Since returning The V-Spot sex advice column to the pages of the Advocate earlier this month, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our readers. Most are thrilled to have a sassy sexpert closing out the paper every week. Others question why a newspaper would dedicate so much space to something so explicit.
As the editor of an alternative newspaper, I strive to feature voices, topics, places and people outside the mainstream. The V-Spot by Yana Tallon-Hicks is a positive, judgment-free, honest and educational sex column, and that puts it miles outside the mainstream.
Sex is right up there with Mom, Coca-Cola and apple pie in its influence on American culture.
Sex is on billboards for beer and animal rights; it’s used to sell movies and burgers, guns and toys. People’s innate sexual appetites are exploited into insecurities that prompt folks to buy expensive cars, perfumes, uncomfortable undergarments, and jewels. All of this is outside the $10 billion U.S. industry dedicated to getting society’s collective rocks off: porn.
Using sex to sell is more popular than ever. For example, according to a University of Georgia study, 15 percent of ads in popular magazines used sex to sell products in 1983. In 2003, it had risen to 27 percent.
TV is filled with women in bras feigning climax while a man makes love to her bellybutton.
The biggest thing in mainstream sex right now is “Fifty Shades of Grey,” a series that adds a few lashes to the threadbare worldly-man-beds-naive-girl narrative.
On-screen sex is about how to look good to others while pretending to be in ecstasy. But where’s the love? Where’s the joy? Where’s the fun? Where’s the respect? Very few people are willing to address sex when it starts with any of these questions. Somehow, it’s seen as unsexy.
Tallon-Hicks exposes the sexual tropes of TV and movies for what they are: flaccid fallacy. She explains how you can feel as sexually satisfied as the actors look. While sex is everywhere, sex education is lacking.
For example, the United States continues to have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world — 68 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19 in 2008. This is more than twice that of Canada or Sweden, according to the Guttmaccher Institute, a sexual education research nonprofit. Every year, roughly 9 million new sexually transmitted diseases occur among teens and young adults.
And on the first page of search term results for “sex” on Google the top post is a link to sexy videos by humor site FunnyOrDie.com. Next up is “sex selfies” on Twitter and third is an article by Men’s Health magazine that lists the missionary position as the one most likely to give a woman an orgasm.
That’s mainstream sex in America — 50 shades of jokes, selfies, and bad advice.
The V-Spot, by comparison, is a haven of sexual enlightenment — no debates about whether the G-spot exists here — but you have to provide your own visuals.
This week’s column, on page 39, is about the joy of male prostate stimulation. The prostate is an excitable, pleasure-gland most easily accessed through the ol’ backdoor.
Due to a lack of education and a strong-heterosexual streak in Hollywood and TV, the prostate is mostly thought of as that thing in your butt that can make it difficult for some men to pee. It’s missing from broader conversations about sexual pleasure and untouched in many straight relationships.
People are having less awesome sex because it’s not what sex looks like on screen. Keep that in mind while reading this week’s The V-Spot, “A Straight Boy and His Butt.”•
Contact Kristin Palpini at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
