Which brings us to the evil miniskirt. Both men and women have always tried to dress as provocatively as possible. Rap videos did not invent short-shorts and halter tops. Have these miniskirt-decriers never seen those French Court getups with the boobs jacked up to the chin? Or the mod era's scandalous contributions to the miniskirt oeuvre? Or Gold Diggers of 1933, with the super-revealing silhouettes of the dozens of women changing out of their wet clothes together? Women dress to appeal to men. Men dress to appeal to women. (Seriously, who thinks baseball uniforms are purely utilitarian?) And this is a problem how?
    The neo-prudes are just appalled by the lengths to which we go to attract men. I would have thought that argument was too absurd, too '60s, to warrant discussion, but it has made such a comeback that I guess we have to say, yes, we can wear lipstick and be feminists. These people also say we're playing right into men's hands when we wear heels. Well, you bet we are. They're doing what they can to attract us, too. Isn't that the whole point of sex?
    And do these cultural critics offer any alternative? Not so much. I find myself in a rare instance of agreement with the academic provocateur Laura Kipnis, who wrote in 2006's The Female Thing: "The pop-feminist solution, endlessly commemorating Strong Women while treating ordinary men as equivalent to rapists when they're merely being (for instance) romantically disappointing, or watching porn, or having midlife crises . . . how is that really helpful to anyone?"
    Smart feminist theorists such as Paul and Levy encourage us to think through the meaning and impact of sex in the culture. Hear, hear. I like thinking about that stuff, too. But once we've thought it through, even if we did agree that our culture is saturated with anti-woman sexuality, what do we do? Unplug the internet? Ban porn? Drop Catharine MacKinnon leaflets onto the beach at Spring Break?
    No, the right-wingers and feminist academics — together again, as in Andrea Dworkin's day — offer no game plan. They just declare that the porn girls and the teen tramps and the pop stars, and all of us, everywhere, who find any of that appealing, should feel bad, dirty and humiliated about the most natural thing in the world, the one thing that unites the history of humankind: trying to look cute.

Nine times out of ten, what turns us on is completely embarrassing.

    What these cultural arbiters fail to realize is that we're not doing it for them. We don't care if columnists think it's gross or lame or sad that teen girls give so many blowjobs or wear such skimpy clothing. I think I speak for teen girls everywhere when I say that it's Jake in Calculus we're trying to attract, not John Tierney. And Jake doesn't see things in the same way. He likes those skirts. Just like we like that he wears his wrestling uniform when he walks us home. That's how sex works.
    The columnists seem to be of the opinion that sex isn't supposed to be messy, or icky or to involve things like online porn or spring break or stupid shoes. But it does. And there's something almost cruel about the way these pundits haul our means of attracting each other, our sexual proclivities, out into the blogs and the pages of glossy magazines and into newsprint. Of course they don't hold up as Noble or Good or Reputable in that analysis. Nine times out of ten, what turns us on is completely embarrassing. Porn is embarrassing. Dressing slutty is embarrassing. The mechanics of sex are absolutely, entirely embarrassing.
    Porn, out of context, is stupid. Wild girls, out of context, are stupid. Sexy fashion, out of context, is definitely stupid. Of course five-inch heels are ridiculous. Of course girls flashing cameramen is ridiculous. But you know what's ridiculous to me? The academics and cultural critics who condemn such things. How cowardly they are to take themselves out of the equation! They must be so happy to have sex lives that they don't feel at all weird about, crushes they can justify before a panel of their peers, a wardrobe devoid of pandering.
    I'm definitely not saying we shouldn't be thinking about sex, trying to figure out why we like what we like, trying to reconcile our politics with our fantasies and our behavior and our hemlines. That's what we do every time we have an honest conversation about sex with our friends or the people we sleep with. Through that kind of honesty, we'll be able to make headway on real feminist issues, such as wage parity, domestic-abuse prevention and affordable child care.
    So for the coming year, let's make a resolution: every time someone casually refers to the horrible hypersexualizing of our culture and encourages us to be more responsible about what we wear, what we look at and how we behave with each other, let's nod and smile and thank them for opening up a discussion about modern sexuality. And then let's go right on doing what we've done throughout recorded time: upending our beliefs about what's right, what's proper and what's politically appropriate, for the sake of desire.  n°

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Nerve consulting editor and Babble editor-in-chief Ada Calhoun has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor and theater critic at New York magazine, and her softball team's MVP.

©2006 Ada Calhoun and Nerve.com