Have you noticed that no one cares when lady celebs kiss each other anymore? Miley Cyrus kissed a girl and everyone was bored. Even proclaiming leztastic crushes has fallen out of vogue. Right now, the lez crush is beyond ubiquitous. No celebrity is complete without one. Washed-up stars stuck in reality show hell are scratching at the pages of Out magazine, dying to confess their attraction to Drew Barrymore. Ingénues vying for roles in Woody Allen films want you to know that they'd love to make out with Chloe Sevigny if only she'd give them the chance. The media might love it, but frankly, if your face doesn't smell like pussy, I'm bored.
So then what's an authentic crush? Certainly more than US Weekly would have us believe. I say it's an attraction that surprises us because it falls outside our usual realm. It's about being turned on by sameness and recognizing ourselves in the object of our desire. I've crushed on strippers, burlesque dancers, poets, cat-eye-glasses-wearing librarians, and a nun who ran the Catholic bookstore in my old neighborhood.
Sexuality researcher Meredith Chivers, having studied the reactions of our pussies in a lab, cites the "nonspecificity of women's sexual arousal," as an explanation of our ability to get hot for scenarios that fall outside our sexual orientation. Her research has been used to support the theory of female sexuality as fluid. In other words, we might all be a little bisexual.
I'm not buying it. Instead, I think we're all just turned on by the idea of getting laid. Watching sex, whether it's two women, men, or the bonobo monkeys that Chivers showed in her lab, makes us want to get busy. Rather than scattershot sexuality, I see it as an indication of our sexual empathy. When we think about sex, we remember what it feels like to fuck and to be fucked. But most of us still require a host of other elements before we'll actually do it. One of those elements is intimacy.
more on next page...
\\\
(continued)
Women create intimate relationships; biologically we're designed to. We bond, we find strength in sameness and numbers. Our empathy is part of the reason my friends so easily say I love you to each other. We end our phone calls with endearments, pledging loyalty above all else. Respect a sister and she'll have your back. She'll pick you up when a lover has hurt you. She'll Netflix Glitter, make you tea with soymilk and play Diana Ross on repeat until your broken heart has healed over just enough for you to climb back into your fuck-me-pumps and head back out into the world.
The authentic crush, the one that isn't proclaimed as a ploy for attention, stems from understanding a woman as a woman, while still having the ability to step outside yourself enough to see her sexuality. The emotional intimacy and empathy we so easily fall into sometimes spills into sexual tension. Sometimes there's so much of it that fucking is the only way out. And that's when it gets interesting.
Follow SheWired on Twitter!
Follow SheWired on Facebook!
Be SheWired's Friend on MySpace!
