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EROTIC EMBODIMENT
Recently, Sesame Street decided not to run a segment in which the young woman singing with one of the Muppets apparently showed too
much cleavage for some parents who saw the images on YouTube.
A lot of people take serious exception to letting a child suckle beyond a certain age, as if a mother's breast could be
pornographic to a prepubescent child. Some adults say things, notice things, that give the impression that they have filthy minds.
It reinforces my conviction that pornography is in the eye of the beholder. After all, the Statue of Liberty is well-endowed,
as are many traditional images of women in Western art. The woman is often the erotic embodiment of a powerful idea, which
is the late Sir Kenneth Clark's definition of a traditional nude.
Many males, particularly teen-aged ones, are no doubt turned on by the Statue of Liberty or statues of Justice, Truth,
or what have you. Should we censor traditional objects of art, as George W. Bush's attorney general did in 2002?
At puberty, children are told that sex is dirty by elders who at the same time claim, in the abstract, that sex is
something holy. To the kids, it already is something wonderful and holy, then panicky adults tell them that it
is something dangerous and that one's spiritual well-being is imperiled even by thoughts about sex. To boys,
this means that the female is a threat and therefore evil and deserving of being punished. For that reason
alone, sex becomes perversely wedded to violence.
Boys grow up finding it difficult to impossible to feel desire and feel respect for a female at the same time.
A perfectly nice man may lie to his lady because he justly fears that expressing his true feelings will offend or hurt her.
It took me twenty years to learn how to have pure thoughts about sex. I mentioned that in a letter to a woman
I knew and she wrote back wondering what I was doing that took twenty years. Well, it's not a problem for her
and most other women. Fortunately for all of us, girls don't grow up regarding sex -- or themselves -- as dirty.
But I do not know how they do it. A girl is a little angel all her life, till puberty. Then she is called,
"filth," "smut," "garbage," etc. Somehow, she grows up not believing that. (If I had a pubescent daughter,
I would tell her that she is still an angel, but as one who can now bring life into the world, she has been
promoted from immortal to divine. On the other hand, I would tell a pubescent son that being nice to females
is far sexier than being mean. The nicer you are to her, the prettier she becomes.)
But I now appreciate that it does not have to take a man twenty years to learn how to have pure thoughts about sex.
Madonna has communicated a faster way: When you look at my body, you are looking at me; when you put a knife
into my heart, you are putting a knife into me.
For myself, Madonna is a defining example of womanhood. I am very grateful to her for that and for the
many others ways in which, as an artist, she helps me see.
The main reason we can believe that sex is dirty is that we routinely divorce it from the things that make
it holy -- love, and the childbirth that turns that love into flesh and blood.
In her Love Profusion video, Madonna eloquently expresses what it is like to know you are loved.
She is shown walking on air, walking on water, and walking down a dark city street with debris and
airborne automobiles flying past her without striking her. It communicates invincibility, joy,
triumph and power. She wears a soft silky dress like my own mother liked to wear. Her hips are
broad to accommodate a baby. Her whole body seems to be a luxuriant gift that she is giving to
you. And she is sexy -- transcendentally sexy.
Ecstasy is something sex has in common with the mystic vision. What we call seduction is simply
the mating ritual of the human, the cosmic dance of the life-giver.
Richard W. Fox is a university lecturer in astronomy and physics at Governors State University near Chicago.
His fiction has appeared in Aim Quarterly, Dana Literary Society Online Journal, and elsewhere.
Essays have appeared in a variety of venues, including The Taj Mahal Review, Mercury (publication
of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific), and Ascent Aspirations. He is also co-author of several
published astronomical research papers.
Email: Richard W. Fox
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