Adrianna Dueck – The Corsair
With all the amazing reality shows that viewers have to choose from on TV every night, the question that arises is “what does beauty really mean in our society?” Does having on the hottest, smallest, tightest Armani short shorts and an elegant Dolce blouse make one sexy, or is it the air and confidence that come with a person that makes a woman (the most stressed form of beauty and sexuality being female in our society) attractive?
While flipping through late-night TV last night, I stumbled upon Jessica Simpson’s new reality show, “The Price of Beauty.” While at first I scoffed at her for wanting to stay in the public eye with another reality show (her last one revolving around her and her then-husband Nick Lachey) and the nonsensical idea of her trying to adapt to every culture that there is worldwide. But, after watching it for about ten minutes I was totally captivated by it and wouldn’t leave the couch until the thirty-minute show was over.
She was in Morocco for the episode that I watched, and she was interacting with the women in a mostly-Muslim society that required females to cover almost everything except for their eyes. While more modern, liberal women have the freedom to dress as they want, most of them stick to the traditional dress, and belly dancers and women of lesser repute wear the more revealing, “sexy” clothes. A more traditional woman commented on Jessica’s shorts and said that she was showing too much leg, which left Jessica feeling frustrated and defensive. The woman’s friend and Jessica’s tour guide, Miriam, later explained that a woman’s sexuality in their country was not measured by how alluring her body was, but by how she could communicate with her eyes and sometimes her speech.
Sitting there watching the show, that comment felt like I’d been hit on the head with a brick. A woman can be as gorgeous as Miss Universe all day long, but if she cannot communicate and behave like a lady that will not make her sexual. I, personally, struggle a lot with eye contact and that also made me wonder if I could lure a man into my tricky web of womanhood without showing him or allowing him to touch any part of my body. It opened my eyes to the true difference between being “hot” and being “sexy.” Watching just that one episode made me so aware of how to exude such a beautiful and pure form of sensuality—it will definitely change my behavior when I’m out at the local nightclubs or just out living my every day life.
Watching this show made me start to do some more research on women’s sexuality, especially outside of the United States, which eventually led me to reading several books on the art of the European courtesan. I will follow up more on my research in a later blog, but I will share my basic knowledge of courtesans that I have discovered thus far. Contrary to modern belief, courtesans were not (are still not) prostitutes or call girls. They are elite mistresses of men who can afford them. They were the most sexually free women of their time and some of the most respected by men as they had only one partner at a time, and were muses for great poets, painters, and other artists. In exchange for strong relationships and friendship, later followed by a sexual relationship, courtesans would give their bodies to men who would spend time with them and provide for them. The affair could only be ended by the man, and once it did the woman was free to go find another partner and provider. These women have also inspired me and opened a new world to my thought process on sexuality. While I do not personally plan on becoming a courtesan, the thought that women were not only paid for and provided for in return of sexual relations, they were respected and fervently sought after by some of history’s greatest men. As I said earlier, I will follow up with this article as I will continue to watch Simpson’s show and research more books on female sexuality.