Beef Curtains

Sex isn't an easy thing, as I have said before. I mean, it's gotten easier… (I have been married for almost 6 months… I'm an old slut now! Just kidding… ;P…)
But this isn't really about sex. This is specifically about VAGINAS. Or… I should say… VULVAS.
I mean, the vagina is all well an good in the male's view. It's the bit he gets involved with. All the really weird and interesting things are in the vulva. What is the vulva, you ask? Everything you thought the vagina was.

I know.

The wall of Vulvas (Interestingly enough, this was the influence of a penis wall, but the penises are ALL erect. Hmm. Men. Am I right?)

Take a moment to let your mind be blown.
You good? Ok.

The vagina is just the channel leading to your cervix. The vulva is the fur and the wings and the clitoris and the urethra and all the weird stuff that makes the woman so very mysterious.

Enough exposition.

I have had a long battle with the knowledge that one day I will have to reveal this weird gooey (Not actually gooey, just my insecurity) oyster to a human male, and try my best to figure out how to still make him attracted to me. There is an enormous stigma in this culture that a woman is… well… Gross.
It's weird. It's mysterious. It's squishy. It's not altogether pleasant in the aroma department (sometimes). For a long long time, this really ate at me.
But slowly (with some help), I managed to get past this insecurity. I finally realized that guys were attracted to this weird thing. That I would one day meet this wonderful, perfect guy who would love me and it wouldn't matter to him. Because love and sex and discovery and true happiness… meant that there wouldn't be one part of me that wouldn't be wholly and completely loved. Intimacy meant lights on, any time of the day, here and now all of me, all of him, all the time.
It took a long time for me to feel good about it.
And in one, horrible, heartbreaking evening… all the insecurity, all the discouragement… all the rage and disgust at my own body, came flooding back in.

My husband is a good man. An amazing man. A wonderful, God-fearing christian man. Who waited till marriage. Who listened to his mother. Who separated the Jezebel from the Madonna.
It happens so often in our culture. There is the woman you are allowed to (I am so sorry for the language but it's really what it is) f**k, and the woman you marry. There is the sexy stripper, the big-busted porn star, the media's portrayal of Little Miss Lay-Me-and-Leave-Me. And then there is perfection incarnate. The girl you date. The girl you marry. The girl you can take home to Mama and mama would be proud.
There is no small amount of shame for a good christian man to accept his sexuality as well as stay abstinent.
And all his life there are his natural instincts, his drives and desires, competing with righteousness, holiness, and Christlike patience. Here's the world holding sex out with a tantalizing tune of naked seduction, and his parents, bearing down with bible in hand and goals and values hard to sustain in a world drenched in YOLO attitudes.
"Wait until marriage."
"Sex is a sin."
Masturbation is perversion."
"Don't think, don't act, don't look, don't touch… No. No. No."

And then… one day… you get married and suddenly… it's OK?? Just like that. You're supposed to magically accept the sexual side of yourself… and the sexual side of her… Like it's natural and easy.
How are you supposed to sexualize the Madonna? She wasn't allowed to be naked. She's not the girl you are supposed to look at, or touch, or want. She's the other.

So on the evening that I fell from my fantasy of perfect happiness, my husband was innocently expressing his own insecurity. I asked if he would like to leave the lights on. He said, "How offended would you be if I said I wasn't ready yet?" I, in turn, was confused and thought he was referring to his own shyness at being seen naked, and assured him that I had seen him already, thought him wonderful and worth looking at. The look of confusion on his face clued me in, and immediately the splinters of my heart began to fall and jab into my stomach.
"Oh. Oh you mean… me. You aren't ready to see me…"
The turmoil of the rest of that night is too dramatic to recount, and I look back now to cringe on my theatrics, though… they were wholly justified.

The extremes women go to for attention from men is so unfathomable when it's all laid out in a list. So here's a list, and try to fathom it.

• Labiaplasty: a plastic surgery procedure for altering the labia minora (inner labia) and the labia majora (outer labia), the folds of skin surrounding the human vulva (As defined by wikipedia). 
• Boob jobs: You all know what that is.
• Thongs.
• Corsets: Archaic, yes. Still in play? Hell yes.
• Push-up bras: We've all got one for those tops that need the extra kick. AND, most bras just COME with the extra padding. I think it's more difficult to find a bra that doesn't already have a fake boob living inside it nowadays!!
• Negligee: Skippy, uncomfortable, lacy nighties that cost WAY too much and you only really wear for 3 minutes!
• Waxing: The removal of hair through the application of hot wax and cloths. Dribble hot wax on, put on the cloth, then RIP THE SUCKER OFF. No more hair.
• Heels: The argument could be made that we wear heels for women and ourselves just as much as we wear them for guys… but for this list, I feel like they make the cut.
• Make-up: Again… could be for yourself or your girls… but there is an argument to be made for using eyelash lengthening mascara to snare the men-folk and fool them into marrying us. 

(I stole some of the ideas of what to put on my list from Cosmo, like the waxing and heels… I barely shave, let alone wax, so it didn't occur to me by myself).

I have started to feel like the ridiculousness… is all his fault. My husband. Because he has been brainwashed by the system to believe that if it's not sexy to him, he shouldn't have to look at it. 

(My resentment and my logic are at odds because I am a woman and I feel more than I reason). 

The conversation is open for us, and we are working at this hitch in our ability to be divinely happy, but I feel like so many women feel the need to change themselves because they want more of what men have to offer. And regardless of what the femi-Nazis might say… men do have a lot to offer. 

I just wish the world (and how many religious folks choose to teach sexuality) would stop screwing up our husbands.