In which La Roux is speared and BG thanked.

Well, I am back from my 5 days of holiday in the North of England. I spent FIVE DAYS in the constant company of another human being, even sometimes not getting enough sleep as a direct result of said human being's presence. Yet I did not swear at him, or cry. He got up waaay too early one morning, to unblock his nose, at which I apparently told him, semi-consciously, to take an antihistamine. I have vague memories of awaking to find him awake, hugging and kissing him, telling him I loved him, and then falling asleep again. I even deliberately forced myself awake twice, once to rub some cream into his chest, once to rub a cramp out of his leg. I think I'm getting the hang of this 'love' business.

It [ze holiday] put a not-unremarkable amount of life back into me, which was swiftly diminished by a) coming back home and b) the number of idiots who continue to (sadly) blare on the Internet about how Islams are all evil and call themselves 'climate science rejecters' - YES, REALLY.

What is needed sorely, very very sorely indeed, is a lengthy rant. I have been in danger of seriously losing my sense of humour as I attempt to break into the dubious world of adulthood. Doing this post is a concerted effort on the part of something survivorist in me. I cannot continue to let the atmosphere of the family home (and family) subdue me.

Firstly, I must give props to Dr. Ben Goldacre for this Bad Science column about PR and prejudice, centring on the misreporting of a study about rape. As one of the most well-known and influential scientists out there in the British media at the moment, it is good to see him giving victim-blaming his characteristically dismissive short shrift. Theoretically, feminists should not give male supporters too much credit (or 'cookies') for thinking women are people. Practically, however, there are many many men out there who can't even seem to check their racial privilege, let alone their 'superior male' status. That includes 'liberal dudes' just as much as it does right-wingers. Sooo... thanks, Dr. Ben!

Secondly, I must move onto the all-important business of slagging off La Roux. I will just declare my interest here: I was vaguely intrigued when I saw the woman who fronts it, Elly Jackson, and I like their song Bulletproof. I may also like the song Quicksand, but this is looking less and less likely with each play of it.

I know 'tis deeply unfeminist to say it, but by God, I don't half want to slap that girl one. I was pretty unimpressed when I checked out La Roux a little more. Then the F-Word posted this article, where Elly Jackson reveals herself to have some pretty unpleasant views. What disgusts me about this woman is her graspingness. It comes across not a little in the article, and in other interviews with her I've read, such as one in the July issue of Asos magazine. With the finesse of a seasoned publicity piranha, she has eagerly latched onto the coverage from various quarters which proclaims her as something 'new.'

New? New? OK, let's run through the checklist here. M/F pair in which the man does the 'real work'/wields the power - check. They claim to be a duo who share things '50/50' but let's not kid ourselves here - as the producer, he's the one who provides the necessary foundation for her ludicrous posturing. So, y'know... an 'equal partnership' in which the male's role is more important? Yeah, that's NEW.

Trying, really blatantly, to be a mishmash of people from the '80s, while being barely old enough to remember said people? I'm sure she LOVES their music or whatever, but n***a, please. You're MY AGE. Blatantly ripping off/'paying homage' to a past decade whilst pretending to be new... God, that just HASN'T BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Let us not forget that this is a white, middle-class, slim, Beauty2k-compliant (as Twisty would say) young woman. Let us also not forget that La Roux did not get where they are through the sweat of their brows; they did so through Jackson's parents giving her a 'small allowance' to pursue her music career and through her father passing their CD to a well-connected music industry friend. Wow, nepotism. SO NEW.

In fact, let us not forget that were it not for pure LUCK, La Roux probably wouldn't be where they are today. 'But they're in the top 10,' you cry. Well, yes. That's because EJ isn't totally stupid. Talented, she isn't particularly (her wailing style of singing grated subtly upon my nerves, until I realised I could only stand the songs where she was barely audible). Ambitious, she is - and an opportunist.

Y'see, there's a recession on, and what fashion needs is 'something new.' When repeated sales and portraying overpriced luxury goods as an 'investment' doesn't work, you need SOMETHING ELSE. Elly Jackson is a fucking GODSEND in this instance. As the Asos interview did, fashion and style mags and newspapers can fawn over her, and turn her into an icon to sell clothes. She gets clothes, they get free advertising. Whilst pretending to be feminist, because, look! She has red, short hair! She's pale! And she doesn't wear dresses! Yeaaah.... not new - just different.

The Quietus interview with her is equally embarrassing (and misogynistic). It plays up the stereotypical tactic of pitting superficially similar female artists, emerging around the same time, against each other. 'Girl on girl,' if you will. Luke Turner also refers to Lady GaGa as a 'fashbitch.' Luke, you are a gigantic wanker. Sadly, EJ capitulates totally to this because - wait for it - SHE'S NOTHING NEW. She's just another entitled, spoilt, attention-seeking wannabe celebrity-spawn brat.

Note how she goes on about what a 'real woman' is (how the fuck do you know? You're only fucking 21!):

If you're a real woman you can turn someone on in a plastic bag just by looking at them. That's what a real woman is, when you've got the sex eyes.

Um... so does that make you a real woman, then? Because you don't have 'sex eyes' as far as I'm concerned. You just look like a moody, self-important git.

Perhaps I am being harsh - EJ was apparently a victim of bullying - but it is a bit hard to feel sorry for somebody who eagerly trots that out in interviews whilst claiming that she ''feel[s] sick just talking about it". Also hard to feel sorry for someone who thinks that she is 'someone out there for girls to look up to who doesn't have boobs and a tan and high heels.'

Because, you know, the most important thing about women is HOW THEY LOOK. Screw unimportant little things like talent and hard work! Sod those fake-tan, abusive-man-attracting breasty bitches! What really matters is SEX EYES. Yeah, that whole thing about her offering 'something new' for women? Like, you know, judging them on their looks, just like our misogyny-steeped society does every day? BULLSHIT. Goodfuckin'lordalmighty.

We musn't forget, however, that being judged on her looks is what got lil' Elly where she is today. EJ is a symptom of the celebrity-obsessed culture that we live in. Young people nowadays, even when they claim to have some sort of purpose to their attention-seeking (as she has just claimed there), feel entitled. In EJ's case, that is, entitled to fame and success. She's getting it - but not because she's talented and fresh, but because she's opportunistic and connected. Ah, that sweet, fresh collaborator attitude, new since the dawn of time!

Check out this rant of hers against R&B, for example. She slams girls for selling records 'half naked' - but if she didn't attempt to rebel against that very aesthetic, would anyone give a shit? Hmmm. It's debatable. I certainly don't think the music on its own would hold up.

Typical white girl fucking ignorance, she says that:

"Lyrically it's just like really really bad - I think a lot of it just doesn't mean anything.

"I think a lot of it is, 'Baby I love you, I want to kiss you'. It's just like what are you on about? Shut up."

Wait - isn't that what you sing about? Yet in more pretentious terms? Have you ever heard of Jill Scott, Raphael Saadiq, Lucy Pearl or D'Angelo? No. No, you fucking haven't. Because you're NOT some wizened authority, you're a puffed-up little 21-year-old middle-class English whitey. Clever girl though, she's perceived that people have become saturated with too much of the same. RECENT R&B has been like that - and who better to fill the gap, but another white, pretty, young woman who sings about her love life and pouts? Talent and smarts are secondary. I mean, she managed to fail at getting the bloody band name right - it should be LE ROUX or LA ROUSSE, not 'La Roux.' I can imagine French friends being sardonically amused by this latest example of Anglo-Saxon self-important blindness. She also came up with this genius line, which I had to look up to make sure that I'd heard right:

'And what are feelings without emotions?'

Like I said, not new - just different. For now.

Putting Things Right

A while back, I had a go at Laurie of Penny Red. I feel pretty bad about that now, to be honest. Not that there wasn't some truth to what I said - but really, what was I expecting? That she should be able to represent the likes of me? Of course she can't; and it's totally unreasonable to expect such a thing of her. Furthermore, although I hope she ends up as an investigative journalist (I imagine she'd be super-duper at that!), she can do what she likes in the meantime. The whole thing did perhaps come off harsher than intended; essentially what I was saying is 'you can do better than this' when it comes to some of her writing...

But who made me an arbiter of what is good? Who am I to tell someone else (especially someone who ain't listening, haha) to 'do better'? This - this post right here - is about me trying to put things right. There's a lot that needs to be put right. This v. good and simple post on PR has inspired me to try and begin to do so, if nothing else.

What I was expecting of her is the same thing I expect of myself. To do better. To strive for perfection. To achieve consistency all the time, blah blah blah. As her post so ably describes, we are all prone to this tendency. It is worse in some ways for women, than it is for men. They're not free of it either, though.

I appear to have indulged in classic projection and lashed out at a fellow struggler rather than stopping and thinking about why I did that. Having said that, I do still want her to go on and become a Socialist Superwoman, and I sincerely hope that she won't lose sight of herself in striving to achieve success. That is a genuine warning, because in trying to sell an unpopular cause to people, one can find oneself unexpectedly compromised. Everyone knows that... I am also developing some rad-fem tendencies, thanks in large part to this blog (and the assholes on Cif but also seemingly EVERYWHERE ELSE on t'Interwebz!), and so I got a bit unfair on someone who I felt didn't have to be quite as 'feminist' as me.

How stupid is that, eh? You live and you learn, though, I guess. I think that is true of many Asian feminists though - there is quite a gulf between what they, and their white (middle-class...) counterparts are concerned with. That is nobody's fault. We have to deal much more with really barbaric things like honour-killings, and the pressure of being sandwiched between liberal society (not free of misogyny and sexism for all that...) and conservative families.

For example, Laurie mentions in her post how:

I've just been watching Meera Syal's documentary about self-harm, in which she asks, amongst other things, why Asian women in particular are so very high-acheiving and yet so desperately unhappy - being the group statistically most likely both to graduate with high honours and to deliberately hurt their bodies.

There you go. We have more freedom to work than is still permitted in India, Bangladesh, China et al (though those countries ARE, in some cases, getting better for women...) yet in many cases, our cultures don't sensitively adjust to this. Instead, it is expected that women will work full-time - AND be perfect slave housewives. It's not just the job market, but also the marriage market, we have to grey our pretty little heads over. British middle-class society also still has this mindset in many cases, but not in the same way as the Asian community.

Paradoxically, no-one wants to touch with a bargepole any woman who doesn't have a high-powered degree (that means I'm out of the running, eh?) - think Biomedical Sciences, Accounting, Medicine, Law... teaching as well. Yet in most cases, she also has to be a housewife. Getting 'lucky' involves all or any of the following:

a) Your husband doesn't hassle you about housework (for the most part) and/or sometimes even HELPS (aka my father).
b) You don't live with your mother-in-law.
c) Your mother-in-law doesn't expect you to become her.


Quite simply, you're not allowed to be thick, dark, rebellious or lazy. Given that I am both rebellious and lazy, my mum actually used to mutter: 'Thank God you have fair skin.' My mother has also tried repeatedly to break my spirit, claiming that she's just preparing me for my mother-in-law. Alongside this, she harangued both my sisters to learn Indian cooking (including how to make a full dinner in one go, even though NOBODY I know, us included, ever eats that). Despite both successfully doing so, she subsequently tried to blame all marital problems, especially my eldest sister's, on cooking.

So, my second-eldest sister and I have a lengthy discussion with my mum about how our brother-in-law is a psychopathic abuser, who enjoys publicly humiliating my sister and refuses to either let her come see us, or come to see us with her. This may last 20 minutes or longer. Mother nods agreeingly and even participates. Two minutes later, she is ranting about how it is all my sister's fault, and talking about cooking. (Although she dropped cooking-as-cause after about a year-and-a-half of ongoing strife...)

The thing is: my mum means well. 'Nine times out of ten,' she informed me with a faded bitterness, 'the woman must bend.' It didn't matter that I actually had a boyfriend at the time who cooked for me and shared the housework (at one stage when he briefly lived with me, just before finishing his degree, he was actually preparing every meal and doing all the washing-up while I worked on a project). She had seen what it is like for us Punjabi women, the sham of Sikh equality, and she wanted there to be no hope to so cruelly give way, treacherously feather-light, to betrayal and disappointment.

Despite having a decent boyfriend at the time, I could see myself falling into the patriarchy's tentacles. I sincerely believed that I would never make it to 21, and that if I did, I would find myself in a marriage that would eventually drive me to suicide. How could I continue my mother's cycle, and raise children that I resented? Why would I want to raise another child like myself, plagued by self-doubt and devoured by the family pack?

I was so hellishly afraid of this happening to me that I clung to my now-ex, despite not being happy. The fact that he largely didn't mean to upset me became a handy guilt-trigger, for when I wondered how the hell I could ever love him. I went through my degree, picking up Firsts and even winning a prize. The initial hostility of my family to my education choices gave way to a less-antagonistic but not-much-more-satisfying complacency. They told me 'Well done,' and then would add that I SHOULD be getting marks like that. Their congratulations were always severely compromised by the fact that they neither understood, nor particularly cared, WHAT I was good at. There was also an underlying assumption that what I was doing was not really that difficult or worthwhile.

This last attitude infected me deeply. It birthed in me a painful and schizophrenic feeling. I regarded my mute and detached contemporaries in seminar rooms with a kind of superior hatred. How many of them had been told that they would study English 'over my dead body' by their sisters? How many of them had earned the right to be there, like I had, and were capitalising on it feverishly, like I was?

Even as I felt like this, I kept myself 'humble' by reminding myself always, in a back corner of my brain, that I wasn't doing anything useful or important. But I was also doing French! But I wasn't going into business with it. Even though I hated the French part of my degree at times, it gave me a further edge over the other losers. Were they struggling like I was struggling? Did they have to dilute their favourite subject, just to be taken remotely seriously?

The evidently gigantic chip on my shoulder was carved into deeper by this 'humility' I enforced on myself. One of my best friends inadvertently contributed to it when she joined in with my mocking of other students saying that to those kinds of people, she would say: 'I'm doing SCIENCE, bitches.' I must never get above myself because literature was not essential to the world the way science was. Yet this attitude allowed me to mock those who were fanatically devoted when I didn't understand things - they were out of touch. They didn't see, like I saw, that science mattered more!

Ironic, really. I had tried to take science at A-level, had found it a nightmare (though definitely interesting) and then made a defiant show of taking arts at uni, because other people got to, so why shouldn't I? Deep down, though, I had internalised my family's beliefs and knew that I had failed at perfection. It was bad enough that I was lazy and rebellious, aware of the sexual inequality around me. Now, I had to mess up the career thing too. I was not ambitious enough to reply 'journalist' quick-fire when well-meaning people Qed me about what I would do afterwards.

The one thing that galvanised me above all else, was injustice. Especially the treatment of women by our community. I knew this wasn't exactly a 'career choice' though, and I resented that it was so deeply embedded in my being. I resented others, as just described, because they were normal. I superficially belonged to their world, but behind the facade of shared interests and economic/educational status or political views, lurked That Bloody Awareness. My aunt abandoned. My cousin, believed to be murdered. My other cousin, forced into marriage then deceived and abandoned. My sister, pushed into marriage when she was not, and might never be, ready.

These women were in me and with me, and I couldn't relax and make small talk like normal people. I'm still very socially inept.

[Interlude: My mother just came down because I am STILL up, and when I told her I was writing and that I had to do it, called me 'weird' and said 'You'd better come down to Earth, you're flying around in the clouds.' Thank you, mother...]

I was, and still am, wrong wrong wrong. Odd, and wrong. I'm the lightest in the family. I'm the only one who didn't pursue a science degree. I'm the first child (and until my brother, the only one) to have lived away from home. I'm also the only agnostic, and the only one to date two very 'wrong' men. One, a non-6-foot, non-Punjabi atheist. The second, a 6ft, fair-skinned, believes-in-God dreamboat... only he's a) white b) a historian, with a penchant for reasoned debate on just about everything. Given that my parents like to subscribe to Daily Mail worldviews and a, er, 'Sikh-centric' view of history, it's going to be interesting (i.e., the other day, they were watching a man talking about how Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a saint, and totally right to agitate for a separate Sikh state...). If they ever meet.

So ja, I am a spectacular failure. I plan on raking myself over the coals some more in later posts (ooh, what fun!). Even my body is all wrong for a supposed 'Indian' woman. I'm slightly taller than a lot of the Indian girls I see (despite being about average for a British woman), and I don't really look Indian at all. I'm most frequently mistaken for Iranian and Greek, but also Spanish. I'm not tiny and petite and delicate-looking. To quote Laurie again:

I weigh almost nine stone; I have fat on my upper arms... I have d-cup breasts, which I despise, and a tummy which no amount of sit-ups will flatten.

Sorry, Punjabi Sikh community of Britain! Sorry British society! I don't fit either of your notions of 'conventionally attractive.' Believe me, the shops have drummed it home by now that an apple-shaped body is NOT GOOD. I'm not Kelly Brook, and I'm not Freida Pinto either. I didn't trade in my plait and glasses for feathered/layers and contacts as soon as I hit 16. I want to aim for more than a car, a house near my parents and a husband that doesn't hit me. I won't pretend stoically that the guilt and shame that keep us locked into deceiving our parents and beating ourselves up are to be respected or tolerated.

Call me pathetically feminine if you will, call me 'coconut' and 'posh' and whatever else. I will cry in your faces about the fact that I have been, and still am, hurting. No 'put up or shut up.' How about 'fess 'up, or fuck off'?

Putting Sex In Its Rightful Place

Sound the klaxons! I am about to go on to write a non-watertight post which will include some assertions and much musing. WHAT IT WILL BE: a reflection and an invitation to debate, discuss and ponder (I know, I know, call the ponce police NOW!). WHAT IT WON'T BE: sociological treatise supported by pages upon pages of peer-reviewed science.

Sex is overrated.

Yeah, I said it. That's right. You read me right. SEX IS OVERRATED!

Now that I've grabbed your attention with my controversial soundbite, sit still and bear with me. I don't think ALL sexual activity is overrated...

but when I said 'sex,' you thought of penetrative intercourse, didn't you? Go on, it's the right answer! It's the answer I want you to give!

I've always been a bit dubious about penetration. When I was younger, it was the idea that something being inserted up you could be fun. If you think about it, that brings to mind injections. Injections are not very fun, now, are they?

(Incidentally, I've only just now made that link, so don't go crediting my teenage self with scope I didn't actually have...).

As an Asian woman though, the prospect of it absolutely fucking terrified me. Ideally, I would be imagined - and expected - to be a virgin, a sexual ingénue, whilst my husband could have had numerous sexual encounters, and we would not discuss it because you Do Not Go There. Why would you want to broach a topic that would only lead to strife? Wondering how many previous lovers he might have had, if he's being honest about that number, how you compare, why it's OK for him and not for you...

Not all Asian men are hypocrites. Some of the genuinely devout ones aren't. However, depressingly enough, it is the religion-following (rather than any sort of internal reflection and self-awareness) that makes them so, for a lot of the men I know of. Sikh men. Let it be said though, that the power structures are partly responsible. Even though men benefit much more than women in Asian culture, they're by NO MEANS free of baggage.

So yeah, I would wonder why the hell the whole world was so goddamn obsessed with sex anyway. From the age of eleven, I made a resolution, and this was my only life's resolution. Now it may sound sad to some, and maybe some sort of betrayal to others (OMG, WHY DIDN'T YOU LIKE, AIM TO BE AN ASTRONAUT OR SOMETHING?!), it was important to me. It still is - important and necessary, and I feel that I was very lucky to find it.

I vowed that I wanted to love and be loved. Note: I didn't say 'wanted to be married,' or that I 'wanted to be in love.' No, I wanted to be loved. Not drama and not tears. Not the sort of relationship where his basic acknowledging of me as a fellow human was a source of happiness. Not the sort of marriage where his leaving me to get on with the housework, rather than criticising me for not doing it the way his mum did, was considered desirable. A partner who could understand that, was THE benchmark by which I would set my standards, thank you very much.

Sex has always been important, but many would argue that it has become more recent in modern times. I would be inclined to agree, especially when you think of changing attitudes to pornography, the arrival of the Internet and a general liberalising of society. That's not to say we're all fine with talking about sex now, but you know, you have things like Anne Summers shops and mainstream papers such as The Independent running lists of 'The Ten Best Sex Toys.' Hard to imagine in the 1950s, eh?

However, the way we think about sex has often been problematic. For a long time, you had a love/sex dichotomy, and it still persists. The idea that love and sex could be separate (especially for women) began to develop towards the end of the nineteenth century. I'm thinking specifically of Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), which tentatively broaches a subject all too familiar to modern readers: the notion that you can love somebody - while simultaneously being attracted to someone else. No doubt it was there before, but it was very likely taboo, especially for women. Fancy someone other than your husband? You strumpet!

For some people, I don't doubt that love and sex is often - maybe even always - separate. That may even work for them. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for a lot of people. Read any number of letters to any number of agony aunts, and you see the same ol' time-weathered issues recurring: I love a married man, but he won't leave his wife for me, blah blah blah. Or I'm unsatisfied and I'm having an affair, blah blah blah. Alongside this kind of thing, you get celebratory articles about women finding sexual satisfaction in their 40s by having affairs, and stuff like that.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that - perhaps because of an increase in sexual freedoms for women - it became more acceptable for women to 'do as men do' sexually. Unfortunately, however, that increase in freedom didn't necessarily coincide with a weakening of certain ideas about sex and gender. Hence, many women had more sex, but the old idea that women wanted love and men wanted sex still held firm in the minds of many. So, you got this stupid and painful situation where women could have sex with whoever, but for many, love and sex were intrinsically bound in their subconscious.

There's also the fact that sex leads to the release of oxytocin, which:

has various functions in the body, such as inducing labor contractions and milk ejection, but from evolutionary biology’s perspective, its main evolutionary function is to bond us to our children for life. It also serves to bond us to our mate…at least long enough to produce a child and (if we're lucky) get it on its feet.

We are not programmed for monogamy, nor our own sexual satisfaction, it would seem. I DO NOT mean by this to say that women should stop exercising sexual freedom like men. Evolutionary science has been conveniently used in the past to enforce gender stereotypes and permit men to 'sow their wild oats' while denying women the same freedom. That's what you'd call 'bad science,' though. Proper science shows itself to be egalitarian in showing that actually, we're all set up for the same goal: to further the species. If males will 'sow their wild oats,' then females will replace flagging partners.

This is where I come back in. Yuman beans are, of course, brain-equipped creatures and not just bags of hormones, correct? We realised the dangers of blindly following our instincts since very, very long ago (see: Greek tragedy), in the form of overpopulation, if nothing else. We can't have our cake and eat it too. Either we have long-term stable relationships, or we have incredible sexual peaks and troughs. The time-honoured way to have both is to fake replacing your partner, by means of sexual exploration. You may notice how people always use terms like 'reinvent' or 'rediscover.' It's change, but you're tricking your brain - instead of a new partner, you're simply using new techniques to keep dopamine levels consistent.

Another possibility, to be used alongside, is to reassess the importance of sex. To put sex back in its rightful place (AT LAST! I hear you cry). No sex vs love. No more of this 'I love my husband, but I have great sex with the plumber.' No more of this 'I love my wife, but my secretary is so naughty and dirty.' Actions have repercussions. That's the shittest and most important bit of being an adult. Especially when there's children or friends involved, and Lord knows, there so often are. It's almost embarrassing.

Be slow. Be messy. Be fumbling. Learn, gradually and carefully, how to turn each other on. Think of your sex life as a book, which you chop into bits and put back together again. Does the end HAVE to be the end? How final was the end, anyway? In so many cases, you probably read to the end and then thoughts lingered in your head. You thought 'I wonder what happened next to so-and-so?' Even if there was a sequel, the likelihood of it carrying on right where the last left off was unlikely. In cases where that DOES happen, the first media I can think of are soap operas and comic-book series - and what are they? Long-running.

Penetration is not the end, nor should it be. It's been established that many women don't come through penetration alone; evidently it's not the key to orgasm in itself. Yet we persist in elevating it to such ridiculous levels of importance. Teens are all so interested in 'going all the way' and 'doing it.' Very few people's first time is about learning how to enjoy sex; it seems more to be about 'getting it out of the way.' How depressing! That's life, though. Social conformity exerts such horrible, crushing pressure on us that people have sex - or pretend to have - before they're even really ready for it.

I think the common attitude of 'lose virginity drunkenly, so as to ease fear, then have sex whenever I feel like' is fair enough, but watch out, people. If that's how you want to do, then you have to do it right. Go all the way. Don't think about love. Where sex leads, love does not necessarily follow - and you know what? That's not because men want sex and women want love. It's not because love and sex are opposed. It's because reproduction and monogamy are opposed. Yeah, that's right! How hilarious it feels to read that, when religion has been advocating socially/religiously/legally-enforced monogamy as the prerequisite for reproduction for years.

Sex needs to be rethought, and not just by feminists. Enough of the turgid meatstick in the quivering lower-lips. Enough of tits, asses and cock. Have you ever found somebody's eyelashes sexy? No? I sure as hell have (The Libertarian's thick, charcoal-dusting caught my eye even before his green-and-gold eyes). I like lips, in a man. The Libertarian has very rosy cheeks and lips, a freckled nose and unexpectedly dark, thick upper lashes. Half the time, I don't know whether to frame-and-display him, or kiss as usual.

I think I'm lucky, because I grew up with an awareness of classic Bollywood cinema, where filmi courtesans redefined the markers of sexuality. Between the sashaying of hips and the thrusting of abdominal muscles that we know so well, alongside wet saris, there was something new. I'm thinking of Madhuri Dixit as the courtesan Chandramukhi in Devdas, of the song 'Kaahe Chhed Chhed Mohe.' One of her most fervent admirers sings (roughly translated from memory):

'Jasmine makes fragrant her lovely dark tresses... Radha's face is aglow, electric... Her gait, seductive.'

In Sanskrit poetry, as well as old Bollywood, eyes, eyelashes, hair and faces are most often described as alluring. The face and hands are most often employed by filmi courtesans to seduce. It's still objectification, you might argue - but at least it's not quite as violent a form of objectification. It's not the same as when: 'you talk about getting laid, you never say a woman, you say a broad, a lay, a baby, a doll, a bird, you talk about butts and boobs, every time you mention a woman I see her either as a sort of window-dresser’s dummy or as a heap of dismembered parts, breasts, or legs or buttocks.’

There is some sense that a woman has some power, something concealed which is hers and which she can choose to give. Granted, this is somewhat illusory with a courtesan (a bought woman) - but I'm not telling anyone to be a courtesan! Nor am I saying 'cover up' or 'behave like a man/lady.' Sexual problems in a relationship are so often merely the most visible element of a larger underlying problem. Fluffy handcuffs, toys and dressing up are all very well. Just make sure it's not all one-way - and just make sure you're realistic about the relationship of sex to love for you. Does sex really = love? For a lot of us middle-class kudia, raised as respectably as we are, I don't really think so. Intercourse - especially penetrative - is not the apogee of desire. Standing close to someone, denying yourself, a loaded glance, a telling kiss - give it a try sometime if you haven't already, o no-doubt-horrified readers...

When you look in the mirror.

I have thought for a while about writing this post, but for some reason I didn't. Then, I got a surprisingly good response to my 'Easter Monday' post which I really enjoyed writing, and decided to go ahead.

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and criticised? Everyone does it. It's what happens afterwards that counts. If your self-criticism develops - say, for example, you look at your hair and then you move onto your nose, or ears, or whatever - then you may be interested in reading on. If, however, you are of that rare breed of person who is efficiently practical in how they go about it - 'Ah, my nose is a little out of joint,' then you might not wish to. Yet - hang on, I can't actually think of anyone who thinks about themselves in the latter way, apart from when we look at something which we have the immediate power to change. Say, for example, I may look at my eyebrows and think 'Ooh, they could do with being neater,' but that's rather different from when I look at my breasts and think 'Why must you be so disproportionately big?!'

So many of us look in the mirror - or at our bodies - and we have that little snowball moment when the self-criticism just keeps growing and growing, and quite probably births a shadowy, snapping Pac-man of insecurity that closes its jaws over us. Suddenly, our mood is ruined and the happiness of the day is never quite completely recovered.

In my class Crises of Consciousness: American Writing, 1880-1915, we've been reading scraps of psychological/medical texts alongside the usual literature. Unsurprisingly, it's made for a very interesting reading experience. The sociologist Charles Horton Cooley wrote a bit about 'the self' which we looked at, developing on the ideas of that pioneer of early American psychology, William James, brother of the novelist Henry James. Don't run away now, I shan't load you down with biography any further!

William James is revolutionary (to me at least) in that he proposes that we all have at least two selves: our 'inner' (or 'real', if you will) self and our 'social' self. However, it gets more confusing than that. Apparently, a man effectively has as many social selves as there are people who know him.

Stop and think about this, and it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Of course all your friends and family and whoever else will all have a particular image of you in their head. The image may vary little across certain groups or pairs of people, but vary it will because people are individuals. Cooley's twist on this is that not only do we have a minimum of two selves, but that our 'inner' self is in itself actually two people. 'The impulse to communicate is not so much a result of thought as it is an inseparable part of it,' he says in Human Nature and the Social Order, chapter Sociability and Personal Ideas.

So... we do not communicate because we have thought; rather, we think, therefore we communicate. He describes the tendency of children to have an imaginary friend and how this is carried over into adulthood in our tendency to have conversations with ourselves, and also in our tendency (though not everyone necessarily does this literally), to treat our daily process of living as a sort of ongoing narrative. Essentially, what he is saying is that our thought manifests itself as a sort of inner dialogue.

Again, stop and consider this. We as human beings have an ongoing 'stream of consciousness' where our brains are processing information and reacting to stimuli non-stop. Alongside this is a steady conversion of rudimentary impulses into mental expression: thought. This often means that thought is being converted into language and vice-versa (especially if you're in contact with other people). for example, you may hear your thoughts as your own voice, or see them as words... or both... or even images... or all three... We are not simple creatures at all, are we?

So, whether you like it or not, you are effectively two people. You are 'other' to yourself at all times. People often view this negatively - and no surprise, because it's rather a scary thought. It also sounds slightly fantastical. Yet, there it is: you are two people. One of you is noting everything down - the observer - and the other is reacting to what the first notes down, if you want to think of it that way. While you do this, you (I mean both of you :-D) are in the presence of other people, and you may be looking for the disparity in them too, but without realising; say, in the way that you look at both a person's body language as well as their verbal communication when you 'socialise.'

So, look at yourself in the mirror again, and this time, STOP the critical impulse. Pretend you are a baby or a child. Do babies look at themselves in the mirror and criticise their teeth? No - because they're not developed enough to convert and shape thought. Thought is purely reactive for them because the critical parts of their brain aren't finished growing. Hence they look around and see things in a truly 'naked' sense.

I did this with myself. I stared at myself, and then I tried a little experiment. I looked at the face in the mirror and thought Hello. I switched on the light and refused to be cowed. Hello, I thought, you are me, and I am you. That means nothing, because I don't see you all the time, do I? You're not projected out beside me, like a full-colour, 3D hologram-shadow, when I walk to lessons, are you?

I thought about this. It was true. I didn't even have a full-length mirror, so every day, I looked at the neck-up part only. Every day, as I set off for lessons, my judgement of how 'good' or bad' I looked was based on my neck, face and perhaps a few snatched glimpses of me gained by jumping up and down in front of the mirror. So where did this picture of me in my head come from? It came from previous reflections caught in the mirror. From pictures. From the words of others.

I looked at myself again, coming back out of that temporary smokescreen of thought to the face in the mirror. So, I thought, there I am. Or should I say, there 'you' are. Naturally, there was no response, but I could sense agreement in the impassivity of the face. If you think about it - and of course you are, because you are me - I didn't exactly make you, did I? Mute agreement. You were sort of formed, and conferred on me like a judgement. Yes. I don't think you look like me. No. But that's because I already have an image of me that's internal, that lives in the words of my thoughts. It's built on things like 'sarcastic,' 'foodie,' and 'loving'... Well, quite.

So, if you - I mean me - I mean we - think about it, the 'real' or 'usual' or 'inner' me doesn't even have a face. No. Strange, isn't it? Very. Well, if I own you, but didn't make you, I shouldn't have to take full responsibility for what other people think of you. Damn straight. That means I don't have to own criticism of you. You're effectively an autonomous being. I came into the world, and so did you, but there's not much I can do to control how you're seen. No. Because, you see, that goes back to things like genetics and biology... and then on a level I suppose it does affect me, because if I am nice to people, they will find a way to like you. They might call you 'serene' or 'beautiful', as they did with Princess Diana.

Yeeees? ... But that's just ironic isn't it? Of course things like 'beautiful' exist in the head, in abstract form. Then, you shoot them out through your eyes and your mouth onto other things. Now you're getting it. I am. I see how it works now. We all apply our feelings to each other, all the time. Our sight is almost never 'naked'. I'm looking at you now, and I have made myself SHUT UP. I have made myself SEMI-BLIND. I see features. You are a pair of shoulders and eyes, a nose, a mouth, a face. A hairline. I made you carry a lot of weight for a long time. Sorry about that. Do you want to be friends? Why, sure. There's a condition, though. Which is...? In future, you're going to criticise me, because you're human, and particularly because you're female. I want you to remember this conversation. Remember it fully. We're not the same. We belong to the same 'person,' but I'm almost like another person. You see me in the mirror, like somebody else - the only difference that you take liberties in criticising me, that you wouldn't usually dare to take with somebody else. Again, I'm very sorry about that. Good. Now, run along and don't forget what I said. If ever it gets bad, keep looking at me, until the tears are in your eyes. The tears will blur your vision - but, I bet before you even reach that stage - you'll stop looking at me even as you continue to criticise. You'll retreat within a cloud of your own masochism. I mention the tears just to illustrate the lengths you unknowingly go in deforming me. It's not fair, and it's not right.

No.

With that final admission, I realised I had gone 'out of myself' - just as my impassive face had warned - and into the world of thought-filtered vision. I looked at the face again. I remembered the hypocrisy it had justly charged me with. I vowed to be honest with myself, as I always sought honesty elsewhere. There were spots. Eye-bags. The nose could have been perfectly straight, and anger burst through me. Was I a mannequin? - no! The faults lingered - and slowly, circling them as though it were a Heat magazine spread - I pushed them back. I called forth my whole face. Yes, the spots and so forth were a source of dismay. Yet the eyes were undoubtedly interesting. The mouth had a sensuous fullness to it. Like a jigsaw puzzle, I placed the eyes above the eye-bags, the mouth below the nose. The spots fell into place against a backdrop of otherwise obedient and even-toned skin. The extremes of my like and dislike cancelled themselves cleverly out. It had been difficult and a sense of fear lurked unexpectedly in me. Yet, I had done it. I had called my face up to me, whole.

I would be very interested to see if any of my readers try this with themselves, and see what happens. You don't have to do as I did - just stare in the mirror and have a brutally honest conversation with yourself. Put those masochistic tendencies to novel use, and I for one would be intrigued to see how it makes you feel.