Where have all the loose women gone?
Stephen Marche at Esquire laments the loss of loose women and what it means for modern men. His article doesn’t really analyze the rise and fall of the loose woman in America, so much as his own dissatisfaction with the homogenized dating scene – the inherent sameness everyone seems to be subscribing to lately. That has nothing inherently to do with women – there are just as many cookie cutter men out there, too. What I like is that he isn’t referring to loose women in general. If you want to find a loose lady, you can and will. He mourns the loss of the intelligent, powerful and sexual woman. The days of Sex and the City are well over, at least if you’re looking for a Samantha.
Marche’s article isn’t so much a thoughtful analysis of what’s happening, so much of an acknowledgement that something has happened, but he isn’t quite sure what. He does touch on it briefly, when commenting on Lily Allen’s song, It’s not Fair, in which she complains, “You’re supposed to care, but all you do is take … It’s not fair, and I think you’re really mean / You’re supposed to care, but you never make me scream.”
Whenever observing a sea change in one gender, it’s pretty important to see what’s going on with the other gender. It’s pretty clear that there’s an attitude among the male gender that if you pay lipservice to your lady, you can avoid doing any leg work in bed. Lily’s complaint is that she can’t have her cake and eat it too – she has to choose between a good lay and a good man; she can’t have both.
More women are recognizing that there isn’t a whole lot of point to sexual freedom if you aren’t getting good sex. The benefits of casual sex don’t outweigh the risks. If you’re going to bother with it, it should at least be fun, even if it does come with the increased chance of contracting herpes. If it’s okay to go and have casual sex, then it should be just as okay (if not more so) to take care of those needs all by yourself.
Lily’s is a false choice, however. There are plenty of good guys out there, and Marche inadvertenty identifies himself as one of them when he talks about the lack of sexually empowered women who aren’t just airheads. Marche doesn’t want to take just anyone home, he wants a little more, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it bodes well for future gender relations. The idea that there’s something empty and unfulfilling about sex with just anyone – especially someone who’s all body and no brains – suggests that even casual sex isn’t just about carnal desires. Casual sex is evolving as a cultural concept from a purely physical and empty exchange to something far more appealing and understandable. Casual sex, at least for Marche (and most likely a growing number of people, male and female), is much more about seduction. Seduction involves a lot more brains than cup size.
Seduction is almost entirely about mystery and intrigue. In a homogenized sexual culture where everyone is getting the same wax, the same boob jobs and the same smiles, there’s hardly anything left to the imagination. We’re becoming cookie cutter people and inevitably, we’re stripping ourselves entirely of our identities, our mystery. We are no longer interesting or discoverable.
What Marche is really lamenting is the rarity of seduction in our modern times. No one is getting seduced anymore, and that’s a shame.
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