Magic people - this is what I'm talking about. I'm talkin' about the magic. Why? Because an awesome lady (Ms. Cristie Baldwin-Cole) posted on Facebook a link to a fun word-cloud blog. The blogger in question did a simple little investigation. She watched commercials, mostly during after school cartoon blocks, and took down words used in these commercials. Then she created Wordle word clouds for commercials aimed at boys and another for commercials aimed at girls. Her main focus on the blog is boys and masculinity, and she was mostly interested in the boys commercials aimed at 6 to 8 year olds. The words from girl commercials were just investigated as a comparison. You can check out the blog here (complete with a preamble added about 2 weeks after the original post to clear some things up). I assume this blog got a lot of traffic because I went back to check it a second time, about 24 hours after I first saw it linked on Facebook, and it looked as though the site had been crashed. It came back up about 2 or 3 days later.
Anyway, here are the word clouds below. Check um.
Okay, so gender etc. blah blah blah. This was no deep scientifically detailed study, so make what conclusions you will from these. I have no interest in discussing the causes and effects of gendered advertising to children right now. I want to talk about a sort of awkward connection this conjured up in my brain between life as advertised to little girls and female orgasm as understood by adult women. I don’t know about you, but finding that “magic” was one of the top 3 used words surprised me. No, it actually didn’t. Thinking about my life as a girl, it makes perfect sense, but strangely, I don’t think I could have predicted that one. But ladies, it feels about right doesn't it? I'll say it again - I'll say it a million trillion times. Magic... Think of it - a sparkly gowned and impeccably groomed Barbie living the extraordinary life, a cute and futuristically dressed little girl on a colorfully maned white stallion prancing along rainbows with her friend -a sprite, a land of charismatic and vibrant talking ponies, or simply the magic that is created from playing with friends. Oh, you don't think that relationships are magical? Well let me tell you about Twilight Sparkle - I learned about her on the My Little Pony website (honestly the 2nd “meet the ponies” I clicked on)
"Dutiful and intelligent, Twilight Sparkle is obsessed with one thing: studying magic! She once studied so hard she made no time for anypony else. That is until her mentor, Princes Celestia, charged her with a special kind of magic--friendship!..."
Yes the magic of friendship. In little girl advertising,
it seems like everything is magical doesn’t it? I'm not talking magic like making the Statue of Liberty disappear – although that could be part of it. I'm talking about magical feelings, magical moments, magical lives. I'm talking about, serendipity, or about feeling as privileged and beautiful and glittery as a princess or a movie star or a fairy. I'm talking about feeling an intense other-worldly connection between yourself and your friends or your crush - like shiny little stars are actually spraying from your bodies as you share emotions or glances. I'm talking about a sense that there should be a level of excitement, romance, and glamour in our lives that is not grounded in our physical world. And, on that note, let’s discuss female orgasms…
So, I just Googled “female orgasm.” I was just sort of looking around trying to find ways to make my argument, and found the following line. It is in the 1st paragraph of the first hit – an article from Men’s Health called “10 Lessons about the Female Orgasm.” Let’s see what it has to say.
“Women want to have them, men want to deliver them. But all too often, the fairer sex's big-O falls among the ranks of the Abominable Snowman—great, even magical, in theory, but not something that’s often stumbled across”
Okay, so I guess the female orgasm is “magical.” It’s elusive, but when found is mind-bending - beyond anything a man could imagine. I mean just look at female porn stars, they orgasm continuously for like 30 minutes – it makes them literally scream out in ecstasy. The only orgasm male porn stars get is at the end – and they just grunt and contort their faces a bit. (That’s sarcasm. Male porn stars actually have orgasms in their movies and female porn stars do not – also the female orgasm is in no way elusive- just heinously misunderstood…and it’s no more mind-bending than men’s).
The odd little connection I’m trying to make in this blog goes something like this. Maybe women buy into the elusiveness and superiority of the female orgasm so easily because we’ve been primed to believe in and crave the “magic” that those ideas conjure up about our sexuality. I mean, the truth is that women do orgasm much less than men during partnered sex. It’s kind of sad and wrought with work to attribute that unfortunate fact to misinformation and incorrect stimulation. Isn’t it nicer and more comfortable to think that the female orgasm has the magical quality of needing serendipity to show up, but being extraordinary when it does. Yay!!! It’s soooo amazing, but how do we achieve it? The elusive g-spot?, clearing your mind?, relaxation techniques?, “letting go?,” true love? Who the hell knows – it doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s magical!
p.s. I won't even start on my "Theory of Sparkles," but I'll say 2 things. It's powerful, and we apply it in the Science Sex and the Ladies.
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