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/Pictures of Naked Girls
How I look
I'm primarily heterosexual, or heteroflexible, but I get a sexual charge from images of naked women. In theory, I should be more aroused by images of men, at least to a degree that's proportionate to my sexual preferences, and sometimes I do find myself aroused by a photograph of an unusually hot cock or glimpse of a masculine shoulder, but I'm more often aroused by an expanse of naked, feminine skin.
The feminist argument is that I'm colluding with the 'male gaze,' since men enjoy images of women and therefore I must have appropriated the male perspective. But that argument's specious and simplistic. It's more likely that women simply experience images differently. And there's a growing body of evidence that women have complex, fluid sexualities.
Last year, the New York Times published a piece reflecting on a study that revealed that women tend to be more aroused by images of women than images of men.
The conclusion?
And naked female bodies tend to suggest sensuality. There's the complaint that women's bodies are sexualized by our culture, but perhaps women's bodies are more sexually expressive and evocative. These nude creatures exude sex, reminiscent of flirtation, touch, sensual interaction, foreplay. I respond because I identify with that I see. I see an image of a nude woman and I want to be touched, or I want to be naked, or it triggers a bisexual response and I lust. When I see the model in Chip Willis' photos, I want to run my hands over her breasts, and then I want a man to run his hands over mine. Images of naked women put me in a sexual mood, a mood for a threesome or an atmospheric twosome, and I suspect that if I were hooked up to a photoplethysmograph, it would register a rush of blood to my netherzone while I wander this very site which, at the moment, is rich with images of women.
The feminist argument is that I'm colluding with the 'male gaze,' since men enjoy images of women and therefore I must have appropriated the male perspective. But that argument's specious and simplistic. It's more likely that women simply experience images differently. And there's a growing body of evidence that women have complex, fluid sexualities.
What really matters to women [...] is not the gender of the actor, but the degree of sensuality.
Heterosexual women, Dr. [Meredith] Chivers and her colleagues found, were no more excited by athletic naked men doing yoga or tossing stones into the ocean than they were by the control footage: long pans of the snowcapped Himalayas. When straight women viewed a video of a naked woman doing calisthenics, on the other hand, their blood flow increased significantly.
The conclusion?
What really matters to women, Dr. Chivers said, at least in the somewhat artificial setting of watching movies while intimately hooked up to a device called a photoplethysmograph, is not the gender of the actor, but the degree of sensuality.
And naked female bodies tend to suggest sensuality. There's the complaint that women's bodies are sexualized by our culture, but perhaps women's bodies are more sexually expressive and evocative. These nude creatures exude sex, reminiscent of flirtation, touch, sensual interaction, foreplay. I respond because I identify with that I see. I see an image of a nude woman and I want to be touched, or I want to be naked, or it triggers a bisexual response and I lust. When I see the model in Chip Willis' photos, I want to run my hands over her breasts, and then I want a man to run his hands over mine. Images of naked women put me in a sexual mood, a mood for a threesome or an atmospheric twosome, and I suspect that if I were hooked up to a photoplethysmograph, it would register a rush of blood to my netherzone while I wander this very site which, at the moment, is rich with images of women.
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Durruti Column
Men tend to be represented differently, or their bodies are coded with different traits. They embody athleticism and confidence. In advertising, they are aspirational figures of success, in hipster shots they maintain a kind of cool distance. They're evocative in their own way and I'm sure my body responds to them, but differently. While I can fetishize a single body part, and I do, I generally need more context for images of men. Context allows me to sexualize their bodies.
And this difference might be due in part to how I relate to men sexually, which tends to be less visual than aural, tactile, and contextual. When I close my eyes, it's to feel things more intensely, and as much as I'm a voyeur, my sexual experience is rarely visual. He disappears inside me, my pussy or my throat, and sex is experienced as a tightness, a throbbing, a slow spreading spark and ache. When I see that rare photo of a gorgeous cock, of covetous size and shape, I'm reminded of that tightness and throbbing and my body responds. A hard cock is its own context - an erection is inherently sexual. But if I were to see a man taking part in naked yoga, as the women in the study experienced, I'd daydream with the occasional pause to admire the man's flexibility.
And perhaps images of women are sexual to me because my own body feels sexual, and my body is something I see often. My breasts, my ass, my pussy are all sexual zones, but then there's also my neck and throat, the small of my back, my arms and hands and the backs of my knees, and the insides of my thighs. When I see these exposed on a woman, I think of my own erogenous zones. I simultaneously want to touch and be touched. I might sexualize the bodies of women because my own body is highly sexual.
Dr. Chivers found that heterosexual women have complex sexualities. Where hetero, gay, and bisexual men tend to have a clear preference for one gender over the other, heterosexual women tend to have very nuanced sexualities and preferences. Which suggests to me that my experience is just one of many.
And this difference might be due in part to how I relate to men sexually, which tends to be less visual than aural, tactile, and contextual. When I close my eyes, it's to feel things more intensely, and as much as I'm a voyeur, my sexual experience is rarely visual. He disappears inside me, my pussy or my throat, and sex is experienced as a tightness, a throbbing, a slow spreading spark and ache. When I see that rare photo of a gorgeous cock, of covetous size and shape, I'm reminded of that tightness and throbbing and my body responds. A hard cock is its own context - an erection is inherently sexual. But if I were to see a man taking part in naked yoga, as the women in the study experienced, I'd daydream with the occasional pause to admire the man's flexibility.
And perhaps images of women are sexual to me because my own body feels sexual, and my body is something I see often. My breasts, my ass, my pussy are all sexual zones, but then there's also my neck and throat, the small of my back, my arms and hands and the backs of my knees, and the insides of my thighs. When I see these exposed on a woman, I think of my own erogenous zones. I simultaneously want to touch and be touched. I might sexualize the bodies of women because my own body is highly sexual.
Dr. Chivers found that heterosexual women have complex sexualities. Where hetero, gay, and bisexual men tend to have a clear preference for one gender over the other, heterosexual women tend to have very nuanced sexualities and preferences. Which suggests to me that my experience is just one of many.
- 05/25/2009
