2021.06.19
I've always appreciated love scenes and nudity in movies, their verisimilitude and how they show sex as part of a real and multifaceted life. And admired the generosity of the actors involved (and now, hoping they weren't unduly pressured into it...)
Maybe some of the appreciation is a relic of a sunday school upbringing... one where you know right where every naked person or sex scene in your parents book collection is.
Sometimes it means I have to work on my understanding on concerns about the objectification of women. Like, I understand "no one wants to be an object", no one wants to be valued only for one thing, a thing that can be found in many other people, and thus have their individuality wiped away. But for me, the intrigue is sensuality as one facet of a more interesting person... it always implied a bridge between the mundane and the promised land, a hope that the chasm between regular life and making an affectionate skincentric connection with someone wasn't impossibly wide. As I put it long ago, I've always more easily seen the appeal of the stretchy tanktop vs fancy peekaboo lingerie - stuff trying to hard to put a frame around sex, isolating it from the rest of life.
(Found that essay linked to from headspace-hotel, where there's more thoughts on the appeal of lived-in bodies over carefully manicured temples.)
(more concise version)
Making Juneteenth a national holiday is good but kind of a study in too little too late. Newspaper classfieds of formerly enslaved people trying to find their loved ones are heartbreaking.