Decode This!

Hallelujah! We are finally starting to talk about it. Sex, that is. We’re admitting that it’s out there, that it happens, that we’re curious. Wom­en are proudly declaring themselves sexual beings beyond the roles of wife or mother.

While it is important to cel­ebrate this discourse and recognize the progress made in past years, one should also remember to consider how the issue is addressed and what kinds of messages about sex are fighting for (and winning) our attention.

If you’ve glanced at a Cosmo recently, or for that matter, practi­cally any magazine seeking a female audience, you’ve probably noticed ti­tles offering “8 Things That Drive Men Wild In Bed,” “Body Language Decod­er: how to know what he really likes” or “263 Juicy Answers from Guys.” It seems that from every direction we are being urged to decipher the ever-baffling behavior or desires of men so that we can better suit their needs. This discussion of sex doesn’t feel too liberating, but rather uncomfortably familiar.

Many of these articles bear a striking resemblance to the format of advice features or advertisements of­fered to women over fifty years ago regarding how to be a better wife and caretaker. Many of which, both past and present, employ the same use of idealistic pictures: a couple sharing a Kodak moment or a woman offering a coy sideways glance like she has a daz­zling secret.

They also share a tongue-in-cheek instructive style, designed to make the audience feel that the ad­vice is both informative and devilishly fun. In a 1948 advertisement for a fa­cial cleanser entitled “How to Escape the Dreaded Phone Call: ‘I Won’t Be Home Tonight!’” a woman is depicted (adjacent to the column of advice) smiling in her form-fitting dress and heels as she gracefully chops at a tele­phone pole. Both these and contem­porary sources urge their readers to prepare carefully for an interaction with “their man” and to present them­selves as flawlessly as possible. Both are guilty of an injurious perpetuation of male and female stereotypes.

The fact of the matter is that sex is both more and less complicated than popular magazines make it seem. Where these magazines fall short is in portraying and valuing non-heter­onormative relationships. The bright, capitalized titles screeching at us in the supermarket checkout line assume a very narrow range of experience. If you don’t aspire to achieve Katherine Heigl’s cleavage or find yourself unable to relate to the uncannily handsome heterosexual couples merrily flirting in their best sets of undies, you’re plum out of luck.

Popular culture also convo­lutes the act by trapping consumers in a perpetual quest to disentangle the desires and intentions of the opposite sex. As women, we are constantly be­ing told that we need advice and guid­ance to “arouse him like crazy” or “find out his true feelings.” Regard­less of our sexual orientation, this is a slippery slope.

The back cover of a 2006 revised edition of Tim LaHaye’s book Understand Your Man: Se­crets of the Male Temperament boasts, “Bestselling author Tim LaHaye has the answers. In Understand Your Man, he ex­plores the four distinct person­ality types from a male point of view. He shows women that these traits are ingrained before birth and that it is hopeless to try to change who a man is.” Wom­en’s Health Magazine is among one of the many resources to which women turn in order to solve such behavioral myster­ies, perhaps using the “Decode Him” feature on their website, which provides instant transla­tion services promising to provide “your guide to guy talk.”

Last year, the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor published a survey announcing that women account­ed for 51 percent of all workers in high-paying management and profes­sional occupations, a strong affirma­tion that American women are proudly establishing themselves outside the home. Although most of us consider ourselves under significantly less pres­sure than our grandmothers to domes­ticate, we should still be wary of the forces urging us to see our partners and our bodies in a specific light.

At the recent “I Heart Female Orgasm” talk, speakers Marshall Miller and Melissa Lopez drew our attention to the sad reality that many women know far more about male pleasure and bodies than their own. While we can likely name the most sensitive areas of the penis, our own clitorises seem to occupy some irretrievable space, maybe floating around with all sorts of lost socks and Pokémon cards.

It’s time to be more critical of the images we consume everyday that urge us to be very specific types of women with particular kinds of part­ners. It’s time to learn a little more about what goes on down there and not for anyone’s benefit but our own. True, we may have to do it without the aid of 12 simple deciphering steps, but we can handle that, right?

While it is important to cel­ebrate this discourse and recognize the progress made in past years, one should also remember to consider how the issue is addressed and what kinds of messages about sex are fighting for (and winning) our attention.

If you’ve glanced at a Cosmo recently, or for that matter, practi­cally any magazine seeking a female audience, you’ve probably noticed ti­tles offering “8 Things That Drive Men Wild In Bed,” “Body Language Decod­er: how to know what he really likes” or “263 Juicy Answers from Guys.” It seems that from every direction we are being urged to decipher the ever-baffling behavior or desires of men so that we can better suit their needs. This discussion of sex doesn’t feel too liberating, but rather uncomfortably familiar.

Many of these articles bear a striking resemblance to the format of advice features or advertisements of­fered to women over fifty years ago regarding how to be a better wife and caretaker. Many of which, both past and present, employ the same use of idealistic pictures: a couple sharing a Kodak moment or a woman offering a coy sideways glance like she has a daz­zling secret.

They also share a tongue-in-cheek instructive style, designed to make the audience feel that the ad­vice is both informative and devilishly fun. In a 1948 advertisement for a fa­cial cleanser entitled “How to Escape the Dreaded Phone Call: ‘I Won’t Be Home Tonight!’” a woman is depicted (adjacent to the column of advice) smiling in her form-fitting dress and heels as she gracefully chops at a tele­phone pole. Both these and contem­porary sources urge their readers to prepare carefully for an interaction with “their man” and to present them­selves as flawlessly as possible. Both are guilty of an injurious perpetuation of male and female stereotypes.

The fact of the matter is that sex is both more and less complicated than popular magazines make it seem. Where these magazines fall short is in portraying and valuing non-heter­onormative relationships. The bright, capitalized titles screeching at us in the supermarket checkout line assume a very narrow range of experience. If you don’t aspire to achieve Katherine Heigl’s cleavage or find yourself unable to relate to the uncannily handsome heterosexual couples merrily flirting in their best sets of undies, you’re plum out of luck.

Popular culture also convo­lutes the act by trapping consumers in a perpetual quest to disentangle the desires and intentions of the opposite sex. As women, we are constantly be­ing told that we need advice and guid­ance to “arouse him like crazy” or “find out his true feelings.” Regard­less of our sexual orientation, this is a slippery slope.

The back cover of a 2006 revised edition of Tim LaHaye’s book Understand Your Man: Se­crets of the Male Temperament boasts, “Bestselling author Tim LaHaye has the answers. In Understand Your Man, he ex­plores the four distinct person­ality types from a male point of view. He shows women that these traits are ingrained before birth and that it is hopeless to try to change who a man is.” Wom­en’s Health Magazine is among one of the many resources to which women turn in order to solve such behavioral myster­ies, perhaps using the “Decode Him” feature on their website, which provides instant transla­tion services promising to provide “your guide to guy talk.”

Last year, the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor published a survey announcing that women account­ed for 51 percent of all workers in high-paying management and profes­sional occupations, a strong affirma­tion that American women are proudly establishing themselves outside the home. Although most of us consider ourselves under significantly less pres­sure than our grandmothers to domes­ticate, we should still be wary of the forces urging us to see our partners and our bodies in a specific light.

At the recent “I Heart Female Orgasm” talk, speakers Marshall Miller and Melissa Lopez drew our attention to the sad reality that many women know far more about male pleasure and bodies than their own. While we can likely name the most sensitive areas of the penis, our own clitorises seem to occupy some irretrievable space, maybe floating around with all sorts of lost socks and Pokémon cards.

It’s time to be more critical of the images we consume everyday that urge us to be very specific types of women with particular kinds of part­ners. It’s time to learn a little more about what goes on down there and not for anyone’s benefit but our own. True, we may have to do it without the aid of 12 simple deciphering steps, but we can handle that, right?