kinds of guys who, as Neal Stephenson wrote, sincerely believe that they are way too smart to be sexist. Let's take a moment to revisit Queensryche's classic concept album Operation: Mindcrime, musically a work of genius, lyrically an unintentionally hilarious celebration of manpain which reaches its nadir when the main character finds the dead body of his beloved, his only friend, the ex-hooker nun who's been providing him social services, and tearfully, rhetorically asks who's going to fix his meals now. …Yeah. Well, that was the soundtrack of my adolescence, so I'm totally used to enjoying music that has enormous IT'S NOT FOR YOU signs plastered all over it. It's not a dealbreaker. I'm happy to live with it. But I don't stop noticing it, either.

Two:
I know hip-hop deals with as many subjects as any other musical genre, but the playlists I am checking out, they seem to be hitting the high points. And the most popular songs in the genre, by female artists, seem to overwhelmingly be about: 1) being sexy at the club; and 2) triumphing over other bitches. And that's not speaking to me. I'm lucky enough to be at a point in my life where I don't really have any bitches that I need to triumph over. Like, not personally. There are lots of people I wish would just die, but that's more for political reasons. And as far as being sexy at the club, I can't remember the last time I was at a club; and I can remember the last time I was sexy, and it was right around when I got pregnant with Rocket, and that was a pretty long time ago in terms of that sort of thing, and I'm not sure that I'll ever be sexy again. And it turns out that listening to all these songs about triumphing at sexy are making me feel worse about myself, in the way of "don't read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly."

Hey, speaking, of which, I have a question: how do you deal with the end of sexy? If you are a member of the sex class, that is the person in the relationship whose body's power of attraction is meant to create desire not only in your partner but also in yourself ("I have to imagine he is fucking you just so I can climax"): how do you deal with it if your looks, your power of attraction, such as it ever may have been, is gone, but you are in what is meant to be a sexual relationship and you would kind of like it to continue as such? Do me a favor and leave aside completely the question of whether this is relevant to me at this very moment. No, I'm serious. If we're lucky enough to live long, if we're lucky enough to have lovers if we want them, it will become relevant if it's not now. I'm not gonna age like Helen Mirren or whoever, I'm gonna age like an ordinary person without massive amounts of plastic surgery, and that means I'm gonna age more like those mysterious things you eventually unearth with horror in the back of the fridge. So how do you have a sexual relationship when your body contains all the sexual magic of old Gorgonzola? Do you decide that it's the other person's turn to be sexy? Can you both just decide that? Do you keep the lights off forever now? Do you try to create a sexual narrative that doesn't include sexiness? How do you do that? Help me figure it out, y'all, I found a white armpit hair in the shower this morning, I need some damn songs about that.

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I don't have nearly as much female MC hip hop as I'd like, but you might try Dessa, Floetry, and Jean Grae. They don't really do "Bow down, bitches" or "Sexy at the club".

Edited 2014-09-02 12:02 (UTC)

I'll second Dessa.

I second these recs. Meta might also like Sammus?

Thank you! Man, Jean Grae is kind of painful. Which is not to say bad! Just...on point.

I third and fourth Dessa, she is amazing.

If you like country, maybe Neko Case?

Jill Scott? I know she was supposed to release an album of lullabies, I don't know if it's out.

You know, I've never really gotten into Neko Case! I should try again. I am loving the shit out of some Miranda Lambert, though.

I have been thinking about this a lot. I'm squarely in the spot where I think my lovers are completely hot but kind of can't imagine that they think that about me no matter what they say, which is a TIRESOME position to be in and probably worse for everyone else.

And maybe this is just me, but there is definite sexiness in playing your lover like a musical instrument, and triumphing in the sexiness of what you can do and feel (and make THEM do and feel). Like, there is sexy sex without "sexiness".

"and maybe this is just me" .... no, +1 to that.

Yes! Totally!

And right now we both spend so much time at "I would totally be up for having sex if I can just lie here and have you do all the work, because I am dog-tired exhausted," that that's not helping much. So that sucks, but the good news is, I am night weaning right now - maybe we'll get some of that back soon?

I can't totally address your personal "end of sexy" crisis, because I was never sexy to begin with -- not in the way you're describing. I was only ever middle-of-the-road in terms of attractiveness, and my sexiness was something I have always described as a glamour. It was part performance, part costume/make-up. It was something I could put on and take off at will, that made people think I was hot. As a result, I got to have a lot of sex. It worked really well for a long time. You know when it doesn't work? In a long-term relationship.

These days, gray hair makes me invisible to the world, and P. and I have found a sort of balance that is largely comfort-sex with a frisson of our own personal ids. I know he still likes my body. I know I still like his. But I don't try to use the glamour anymore. It never really worked on him anyway.

Yeah, most of this is true for me, too. The difference is that I've always had long-term relationships (and specifically ones that don't allow for casual sex outside of them). This means that as with you, the "glamour" has never worked within the context of those relationships, but for me it's only led to a lot of strangers or acquaintances thinking I'm hot, rather than me actually having lots of sex with those strangers and acquaintances. (And for what it's worth, I'm okay with that.)

I've also noticed that I still have the ability to use the "glamour", but that it takes more work as I get older. And that more often than not, it ends up translating to "pretty" rather than "sexy" anyway. Not that that's really relevant to the issue at hand.

-J

Edited 2014-09-02 15:57 (UTC)

Some of us still mourn your closed relationship status at time of meeting. IJS. (:

*smooch* :)

Huh - see, for me, I know exactly what you mean by that glamour thing, but for me it has always been that attitude that everyone says is so important to sexiness, more important than the physical, etc. But like you say, I can't sustain it forever in a long term relationship. So, argh. Frustration. I mean, I like comfort sex a lot! It is lovely! But I am not happy at the idea of giving up all other kinds of sex!

I don't think you have to, though! There's adventure and kink-exploration and stuff ahead of you. Passion and enthusiasm are motivating even with the same partner -- there's plenty of stuff you haven't tried yet, right? Fantasies you haven't shared?

I'm not bored, if that's what you're asking. :) The nature of my troubles is different!

I didn't think you were bored! But it sounded like you didn't know quite how to be libidinous without feeling like you were beautiful. Maybe I misread you.

I'm not sure how to put this in words, but in my live-in relationship (which is something like eleven or twelve years old right now -- I should know that number, shouldn't I? 2003, so okay, eleven) there's something about a shared history of sexytimes and fun around that that makes me doubt that we (fat, old, straddling the fifties -- he's fiftysomething and I'll be fifty in two years) will stop being sexy to each other. It's like even when we're not actively having sex, we're talking in innuendo and joking about how we would TOTALLY tap that if we weren't so freaking tired, etc. Maybe we will stop feeling sexy to the world, but I'm hoping it's not true that we will stop being sexy to each other, and it feels unlikely.

I think the fact that I have always fallen outside of the boundaries of conventional beauty, and have always known that fewer people will be attracted to me than they would if I were thin and fair of face, made it a reve-fucking-lation when someone first looked at me with undisguised lust. Suddenly, I deeply believed that there were people out there who actively think I'm beautiful. They're not settling for me -- fat, tall, full of scars, no makeup, sketchy social skills, feet the size of Cuba -- but they actually think I'm fuckable. And then they keep wanting to fuck me. It's not most people, but it's the people who count. For me.

Right on.

You have talked about this before, and it is honestly a thing I think about from time to time that makes me happy. I love knowing that you, my friend, are out there being fucking cherished. Far too few people get the good things that they deserve, I am so happy that you get this.

Thank you. I gotta say, though, that re-reading my comment is making me cringe. I was trying to get at the idea that I deal with sexiness feeling "over" sometimes by contextualizing it in terms of adjusting my expectations, and instead I bragged about my sex life. Apologies.

Nooo, don't apologize! As snippy said on the LJ post, role models are important!

For what it's worth, I've only managed conventionally attractive for about five minutes in my mid-thirties, and the partners I had at the time were most complimentary about my passion and responsiveness rather than my physical attributes. They liked having sex with me because I clearly really liked sex and having it with them. Sexiness is a lot more about attitude than attributes. Of course, I may be a bad source for such advice, since I'm quite content to a life with cats and books and being left the hell alone otherwise.

Sexiness is a lot more about attitude than attributes.

+1 to that in particular.

I suppose I worry about my body partly because my attitude isn't always all it could be, either. I mean, I like sex with my partner, but my psyche is a bag full of snakes and broken glass, and I can't always (lol, never) perform sexy confidence and smoothness.

Complicated! I think attaching more sexiness to (and focusing on) sexual responsiveness and actual feeling rather than fetishizing particular looks is a good skill. But, what if (as I think you may be saying) part of finding a relationship or situation sexy is *knowing you look sexy in a particular way to someone* and you aren't? I don't know! I like to think sex is more flexible and about communication. I mean, I have had a lot of sex in dungeons

LOL ... continued..... A lot of sex in dungeons with a great variety of people and thought they were all sexy and fun. Lights were on. I do not like to think that anyone is doommed in a relationship to not feeling sexy. :( Or not having sex. And to hope for some way to make it work.

I kind of liked the mysterious way it ended. :)

I can't imagine being 80 and feeling sexy, though! Unfortunately I can easily imagine being 80 and feeling horny. :/ I suppose I should start working on my imagination.

Well, it's not about being sexy, per se, but Stan Rogers's "Lies" is right up there.

Yep. To the best of us.

I like your taste in themes.

The scary thing about the end of sexy is that you get used to it and then someone finds you sexy. Very, very unnerving. Don't count on the end of sexy sticking. It doesn't just depend on you.

That would be unnerving at this point, yes!

(dark nod)

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