Lusting after lingerie...

[CherylNYC]

I wish I had written Femmadian's post. It's pitch perfect. That said, I agree that the sheer volume of ultra-thin women puckering and arching for the camera in this thread can be off-putting for me even though I have a similar body type to some of those models. It's not that there's anything specifically wrong with any one of those photos. It's that they're relentless in their monomaniacal depiction of the one way in which a woman supposedly can be sexy.

What I miss is the way the earliest posts on this thread felt to me. Women who were imagining how powerfully sexy they would feel in a particular piece of lingerie posted a picture of the lingerie. Sans model. Just the clothing on a hanger or laying on a plain piece of photo paper. It made me feel like I was participating in a secret femme party where we were sharing pictorials that told a story about our personal sexual power. That imagery left room for our own narrative. There's not an inch of space left for that when the focus of every post is about the body of the model, not about the endless possibilities of our own personal sexual power.

As for the evils of objectification- whooo-ah! That's a sticky wicket. I certainly do dress up in lingerie that makes me feel sexually powerful. I also absolutely desire that my partner, (should I ever find one again), would think I'm super sexy, and to objectify me for that reason. Yes, I please myself by wearing sexy lingerie, but it's deeply pleasing to me to know that I've pleased her as much, if not more. BUT... general objectification by any and all, including straight dudes? Goddess please save me from that nightmare! I spent the first 50 years of my life fighting that shit off. Thankfully, I've finally aged out of much of it, but I still reflexively duck and cover. It's easy to eschew any and all objectification when the overwhelming majority of it emanates dangerously from entitled men, but my brand of feminism means that I get to choose what moves me. I WANT to be objectified by my butch female partner. If anyone has a problem with that they should stop peeping through the keyhole into my bedroom.

Context is really important. The context for these lingerie photos is supposedly femmes in the femme zone posting for ourselves and each other. In theory there wouldn't be very much objectification going on between us, and one would hope that there wouldn't be a shred of judgement aimed at each other for our choices. That's why it felt particularly icky when a few butches started publicly licking their chops at us here. And also strange for a butch to scold us for our lack of feminism when it comes to choosing when or why we would wear sexy, and presumably expensive, lingerie that may be terribly impractical to wear while changing the cat litter, for instance. Those wispy little things have a very short life. You can trust me on this- We're capable of making practical decisions about when and where to spend the few useful hours during which those sexy little things look and feel beautiful.