By Britney....
I have had a threesome fantasy or two in my day—the two-guys-and-me kind, not that way overplayed other kind. I have boys-and-boozed it up just for sport, and/or to lift spirits that self-help books would've told me just needed some yoga or a lavender bath or special "me" time. I enjoy a good vibrator and great oral sex and hot guys wearing boxer briefs.
I don't think any of this makes me very different from lots and lots of other women. But until recently, you wouldn't have known many of us existed—at least not if pop culture was your barometer. Even the coolest chicks on TV have, if anything, been too busy being, you know, Strong Female Characters—chatty single moms, super-spies, angsty students, neurotic lawyers, mega-bitches—to get too down and dirty. In movies, women's overt sexuality came with such lovely bonuses as gratuitous crotch shots and boiled bunnies. Music gave us our savior, Madonna—and then another 20 or so years of occasional tiny breakthroughs (Alanis Morrissette, I salute your idea of a good night at the theater; Kelis, sweetie, you can charge whatever you want; and Liz Phair, well, I'm speechless in awe), but no major movements.
Until now. Thanks to the Super Sexual Powers of a rag-tag team of surprising heroines—Meredith Grey, Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls—our time has finally, ahem, come. And it is precisely because these women's presences are so overwhelmingly popular, so mainstream—and so wonderfully slutty (that's a term of endearment here)—that they're so important.
Who knew the second coming of Madonna would appear in the form of a kinda wispy, kinda mousy, unfortunately whiny chick in scrubs? But love her or hate her, "Grey's Anatomy"'s Meredith inspires more conversation than any one character in recent TV history. And thank God for that, really. Suddenly, all of America cares deeply about what happens to a woman who, the first second we saw her, had just slept with a guy whose name she never quite got the night before—and she barely cared, as it was her first day as a surgical intern. Of course we find out the guy is her boss, drama ensues, etc., but that's not the point: We now have a blockbuster of a show whose central female character not only slept with a random—she did it on the night before a very important day in her career, she showed no regret, and then, by the way, she wasn't even that interested at first when he tried to pursue a relationship with her. Oh, and later, once he succeeded and then broke her heart? She went right back to trolling bars for strangers, and when good old McDreamy called her on it, she called him on that right back with the greatest line ever uttered in a hospital stairwell: "You don't get to call me a whore." It's no accident, incidentally, that this character was created by a female executive producer, Shonda Rimes.
That's probably why we've gotten most of our recent spate of empowered feminine sexuality from the music world, where women are more likely to write their own material. Everyone tried to make Britney Spears the New Madonna a few years ago—but it was the other one in that famous girl-on-girl action with Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards who really succeeded in succeeding the Big M. What Madonna did differently from most major sex symbols before and since—and Britney has never had the wherewithal to grasp—was to own her own desires, no matter how unladylike they were. She wasn't getting off on her ability to excite men—she knew that was nothing particularly special.
And no where is her legacy better demonstrated than in Aguilera's transition from raunchy X-tina to her current classic Marilyn Monroe styling. It's not just a love of Norma Jean that these two share, either—they both demonstrate the toughest aspect of female sexuality for the culture at large to grasp, that you can be classy and horny at the same time. Every magazine article about Aguilera breathlessly describes her transformation and attributes it to the love of her new hubby—it's a good, classic "Taming of the Shrew" story. She herself doesn't dispute this—it plays right into her single, "Ain't No Other Man"—and, to be honest, it comes off as at least part of the truth. But she also incorporates her naughty side on her current album, which feels all the more devious because it's packaged as music heavily influenced by old-school jazz. "I'm gonna give you a little taste/ of the sugar below my waist," she croons over a smooth Big Band track. And does it get any better than an Andrews Sisters-style song with a lyric like, "He's a one-stop shop/ makes my cherry pop"?
Fergie also embraces the old virgin-whore dichotomy in her weirdly infectious rapping-singing hybrid thing, "London Bridge," with a direct—if less artful—approach. "I'm such a lady but I'm dancing like a ho," she chants before launching into the chorus: "How come every time you come around my London London Bridge wanna go down?" Complain if you must about this making no sense, question what body part and/or article of clothing "London Bridge" could possibly be a euphemism for … but admit it, you know what she means. In fact, you have a picture in your head right now of the man for whom your London Bridge does, in fact, want to go down every time he comes around.
And though I'll take Justin Timberlake in shackles any day, he's not bringing sexy back as single-handedly as he'd have you believe. In fact, he should know—he was, after all, in the video for Nelly Furtado's early-summer hit "Promiscuous," in which she imagines a presumably recent male acquaintance naked and laments, "You're making me crazy the way you're making me wait." No girls, however, are more impatient than the Pussycat Dolls, an urgency I suppose they earned from all those hours entertaining men as burlesque dancers. They have some serious expectations, as they mention a couple dozen times in "Buttons": "I'm tellin' you to loosen up my buttons, baby/ But you keep frontin'/ Sayin' what you're gonna do to me/ But I ain't seen nothin'."
Jessica Simpson, on the other hand, thinks she's doing the same thing as Aguilera when she struts around in short shorts, but here's the thing: She's simply acting out, in a very public manner, a very ho-hum 20-something rebellion/discovery of personal sexual power over men. Like Britney Spears before her, she's not adding a damn thing to the discussion—nothing more than your average Girl Gone Wild. But, it is important and noteworthy that this normal behavior is now accepted as the norm--as it should be.
But can a surgical intern with a healthy sex drive and some hot singers with a few naughty lyrics really add something to the discussion? Well, yes. Because they're putting our private actions and our previously secret (or certainly kept-among-close-friends) thoughts out into the cultural ether. They're doing it in a way that can't be refuted as just one slutty chick's aberrations. And they're doing it in a way that they can't be ignored … because everyone will be talking about it at the watercooler, or you'll be humming it despite yourself.
Because of all that, I now get to say that despite all my admissions in that first paragraph—and a few more that I'm keeping to myself to protect the innocent and my brevity—you don't get to call me a whore.
