Desire. Longing. Lust.
Lust /ləst/ A noun that describes an intense sexual hunger for another. Middle English, from Old English, desire.
Lust is defined as “any source of pleasure or delight,” also “an appetite,” and “a liking for a person,” also “fertility” (of soil). Sense of “sinful sexual desire, degrading animal passion” (now the main meaning) developed in late Old English and in other Germanic languages, the derivative words mean “pleasure.”
I am fascinated by the erotic layers of desire, passion, and lust experienced in my own sex life. They are the spices of sex that go together just like cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in baking. As I love to cook and bake, I think of spices to explain lust, especially aphrodisiac spices. And when I think of lust, I think of moments I have desired someone beyond control. Moments so overwhelmed by lust, I become animal, lost in the heat of chemistry. Lust itself is the high note of sexual desire. It is the spark of what moves us from attraction to arousal and into action.
Reading other women’s stories about lust gives insight to the human response of sexual desire and passion. Erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel’s newest anthology Women in Lust is juicy and bursting with the passionate flavors of many voices. These stories taste as good as the musky inside of a lover’s thigh and the intoxicating mystery of an evolving kiss. Fresh and wonderfully compiled, twenty erotica authors combine their literary gifts and mix it all up into a lusty book.
I have read this book in bed. I have also read it in a cafe while having lunch, while having a pedicure, and I have taken moments to read it before meeting my lover for dinner. Erotica like this is inspirational, and musing on the subject of lust always whets my appetite for more. One of my most favorite stories from this anthology, Comfort Food by Donna George Storey, made me do a double take to the page, as the author’s voice reminded me uncannily of my own lustful fantasies (as well as a few realities) and my proclivity for combining food with lust. The featured dessert at the beginning of the story, a butterscotch pudding, was reminiscent of a recent sensual experience with my lover at a restaurant that served a butterscotch budino (an Italian pudding). Something about butterscotch pudding, I think. Its caramel flavor and satiny texture inspires lust for a taste of something just as creamy, just as delicious, if not more so. As the author describes, “Perhaps it was the creamy smoothness caressing my tongue like satin? Or the bottomless depth of flavor: caramel, tropical vanilla and an almost floral sweet cream, all mixed together with something else mysterious, alluring, even addictive? Whatever the reason for the magic, at that moment, I was very glad to be alive. When I finished my dessert, resisting the urge to lick the bowl clean, I waved over the pretty waitress.”
The story evolves from wanting the recipe to something more than a desire for ingredients from the chef.
Cherry Blossom by Kayar Silkenvoice is another story that capitvated me. The erotic tale takes place at a ryokan in Kyoto, Japan, where bathing in hot onsen waters and a massage transcends within the beautiful and sudden moment of desire. I loved the fluidity of Silkenvoice’s writing, as graceful as cherry blossoms falling upon hot spring water, illustrating the concentrated delicacy of sexual energy between two women for one another.
And lust can be so overpowering that we might feel like an animal, wanting to bite the one we desire because the feeling of lust is so strong. In Bite Me by Lucy Hughes, an exploration in pain, lust, and her lover’s request to bite him piques her curiosity and questions her indifference to this kind of fetish, pushing her beyond boundaries.
This book gives the reader a bouquet of delights, all clamoring with lust, displaying its words, paragraphs, and letters in sinuous sentences and wanton descriptives. As most of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s erotica anthologies are sexy, this one is hot off the press, and one to lust for. This delicious book would make anyone blush with lustful wonder.
Women in Lust is a sexy read. You can buy it online or visit the Women in Lust blog to discover more about the authors. I admire Rachel Kramer Bussel’s work as both an editor and author. Read about the Lusty Lady herself here on her main website.
The stories and their authors:
Naughty Thoughts by Portia Da Costa
Guess by Charlotte Stein
Her, Him, and Them by Aimee Pearl
Bayou by Clancy Nacht
Smoke by Elizabeth Coldwell
Bite Me by Lucy Hughes
Ride a Cowboy by Del Carmen
Queen of Sheba by Jen Cross
Hot for Teacher by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Unbidden by Brandy Fox
Something to Ruin by Amelia Thornton
Guitar Hero by Kin Fallon
Ode to a Masturbator by Aimee Herman
Orchid by Jacqueline Applebee
Cherry Blossom by Kayar Silkenvoice
Rain by Olivia Archer
The Hard Way by Justine Elyot
Strapped by K D Grace
Beneath My Skin by Shanna Germain
Comfort Food by Donna George Storey
I’ve been reading (and re-reading) Obsessed. Nineteen stories of erotic romance that pivots upon the g-spot of love like a 110-volt charged vibrator in search of the female cerebral orgasm. It hits the spot; the emotional and psychological soft spot that causes obsession to grow, germinate, and blossom.
In the introduction written by editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, she hopes that “Obsessed speaks to the part of you that knows what it’s like to do anything for the right person, to bare yourself body and soul in the hope that once stripped to your most secret self, you will be rewarded with someone who sees you for who you truly are.” And isn’t that where the depth of obsession comes from? Our deepest, most secret self; the raw part of us that yearns to be touched, even down to the nerve and bone. The word “obsessed” is fraught with a hungry notion that we cannot get enough of something or someone so painfully compelling to us, and that is the very point and place where we lose ourselves to it.
The Western perspective of “romantic love” has idealized this experience, making an unconscious psychological demand that the person we are obsessed with fit our ideal “other half.” The anima and animus of Jungian archetypes present this kind of obsessive love in a mythical and dreamlike state of being “in love.” In Eastern and Zen philosophies, this kind of emotion is where inner growth begins— the experience of a “red-hot coal in the throat” allows us to evolve, and, as we know, growing pains are part of the experience. Obsession can be beautiful like a thorny rosebush. If we throw ourselves into the thick of it, blood will be drawn. Like sailors entranced by sirens, we crash into the rocks despite of it all when we are obsessed. These nineteen writers tell us about erotic obsession with extreme eloquence. Romantic obsession is one subject to contend with. Add some hot and steamy sex into the equation and erotica has some literary weight.
Each story of women in the throes of erotic obsession has taken me on a journey, caressing my own passionate emotions, comforting me while I read, reminding me that I am not alone in my own experience within the tangle of obsession, sex and love. It is because as I have been reading, I have been obsessed with a man myself. It began as mental attraction, a parallel, and a familiar feeling of like-minded connection. I was a fool to think it was merely a budding friendship, for when I first saw him I was consumed by a fire that only poets throughout history can explain. Then my sexual obsession began to brew, to be sure, after our first time together. Boiling over like a hot cauldron, the flame of my obsession is now a hot pot of scalding desire. But sex is not the only reason. There are many other aspects and layers to my own obsession with my lover. Well, the sex is amazing, I’ll admit. And not for the reasons anyone might assume. It is because he touches that naked part of me that is hidden, my secret place, and he sees me for who I am inside.
There are the obvious symptoms of a woman obsessed with the man she wants: she feels an immense desire, uncontrollably so. She can’t stop thinking about him and all the things he does to arouse her lust. Sometimes, it’s someone she cannot forget. Perhaps it’s the way he smiles at her with a gleam or the tone of his voice, or maybe she doesn’t get to hear his voice at all, as in Silent Treatment, by Donna George Storey, the first erotic tale that opens this anthology of women writers. She’s on a weekend yoga getaway where silence is mandatory, talk is forbidden. During her stay at the retreat, she reconnects with a former lover without words. “He blushed, but kept his gaze fixed on me. It was, in fact, the only way we could speak. In the almost palpable weight of our silence, that prickling warmth of desire suddenly sprang to life down there. Stephen was glad to see me. There was no question about that. And he wanted to express something else with those bottomless amber eyes: Apology. A faint sorrow. And— no mistake about it— hot, smoking desire.”
Yes, I admit, desire began with the smell of his skin, the look on his face, and his kiss. The feeling stirred itself up in my gut, a tingling sensation. Butterflies in my belly. Swarm of bees in my brain. My body became lighter, and my mind dizzy with want. Obsession. It’s real honest-to-goodness passion that takes your life off the path and creates a whole new one you never thought you’d take, and as you follow your heart (and other parts of your lusty body), obsession undoes every bit of reason you thought you had.
I know obsession intimately, and sometimes excruciatingly so— and the pain of falling in love is exquisite. Obsession is a delicate matter; it doesn’t come all neat and tidy, packaged in a pretty box with a ribbon. It can be ink-stained and needled deep under your skin like a tattoo. In Raven’s Flight by Andrea Dale, a woman’s fetish for licking her lover’s tattoo begins her adventure with a silver-tongued Irishman. “I had the overwhelming compulsion to lick his tattoo, trace every spiral and intricate knot and line with my tongue.” She goes from longing to action: His kiss tasted peaty and smoky like the whiskey from his chalice, she explains, and the sweep of his tongue sent her into a full body shiver. “My nipples peaked, my clit trembled. All that just from a kiss. A kiss that rocked my world so soundly, I half thought we were having an earthquake. So I did what any right-minded hussy would: I took him home with me, and I confessed my burning need to explore his tattoo.” Tongues, kisses, and tattoos on the skin and underneath, ink-stained within the heart.
Ah, my lover’s kiss. But, there are other things about him that arouse me. I know the way the heat of his mouth grazes my lower lip in a kiss, how it travels down along the back of my neck. His kiss intoxicates me. And I’m obsessed with his hands, remembering how the wide expanse of them holds my hips firmly as he plunges deep inside. His hands rule my body. His hands are my obsession, too. Looking upon the shape of them sends shivers of longing through me, sensations I cannot describe; there aren’t any words that can explain the way they undo me, bit by bit, like sugar dissolving. In Memphisto Waltz by Justine Elyot, Lily has a reunion with her childhood piano teacher, the passionate Russian Leonid Gorodetsky. She marvels his hands: “Gorodetsky’s hand. I am holding his legendary hand. Those women outside by the rubbish bins would kill to be in my position. It’s a very nice hand, too, warm and smooth, nothing limp or clammy about his grip. It’s the hand I remember from my childhood. The magic hand, the hand that turns notes and chords into sensual experience and fill the critics’ heads with hyperbole. I feel as if I ought to light up, or crackle, or something. Actually, I’m not far off crackling.”
And yet another story about a woman’s obsession with a man and his hands; perhaps there is such a thing as a hand fetish? If so, I have an obsession for my man’s hands and what they do to me.
In Rachel Kramer Bussel’s piece, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Shelly’s obsession is her husband. When he lost over two hundred pounds, he changed from the sexy teddy bear of a giant to more like a linebacker. Her desire is rekindled when she feels jealous over the new attentions her husband receives from other women. But, Shelly admits, she liked her husband heavier, in fact, she preferred him bigger. Knowing that some things don’t change, as Ron still had the heft of his hands and his cock, Shelly thought of what reminded her about falling in love with her husband: “his hands, though, were big, strong, powerful; there was nothing he could do about his man hands. Ron had always been able to speak to her with his hands, even on their first date, when he’d reached for one of hers and massaged it, his thumb tricking along her palm, his fingers tickling her skin, making her curious about him, about what he could do to her.” Shelly and Ron run off to the movies and in the seats of the theater they rediscover their desire for each other, remembering why they came together in the first place.
The whistle of the kettle reminds me of an afternoon when we were in the midst of making tea, and suddenly his hands clasp my waist, then my wrists, and he pins me to the wall of the hallway, the whistle screeching with boiling hot water, his mouth on mine, going down further, until I am forgetting what the sound of steam is persistently calling out for, as the heat of his mouth on my sex causes me to lose control. His tongue dances on my clit, inscribing something, some kind of language. I’m obsessed, and I’m in love. Like a kettle on the stove to boil and whistle, I’ve spouted out “I love you” during the heat of passion, but he doesn’t express the way he feels for me in words. How he feels is secret, hidden. In Secret Places by Adele Haze, Marian’s mouth shaped the words I love you during sex with her lover, Dan, or as she calls him “the boy,” in an unusual coupling between once-strangers on a subway commute, who become tender lovers that hide their emotions from each other. “Underneath it all, there is so much tenderness, so much of the unnamed, unknowable feeling. The other’s pleasure is the ultimate reward for each of them; they compete to bring each other to the brink. Out of bed, they race to make each other tea, to give comforts, to spoil the other with small kindnesses. Still, neither of them will say the words.” And during their lovemaking and revealing of their innermost places during sex, Marian decides to use her finger to tell her lover what she feels. “With the tip of her finger she writes on his naked shoulder: I L-O-V-E Y-O-U. Her heart whispers the invisible words.”
Obsession is an attraction that goes beyond the ordinary, a feeling that inspires as well as terrifies, because a woman obsessed is a woman that will do anything for the man she so desires. Obsession runs deeper than lust. It tangles up the mind with feelings you never thought you would ever have. It’s irrational, passionate, and a little crazy. It’s sometimes dangerous. It’s risk and pushing your boundaries. Feelings that overwhelm you when they are near, the smell of their skin, the chemistry that has you obedient like a dog on a leash, the nearness of the one that you desire emanating power over you like gravity, like magnet pull. And sometimes your obsession can be your ex-husband, shaking you up with aftershocks of your desire in Aftershocks by Bella Andre. “Oh god. They’d just survived one hell of an earthquake in a room full of dangers and instead of crying, instead of freaking out, she was wet. Soaking through her panties from nothing but his arms, tight around her, his breath whispering over her ear. She’d been looking for adventure, had been wanting to live on the edge for so long, that instead of frightening her, the earthquake had been foreplay. That was why she knew that the biggest danger wasn’t going to be from aftershocks and falling boxes. It was staying here with Darren. Because if she wasn’t careful, she’d give in, and they’d be right back to where they always had been. Back to good. But good wasn’t good enough— not when she wanted fireworks and breathless need and desire so strong that pleasure was almost pain.”
I think of my obsession during the day when I’m at work, and I replay scenes from our moments together. He’s just a drive away from me. I have had the pleasure and fortune of having my lover know about my obsession with him, where as Vivian Sinclair, the executive assistant in One Night In Paris by Kayla Perrin, had to fly all the way from Dallas to Paris to let her lover know how much she wanted him. I suppose I would do the same as she did— act on her desire and make her obsession known: “You’re like a fever I can’t shake. Ever since that time we were together, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
Portia de Costa’s eloquent Concubine tells a historical erotic story much like Scheherazade would have done. Merry weaves a romantic and juicy tale within a tale, as she tells her convalescing lover Rick a naughty story about the Concubine Merissa and her obsessive love for her Lord Alaric. Concubine Merissa’s body is moist with longing by the memory of their first night together as concubine and prince, with the memories of their love building within her a desire as strong as his princely male magnificence took her that first time. With her intense and steadfast love for her prince, she brings him back to his virile strength after a battle injury that caused him a momentary lapse in masculinity. “It was almost a miracle, but where had it started? In her mouth, or with him, as she sucked… or in her sex, through the unstoppable force of love?”
Love and Demotion by Logan Belle is about a woman who leads a secret life as a stripper, obsessed with her boss at her day job at a publishing house. Around her obsession Declan she felt like the world was in Technicolor, and when she was away from him, black and white. Hiding her moonlighting burlesque occupation from her employer was as difficult as it was to hide her Vargas girl tattoos onstage while she stripped down to Marilyn Manson’s “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” dressed as a sexy Lolita.
Obsession can be dark, full of the shadows of our souls. It can be wild-eyed lust until our throat is hoarse from moaning out of sheer animalistic fucking, from being taken, and surrendering and submitting to the man of our dreams. It can be voluptuous and full of black magic. Obsession holds us like a voodoo spell. In Spellbound by Garnell Wallace, Kia Monet goes back to her roots in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, under the spell of Jonah’s smile, his voice, and his magnificent cock. “Even his long, tapered fingers buried deep in my pussy can bring on multiple experiences of what we French call “la petite mort,” or the little death, when you are so inflamed with passion at the moment of surrender it feels like you are about to surrender your soul as well.”
Sometimes obsession is a fantasy. In Hooked by Ariel Graham, the obsession is a thing that provokes a woman’s erotic curiosity and dares her to explore it. A couple, Ricki and Jody, just move in to their new home and in one room there is a mysterious hook in the ceiling that fascinates Ricki. It’s too heavy duty for a plant and the light isn’t good in the corner either. Ricki wonders about the hook and imagines all kinds of scenarios that the hook could be used for. She wants to tell her lover Jody about her wildest fantasies involving that curious mounted hardware. “Why don’t you just look back up at that hook?” he’d asked. “Like you want to reach for it.” She reached for it. On tiptoe, as if she could touch the ten-foot ceiling, she reached with both hands. An image came to mind: her hands bound at the wrist, with some kind of silken cord, maybe a curtain tie; something soft but strong enough to keep her bound, even if she struggled. Would she struggle? Ricki held her hands out toward the hook and imagined Jody standing behind her.”
I’ve enjoyed all of these adventurous, wonderful, and genuine stories about obsession and reasons why women become obsessed. Reasons why women stayed obsessed, and things that caused them to follow their hearts and nether parts to explore the wilderness of the erotic landscapes they could not keep from traveling. Reasons to be irrationally lost in the arms of the one they are obsessed with.
Obsessed is a treasure full of tenderness, raw lust, longing, and all of the many things that fill our sexual lives and erotic minds. The nineteen stories written so fluidly fills the oceanic depths of desire where obsession lies. Perhaps the word “obsessed” is as elusive as the state of being it exists in. Like a drug, we want more. More stories, more lust, more sex, more love, and it’s never, ever enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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It was forbidden, that street. When I was a girl, I was not allowed to go down that road. My mother had made it clear that I could only go as far as the end of our street when I went out on my bicycle, never to wander. The forbidden street was at the bottom of the hill, just to the left, at the end. The entrance was shaded with trees, sloping down into the park. At the end, the road turned into hiking trails, eucalyptus trees, mystery.
I wanted him to drive me through the neighborhood where I grew up, where I skinned my knees from bicycle falls, where I played and drew in colored chalk on the sidewalk. We drove around and up and through the hills, my memory as a girl following along the asphalt. “Where can we go?” he asks. I give him a look, wanting. We kiss quickly. He leans close to me as he curves the moving car through the narrow roads, guiding the steering wheel through my childhood memories. I nestle my head into the scoop of his shoulder, planting little kisses lightly along his neck, nuzzling my nose to smell his skin. I trail my fingers along the edge of his ear, the curving shell roundness of it. Just then, at the bottom of the hill, was the forbidden street I wasn’t supposed to go down.
“Let’s go down that street. Turn here.”
The street is quiet. There are houses on one side. The other side is hidden by the densely wooded brush and trees. The tires crackle slowly along the road. We look for a spot to park. I have butterflies in my stomach and a melancholy ache in my bones. He turns the car around at the end, finding a place. We kiss for a moment. It’s dark, headlights off, streetlights buzzing in their orange glow. We can hear someone’s television in the distance. Like teenagers on a date, we cannot wait to kiss. I clasp his face lightly with my hands. The natural scent of him, his warm mouth melting against mine, I’m intoxicated by his kiss. He leans across the center and unbuckles his seatbelt. The click of his seatbelt undone, the sound, opens a place in my body. My blouse, my wide leather belt, my jeans, the seatbelt—confining me. I want to remove everything, remove the things in my life that keep me from him. I want undoing. I unbuckle my heeled sandals. I undo the seatbelt. His hands tuck up underneath my hair. He pulls my face deeper into our kiss.
His mouth and mine, his mouth, mine.
I look out the window into the nigh, and see myself as a girl, running down toward the end where the dirt path begins. I see myself looking back at the older me in the car. She knows— that little girl— where I am going. Whatever she knows, it’s discovered here, this secret place at the end of this street. She sees me, thirty years later, in a minivan full of my children’s things– a baby seat, a baseball bag, the sand toys for the beach all cluttered in the trunk, kissing a man I am having an affair with, a man I am falling in love with, in the dark, stealing a moment away. Secret. It seems that my life has come to this secret and hidden end of a street, to rediscover something forgotten within me.
We climb into the back of the van, my jeans pulled off, removing my belt, my pussy wet, his hard sex in my hand. “You are so hard,” I marvel, as the length and swell of his cock is warm and heavy with thick arousal. I caress his sex with one hand. I cup his balls with the other. He is sitting on the seat, half dressed, still wearing his shirt. I lean up and into him, kissing him deeply. Holding his body to mine, my blouse is sticking from sweat and desire, the fabric coming between the smoothness of our bodies. I want to feel him naked and breathing upon me. I pull the fabric away to feel his belly and chest against mine. He pulls his shirt away, too. We want our skin touching. I want to dissolve into him where the world is golden-yellow and soft like sunlight in summertime memories. I want to melt away into the light as he plunges his body into mine. No barriers, nothing between us, not even the years we lived so close to one another, never knowing that all this time, we were already close in parallel existence. I want his hunger, his sadness, his memories, all of his colors inside of me, blending both of our shadows, touching, like watercolors all bleeding together until the paper is saturated with imperfect beauty.
My lover’s face in the shadows is luminous and delicate. There is something within him that is intangible, revealing itself to me. His face is like moonlight through a raincloud. I put my hand to his cheek, making sure he is there. Here in the dark, the blueness of the evening, illuminated by the amber street lamps lighting the shadows within ourselves, the forgotten places within us can no longer stay hidden. I open my eyes to see him in the dark. He cannot see me entirely. We can only see each other in the half-light. We are shadows of each other. We are radiant with desire, opening and tasting what is true, kissing him, kissing him. By this desire, he is awakening my soul. His fingers and hands light along my body, undoing me, releasing me, bringing me back to life.
I feel released from everything when we kiss. Nothing is binding me to the gravity of my existence. I am a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. I am returning to myself within his embrace, by his kiss. We move around in the back, trying to find the right position. We kiss, and I laugh like a teenage girl. My legs are up, bare and dangling over his shoulder. He can’t see my face at all now. What he can see he finds with his hands. He discovers me in the slip of my wanting. My skin against his, my pussy is flowering with ripeness, and, as he touches me there, as he slides his fingers inside, he has me, he possesses me— all of me— the girl running down the street and the woman in the back seat of the car.
We kiss. I press my body into his. My hands are slipping all around his shoulders, feeling the fabric of his shirt, flattening my palms, smoothing and stroking his chest, squeezing his arms, and pulling him against me. I want him inside of me. My hands caress up along the back of his neck. My fingernails claw into his black hair. I have this erotic need to kiss him in the back of the car, half naked like this. It brings moments from girlhood into womanhood colliding within me like a surreal dream. I pretend it is him that I first gave myself to in the back of a car. I pretend, all this time, it was he, this man I see in the half-light, the blue shadows curving along his handsome face, his smile, his sighs. I suckle his lower lip, and he says something, pulling away, mystified, searching for my face. He says something beautiful. He is beatific in that moment. I suck his lip in a kiss again, and the same reaction comes. He is searching for my face. The kissing is making us dizzy with the feeling we have. We are in this dream together, looking out the windows at the broken indigo and granite colors, just shapes now, the houses, the street. We are dreaming each other. What we cannot see with our eyes, we can see with our hands, with our kisses. We can see everything about each other and all the years that paralleled themselves, bringing us to this moment, all the secrets once so elusive, now illuminated.
Thirty years before, I ran down that street, not supposed to go there, not allowed. Danger. My mother worried about someone kidnapping me, taking me away. Now, I want to be taken, I want someone to kidnap me. “Take me,” I whisper.
We are in the back of the van. My body is longing for him to be deep inside of me. I am sucking him as he straddles the farthest back seat, slinking into a position so I can take his cock into my mouth. My face nuzzles into his belly, making my way down. I inhale his musky scent, petting the soft nest of hair there with my palm, pressing down upon where his pubic bone meets the base of his sex. Tenderly I open my mouth to take him in, my mouth wet, longing to suck him, licking the head, savoring the length of his erect cock. He is hard. So hard, I have never felt him harder than that. I want him to kidnap me, just take me and take me. I don’t want to go back. I want to run away. I want him so much I can’t imagine how it’s happened. It consumes me, this want, and there’s no stopping it.
Outside the car windows, it’s deep night. We can only hear our breath and our sighing, our desire for one another climbing over the velour car seats, reaching the branches of the trees outside, shaking. I am shaking with orgasms. He gives them to me, over and over until everything blurs together and I don’t know who I am anymore.
The gray concrete of the street softly encompasses us. There is no time, only our breath, our hands, our kisses. My body sinks upon him, I climb upon him, slide him within me. When I am like this, on top of him, I am his. I belong to him, and that is what I need. It doesn’t really matter what we do, or how we do it.
He moves us down onto the carpeted floor of the back of the van. My leg is cramped against the side of the car interior. I cannot see his face now, but he can see mine by the dim light of the window. I feel him watching me as I ride him, moaning a little, feeling the marvelous way his cock slides in and half out of my cunt, my wet and juicy place where he is entering me. He grasps the sides of my hips, holding me upon him. He holds, squeezes me, and shakes my fleshy hips with yearning. I feel like a woman. When he holds my hips like that, I feel him possess me. The softest place of me, not just the inside of my body, but the most secret place, he finds, he uncovers. I am naked inside. I am his. I am myself again.
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Slipping his fingers into my wet and wanting sex, he pulls aside my apron from behind as my ass lifts a little higher. I’m leaning over the kitchen sink. He has three fingers buried deep into my pussy; my lips are swollen with a delicious melting sensation. More. The bottle of gourmet olive oil. He spies it on the counter and reaches for it. Pressing his arousal hotly against my bare behind, he pours some of the oil into one hand and slathers my bottom up with it. The delicate perfume of olives fills the kitchen in the heat of the day. With the slippery olive oil he deftly presses his thumb— his one thumb that is wide and slightly flattened– slowly against the tender entrance of my ass. Pushing gently inside, it sinks in slow. His fingers work themselves deeper into my pussy. Deeper. He’s got a way of doing this where I can only surrender to the pleasure. I want his hardening cock inside of me too, but his hands are causing me to vibrate with excitement. I can’t think of anything else. He takes his other hand and, with the long tips of his index and second finger, circles my clit in light, little motions. He flutters his fingers back and forth, lightly, the way he taps an eggshell against a bowl. He pinches my clit and plays with it like sprinkling spices into a pot. The ache of his three fingers in my pussy and the girth of his thumb inside my ass is exquisite. I want him so much that my whole body responds to him like a pot of boiling water, simmering and rolling into heat. He has full control of my body with his hand. He kneels down on the kitchen floor, burying his face in between my legs. His hot mouth is tonguing my pussy, trailing his kiss up, spreading my cheeks open, licking, tasting. I moan with desire, clutching the Formica countertop. Being in the kitchen with him couldn’t get any hotter. His fingers stir me into a froth of lust.
When we are at dinner in a restaurant, sitting side by side, he trails his hand to my thigh, delving downward in between my legs. His fingers tempt me under the dinner table, coaxing the edge of my panties aside, teasing, just until my body bubbles with desire, so close to climax. He smiles mischievously, observing my response. He drinks his wine coolly, watches me with a sideways glance, as I try to not to show anything in my expression. He’s sly and just a bit naughty. Other diners at surrounding tables might notice. Sometimes I just don’t care, it’s so good, what he does to me with his hands.
His hands. Looking upon the shape of them sends shivers of longing through me, sensations I cannot describe. There aren’t any words that can explain the way they undo me, bit by bit, like sugar dissolving.
I watch him peel shrimp in the kitchen. He’s holding the knife steady, his index finger is pressed against the outer part of the blade. With precision, he deftly cuts along the spine of the shrimp, pink and quivering in his grip. I understand how that shrimp feels, much like the way I am when in his command. At the wooden cutting block, he conducts with his chef’s knife— he’s finely chopping fresh wide leaves of mint, frilly clumps of cilantro, his fingers nimbly mincing the green leaves into submission. He scoops the herbs into a bowl as I watch, enthralled by the way his hands take such loving care with what he is making. The watermelon and cucumber, all cubed and ready, shimmer with watery urgency. His long fingers casually shimmy among them, dipping into the bowl, tossing and dressing it with a squeeze of lime. The juice spurts into the bowl. He squeezes the lime until its pulp feathers and separates from the green rind. I notice the juice covering his fingernails, tips of his fingers, palm of his hand. It smells good and citrussy. He pulls me close and kisses me. I smell fragrant mint and juicy lime on his fingers as he touches my face. Then he’s back to preparing our meal. I delight in watching him drizzle olive oil into another bowl; stirring the dressing with the stainless whisk. He slices corn off the cob. While I stand there, barefoot in my sundress, watching him like a little girl, he smiles the faintest hint of a smile. He knows I am melting inside down to the marrow with want. My body is responding from the buttery center of my rising lust, a soufflé of creamy desire.
He sets the two dishes down on the dining table. Just a simple dish: shrimp in a dressing of olive oil, lime, honey, mint, cilantro, corn, watermelon and cucumber— the fragrance and sweetness, the pleasure. He caresses my thigh with one hand as I taste a mouthful of his creation, and suddenly, from the very core of my body, I am shuddering with some kind of mysterious reaction to the meal made aphrodisiac by his hands. I am melting with tenderness. I am noticing how he holds his fork. His index finger points into the silver handle of the fork, controlling its motion. My thoughts are percolating, the agitation in my body won’t stop. His other hand is warm and smooth against my thigh. I am shaking; my knees are gelatinous and unable to hold still. He slides his hand softly along my leg. My mouth is full of watermelon and shrimp, and I can’t stop giggling. I am so moved I want to cry from the joy. Another kind of orgasm, one coming from the depths of me, ripples from within, and all I can do is surrender to it. His eyes gleam at me like champagne glasses as he gives a fizzy smile. We eat from our dishes, and I taste slowly, savoring each mouthful. The heat of his hand and the way he made our dinner is whipping up some unknown place inside my body. A kiss with flavors of watermelon, olive oil, honey and mint on our tongues, the sea-sweetness of the pink fresh shrimp, the tang of pleasure.
Later, again, after the food, in the kitchen, his hands hug my hips close. We embrace. The warmth of his palms travels up my body, wraps in and cups around my breasts, kissing. He holds my face in his hands. The faint scent of herbs, like a magic spell from his fingertips, intoxicates me with its summery bouquet. He gazes into my eyes. I am trembling. I’m in love.
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Isabel Allende was born in Peru and raised in Chile. She worked as as journalist until she began writing fiction. Her first novel, The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus) (1982), was made into a film.
When Isabel Allende worked as a journalist, she wrote an interview with Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet. Neruda, during the interview, told her that she had “too much imagination to be a journalist” and suggested that she become a novelist.
I have admired Isabel Allende’s writing, having read The House of the Spirits, Portrait in Sepia, and my favorite, Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses.
I have loved Isabel Allende’s writings because she weaves such intricate threads with her words into tapestries of stories. Layer upon layer, the emotions and fragments of beauty come through like sunlight through a stained glass window, creating colors and shadows, and nothing is purely sunny nor is it dark. Her feminine intuition and wisdom comes through, as a deeper understanding of people as human beings.
Even her translation of love and eroticism within fiction has human frailties and passion within the pages.
Imagine how excited I was to find this erotic passage written by Isabel Allende in a Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women:
Our Secret (1989)
“She let herself be caressed, drops of sweat in the small of her back, her body exuding the scent of burnt sugar, silent, as if she divined that a single sound could nudge its way into memory and destroy everything, reducing to dust this instant in which he was a person like any other, a casual lover she had met that morning, another man without a past attracted to her wheat-coloured hair, her freckled skin, the jangle of her gypsy bracelets, just a man who had spoken to her in the street and begun to walk with her, aimlessly, commenting on the weather and the traffic, watching the crowd, with the slightly forced confidence of her countrymen in this foreign land, a man without sorrow and anger, without guilt, pure as ice, who merely wanted to spend the day with her, wandering through bookstores and parks, drinking coffee, celebrating the chance of having met, talking of old nostalgias, of how life had been when both were growing up in the same city, in the same barrio, when they were fourteen, you remember, winters of shoes soggy from frost, and paraffin stoves, summers of peach trees, there in the now-forbidden country. Perhaps she was feeling a little lonely, or this seemed an opportunity to make love without complications, but, for whatever reason, at the end of the day, when they had run out of pretexts to walk any longer, she had taken his hand and led him to her house. She shared with other exiles a sordid apartment in a yellow building at the end of an alley filled with garbage cans. Her room was tiny: a mattress on the floor covered with a striped blanket, bookshelves improvised from boards stacked on two rows of bricks, books, posters, clothing on a chair, a suitcase in the corner. She removed her clothes without preamble, with the attitude of a little girl eager to please. He tried to make love to her. He stroked her body patiently, slipping over her hills and valleys, discovering her secret routes, kneading her, soft clay upon the sheets, until she yielded, and opened to him. Then he retreated, mute, reserved. She gathered herself, and sought him, her head on his belly, her face hidden, as if constrained by modesty, as she fondled him, licked him, spurred him. He tried to lose himself; he closed his eyes and for a while he let her do as she was doing, until he was defeated by sadness, or shame, and pushed her away. They lighted another cigarette. There was no complicity now; the urgent anticipation that had united them during the day was lost, and all that was left were two vulnerable people lying on a mattress, without memory, floating in the terrible vacuum of unspoken words. When they had met that morning they had had no extraordinary expectations, they had no particular plan, only companionship, and a little pleasure, that was all, but at the hour of their coming together, they had been engulfed by melancholy. We’re tired, she smiled, seeking excuses for the desolation that had settled over them. In a last attempt to buy time, he took her face in his hands and kissed her eyelids.”
This erotic passage read beautifully to me. It shows two people as erotic and human. There is no idealization of the erotic, no fixation of body parts or intentions. The passage felt beautiful, melancholy, and real.
The book I love of Isabel Allende’s the most is Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses.
“I repent of my diets, the delicious dishes rejected out of vanity, as much as I lament the opportunities for making love that I let go by.” ~ Isabel Allende
Aphrodite‘s non-linear form is a melting sensual pot of her romantic and culinary recollections. She blends in her stories like a chef in the kitchen, adding spices and herbs. The book has recipes, erotic excerpts, mythology, poetry, travel notes and stories, and aphrodisiacs. Aphrodite is “a mapless journey through the regions of sensual memory, in which the boundaries between love and appetite are so diffuse that at times they evaporate completely.”
“Appetite and sex are the great motivators of history … All of creation is one long interrupted cycle of digestion and fertility.” ~Isabel Allende
In Aphrodite, Isabel celebrates the aphrodisiacs of many dishes with given recipes and sensual suggestions for their uses. Caviar, for instance, is “the supreme stimulus for lechery” and tells the tales of caviar and its sordid history. When cooking omelets, like making love, “affection counts for more than technique.”
Allende describes her dream of swimming in a pool of creamy arroz con leche, her favorite dessert. She gives her precious recipe for the soul food of rice pudding at the finale of her book. She suggests that we can slather it on a loved one, and slowly lick it off. She notes that, in this instance, the calories would be justified.
Sensuality and food is explored, revered, and celebrated in this saucy book of erotica excerpts, personal stories, aphrodisiac ingredients, and orgies are mentioned along with possible menus for such decadent events.
Isabel Allende’s Works
(He)
“Calixta,” he said, “don’t be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too-low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! aren’t you going to be quiet? say, aren’t you?” He pushed her hair back from her face that was warm and steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her firm, full bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes and there was nothing for him to do but to gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption.
“Do you remember– in Assumption, Calixta?” he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! She remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed her and kissed her; until his senses would wellnigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honour forbade him to prevail. Now– well, now — her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.
They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.
The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached. When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in a quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life’s mystery.”
~The Storm, Kate Chopin
Vintage erotica captivates us. The passage by Kate Chopin titled “The Storm” is an sensuous excerpt full of passion in the stormy throes of desire. Kate Chopin was a Louisiana writer. Having lived myself in New Orleans for nearly five years, I could feel the temperature surge, smell the rain, and feel the electricity in the air as it does during a thunderstorm down in the bayou. This line in particular expresses the lovers’ moment so eloquently: “Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed. Her white neck and a glimpse of her firm, full bosom disturbed him powerfully.” You can feel her white bosoms swelling after that torrid sentence. Desire. What this excerpt leaves out is her (Calixta’s) husband and son are both caught in the heavy rainstorm, and they are delayed while going out. Alcée Laballière, Calixta’s lover, is also married and lives nearby. I didn’t include the entire story in the above excerpt. I think that if I had included it, it would lend more of the intensity to the moment of passion. If you are curious, then click on the link of the title The Storm and read the entire story.
As explained on a website dedicated to Kate Chopin:
American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote two published novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.
Her short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America’s most prestigious magazines, including Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly. Her early novel At Fault (1890) was not much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned.
Kate Chopin also wrote her short story “The Storm” in 1898. Because of its sexual content she did not publish it.
The story itself reminds me of her novel, The Awakening. The male character in The Storm from this passage, Alcée Laballière, is similar to the romantic man of the heroine’s desire in The Awakening (Alcée Arobin, a young man of fashion in New Orleans). It does make me wonder if there was a real Alcée in her life.
Although Kate Chopin was not an “erotica writer” per se, nor a “romance novelist,” she still was capable of writing a passionate moment with visceral and palpable grace. I enjoy reading Kate Chopin’s stories mostly because she has the ability to capture not just the atmosphere of Louisiana, but the elemental temperature of a woman’s suppressed sexual desire. The sultry heat and moisture of Louisiana mingled with the tension of social positions within the period, where women had “their place” as mothers and caretakers, with little allowance for their own needs and sexual hunger. Such a combination creates a storm of billowing passion that brews much like the dark tempestuous clouds of a hot tropical rainstorm.
Erotic literature was risqué during the 1900′s. Especially when written by a woman. Not just “erotic” aspects, but the subject of a woman’s emancipation and freedom also caused alarm. Kate Chopin’s stories, according to the website dedicated to her:
As the critic Per Seyersted phrases it, Kate Chopin “broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.”
{This vintage erotic photograph is how I imagine the lovers Calixta and Alcée Laballière in The Storm. Just listen to a heavy downpour while looking at the photo, and imagine the sexual storm while drinking a Hurricane cocktail}
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Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir by Susie Bright
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Fragments of stories weave in and out of my thoughts after reading Susie Bright’s memoir, Big Sex Little Death. Stories that Susie experienced, with guts, audacity, and sexual independence.
She begins with her family and by no means is she excusing them. They are necessary for her tale to be told. Beginning where she herself began, from the lives and union of two complicated people—- her parents. Perhaps the raw emotions and scars are still too palpable to fully express her feelings about her parents, but Susie does well in illustrating her childhood nonetheless.
Susie, “intellectually precocious but socially inappropriate,” wearing glasses and hand-sewn dresses, artfully explains her parents’ divorce that coincided with the deterioration of her mother’s mental state. Her mother, Elizabeth Halloran from Fargo, North Dakota, and the Halloran family, her mother’s Irish side of the family tree— they come, arms full of all the misgivings that bring her to where she is now. The darkness can create beauty, as the old-fashioned photographic process of a darkroom exhibits, how photo paper placed into developing fluid, magically transforms paper into details of captured light. Her prose of memories develops from the darkness, her childhood desires to be held and loved, but instead hurt in so many ways.
As difficult as it is to describe a relationship between mother and child, Susie is honest in her description of her mother. You can feel her unspoken words in between the lines. The pain, anger, and sense of abandonment, layered with the remnants of love, and the longing to be loved by the one person she came from, that gave her life. It is heartbreaking and messy. Gracefully, eloquently, she carries on, and discovers her strengths. With a valiant spirit and strong sense of power, she is a lotus rising from the dark mud.
Susie is a natural born rule breaker, a non-conformist, and a sexual revolutionary. Her words glimmer and spark through the pages, multi-colored, glittering. A firecracker, a wild thing. She is a cosmic kaleidoscope of a human being. Bi-sexual, lesbian, heterosexual, there is no box. There have been many who wanted to box her in, put her in a category. There is no category for Susie Bright. She is coloring outside the lines, she is messy finger painting, she is strong and delicate all at once, and she is beyond it all.
Her first menstrual cycle marked the beginning of her teen angst. She skipped school during lunchtime for a luxurious moment of solitude, reading, watching Petticoat Junction on TV, and ironing her grilled cheese sandwich on the ironing board, using it as a sandwich press. Suddenly, bleeding from her first menstruation, she figured out a tampon insertion before returning to class:
“I saw a blue box on the laundry hamper I hadn’t paid attention to before. Tampax. Yes! A new box. It had a paper diagram. Annette Laurence, who sat behind me in algebra, had said tampons would ruin your virginity. But I felt like ruining something. I slid the tampon into my vagina, and it was like folding a perfect paper crane. I felt nothing— in a good way— and the blood was no longer running down my leg. Now I just had to clean everything up. I was really late for class.”
When Susie (or ‘Susannah’ when she is in trouble) returns to class, she is sent to the school principal’s office:
“I walked into Dr. Shalka’s office like a mad bear. A mad menstruating bear with Germaine Greer on my tongue.
“This is not right,” I said, before he could motion me to sit down. “My period just started at noon, and I had to figure out the Tampax all by myself and I am never late and you can’t discriminate against me just because I am menstruating—“
I probably didn’t get that far, actually. I remember the look on his face when I said the “female” word. Was it period or the one that started with m? You would’ve thought I had sat on his face with my “vagina.” He flushed, his giant hands fluttered at his desk, and he coughed repeatedly into his cloth hankie.”
Thus begins the tale of Susie Bright.
I have much more to say about her memoir, but feel my words inadequate. I get the sense that I need to read this memoir again. No words can capture the essence better than “Sexual Freedom” to express the life path of Susie Bright. So many moments where society and people want to put her in a category. I won’t do that to her. I cannot, therefore, say enough about Susie, outside the lines, outside of paragraphs and sentences, where she exists, free and wild and wonderful and 100% herself.
I did post this review back in May here on Erotica du Jour. A few things I did want to note: Susie’s memoir contains a lot of chutzpah and gunpowder, so the thing is, with her life story, it must have been hard for Susie to write it all down. It did feel like she skimmed over surfaces, and I know she’s got more in her. Brave to write a memoir, so I give her much credit. Also, on a personal note, I myself identified with her life— and felt an understanding of her rough path, as my own has had similar challenges, and moments of being lost in the teenage wilderness where most don’t go. Emotional, abuse and abandonment, sex, coming of age, and wandering. A gun-packing Lolita of the Comrades. This book spoke to my soul. It was an honest account of her life that was wild and raw, but made her the strong woman that she is. Bravo Susie.
View all my reviews
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“Tired of bein’ lonely, tired of bein’ blue,
I wished I had some good man, to tell my troubles to
Seem like the whole world’s wrong, since my man’s been gone
I need a little sugar in my bowl,
I need a little hot dog, on my roll
I can stand a bit of lovin’, oh so bad,
I feel so funny, I feel so sad”
~ “I NEED A LITTLE SUGAR IN MY BOWL” BESSIE SMITH 1931
Where to begin? This is a phenomenal read. The stories, personal essays, and confessions of sex, love, sexuality, and all that connect, by women, are real, timeless, and full of life. Real life.
This anthology of “Real Women Writing About Real Sex” is a treasure of experiences and stories by women. These women speak about their lives, They tell us about sex in all its many forms: marriage struggles, love and getting pregnant while abroad in Spain (“A Fucking Miracle” by Elisa Albert), stories about childhood sexuality: caught kissing and playing doctor in the closet (“Peekaboo I See You” by Anne Roiphe) and hilarious motherhood observations, parenting dilemmas, and marital-bed sex (“The Diddler” by J.A.K. Andres). There are internal contradictions, secret erotica publishings and prudish thoughts of a sex novelist (“Prude” by Jean Hanff Korelitz) and love discovered during one-night stands (“Sex With a Stranger” by Susan Cheever). Longing, first time sex, losing virginity, and a bottle of Cointreau (“My Best Friend’s Boyfriend” by Fay Weldon). Take a wild ride with hot sex (“Love Rollercoaster 1975″ by Susie Bright) and fall back into an ex-boyfriend’s arms for a one-night fling in a luxury hotel to indulge before a double mastectomy (“Everything Must Go” by Jennifer Weiner). There are so many touching, moving, and brilliant stories by a myriad of amazing women writers, telling their tales of sex and everything that goes with it. There is also, to our delight, a short, short story by Erica Jong titled “Kiss” about her encounter with “a kiss that moistened oceans, grew the universe, swirled through the cosmos.”
Erica Jong begins in her introduction: “Why are we so fascinated with sex? Probably because such intense feelings are involved—- above all, the loss of control. Anything that causes us to lose control intrigues and enthralls. So sex is both alluring and terrifying.”
Elegantly, poetically, Erica Jong introduces the book by exploring the subject of women writing about sex, her process in handling the emotions of contributors, and her observations on what has changed much, and what has changed little, in the realms of women writing about sex. She comes to a conclusion that “writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.”
Erica Jong, the author: award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist best known for her eight bestselling novels, including the international bestseller Fear of Flying. She is also the author of seven award-winning collections of poetry.
Her contributors, all marvelous real voices of women writers, telling us about their experiences, ranging from fiction to non-fiction. A well-crafted crazy quilt of sexual patches, making up a whole of fabric, many colors and stories of sex. The innocent curiosity of childhood sexuality, losing virginity, sex and illness, pregnancy, urgency of lust, desire, the best sex, the worst sex,— all aspects, facets, and layers of sex and sexuality in the experiences of women.
“Sex is life— no more, no less. As many of these stories demonstrate, it is the life force.” Sex is about being human.
Contributors:
Karen Abbott, Elisa Albert, J.A.K. Andres, Susie Bright, Susan Cheever, Gail Collins, Rosemary Daniell, Eve Ensler, Molly Jong-Fast, Susan Kinsolving, Julie Klam, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Min Jin Lee, Ariel Levy, Margot Magowan, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Daphne Merkin, Honor Moore, Meghan O’Rourke, Anne Roiphe, Linda Gray Sexton, Liz Smith, Jann Turner, Barbara Victor, Rebecca Walker, Jennifer Weiner, Fay Weldon, Jessica Winter, Erica Jong
**I have worked very hard to find all the links above, but cannot find J. A. K. Andres mentioned anywhere except for Erica Jong’s Sugar in my Bowl mention. Please authors: if you are linked (or unlinked) and need to update me, please contact me at [email protected] or twitter: @butterflydujour
BRAVA ITALIA for bringing back the CURVE.
The Hips, the Breasts.
Woman.
Soft, Strong, Warm, Fleshy
Venus of Willendorf, Primal Womb
Ripe, Juicy, Sensuous, Curves of the Cosmos
Primordial Sister Moon, Mother of Life
Breasts, Goblets of Milk, Elixir
Hips, Thighs, Buttocks
Beautiful Woman.
Feminine beauty for centuries has been based upon the round, soft hips, the swell and dip of breasts. Rubenesque. Zaftig. Curvy. Venus had them. Aphrodite, as she was called by the Greeks. Femme Fatales. Sirens. Seductresses. All of them had a powerful gift: femininity.
Photographer Steven Meisel has captured, and only with his lens, the magnificence of the curve, the way we women are supposed to be. Enough of this dieting, the maniacal efforts to be slim, to squeeze into a size too small, for our true beauty is built in. Honor the curves, don’t fight them, as we have for decades now. What have we been doing? It’s like trying to control a tidal wave. A natural force. Corsets to control our tummy, “body shapers” and “tummy tamers” and contraptions to bind our curves? Enough of them. Unless you enjoy wearing a corset along with your garters and stockings to accentuate the positives of your curves.
Tara Lynn, Candice Huffine and Robyn Lawley are on the June issue cover story of VOGUE Italia, portrayed by Steven Meisel.(Interestingly, Steven Meisel was also obsessed with models such as Twiggy, Veruschka, and Jean Shrimpton at 12 years old. To meet famous model Twiggy, the 12-year-old Meisel stood outside waiting for her to appear). But, here we have curves like never before. Unlike Twiggy, these curvaceous beauties are bringing back the bounce, the boom boom, and the vavoom. Or the… abbondanza!
The Renaissance of Feminine Beauty, Power, and the Goddess. Real Goddesses. The Archetype of Woman.
And VOGUE Italia is fighting the war against Pro-Anorexia websites with their buxom beauties.
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION
“On learning that Facebook is considered today the culprit of anorexia, and since I believe it is impossible that a social network alone may be held responsible for the spreading of such phenomenon, I did some research and found that there are countless pro-anorexia websites and blogs that not only support the disorder, but also urge young people to be competitive about their “body shape”.
Vogue Italia, the magazine par excellence that deals with and promotes aesthetics and beauty, has decided to make use of its authority and its readers on the web (over one million of contacts per month), to battle against anorexia and collect signatures with the final goal of shutting such sites down.
Fashion has been always blamed as one of the culprits of anorexia, and our commitment is the proof that fashion is ready to get on the frontline and struggle against the disorder.”
~Franca Sozzani
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