Women and leggings and...well, Carlos Bocanegra NOT wearing leggings

My friends Lisa and Labrys reminded me that looking at attractive bodies is not a gender-specific thing. So here's some eye-candy for the female readers; U.S. Soccer's Carlos Bocanegra:

If you knew that this body was under baggy sweats and a ballcap, would it matter whether it was tight shorts or baggy sweats, or a bare chest or a hoodie?

I mean, certainly less clothing is more scenic...but what is unseen can still be seen, if you're thinking about it.

As Lisa said; the brain is the real sexual organ. What can be imagined will be imagine, whether it be by man or woman. We men may be a trifle more visual, but we were all designed to respond to each other's (or our own gender's, for those of us hardwired that way...) bodies. As Labrys said; we may be married, or in love, or committed, but we're neither blind nor dead. We respond to those bodies as our own minds and bodies tell us we should. And that's just fine; if we are truly civilized people we can surely find ways to dealing with our desires in civilized ways.

The fact that religious zealots - whether fundamentalist Christians, ultraorthodox Jews, Wahhabi Muslims, or every other flavor of God-bothering asshole - can't seem to do that is their problem, not ours, frankly.

Otherwise?

Enjoy.

Men and leggings and living with them both.

So I open the digital version of the World's Worst Newspaper this morning and there's this:

"Why I Chose to No Longer Wear Leggings...(Veronica) Partridge, a 25-year-old Christian, felt conflicted about modesty, she writes in the post, and talked with her husband about whether or not leggings are appropriate as pants. He told her that it's hard for him not to look at other women wearing the tight athletic wear. She wrote: "And at that moment, I made a personal vow to myself and to my husband. I will no longer wear thin, form-fitting yoga pants or leggings in public."

And I thought, oh, Ronnie.

Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie...

You and me, girlfriend. We need to have a little talk.

Well, OK, first, let me admit; this wasn't the first time I'd heard of this leggings-deal. I ran across it the other night skimming Fred Clarke's blog Slacktivist, where he kinda slammed you not for your obsession with "modesty" but for your misprision of the central tenets of your Christianity:

"For white American evangelicals, religion is always about sex — about other people’s genitals, but when Jesus spoke about modesty of dress it was never about sex and lust. It was about money and greed and self-indulgence at the expense of those in need. If you’re striving for “biblical modesty,” that is the core and the whole of what the Bible itself has to say about leggings and yoga pants: “Whoever has two pair of leggings must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."

Which is in itself all well and good from a religious-good-doing sort of perspective. Though I should note that I tend to agree with Fred that Dale's comment was sort of a dick move. Sorry, Ron, but he was implying that it is haaaard to be faithful to you with those darn sluts prancing around in yoga pants. But that's a whole 'nother thing.

Thing is, sorry, I'm not a Christian like Fred (who is a pretty insightful guy and a fellow Jesus-pesterer; you might give him a read, just sayin'...) I'm just some random atheist. So I can't really help you on the whole "Christian morality" thing.

But.

I, like your husband Dale the "serial entrepreneur", am a guy. Dude. Vato. Hombre. Mensch. Fella. Goombah. We're both members of the He-Man Chest-Beater Club, sharers of the descended testicles, and we have a lot in common, saint and sinner the two of us.

And I thought we should reeeeeeally talk about this whole thing you said Dale said to you. Accoring to your blog "...he told me, “yeah, when I walk into a place and there are women wearing yoga pants everywhere, it’s hard to not look. I don’t, but it’s not easy.”

And, Ronnie, love ya, sweetie, bless your heart, but I'm here as a guy to tell you; Dale's lying his dear little Christian ass off.

"Looks?" Of course he looks. We ALL look.

Why?

Because we like you.

Sure, he loves you as a person, as a wife, mother of your kids, helpmeet, companion, lover. But...he's also a heterosexual guy. So he likes you as a woman.

Meaning he likes women. Women, plural. Women in general.

We're like that, us het guys. We may like some women as individual friends. We may love some - or, one, hopefully as in your case - as our inamorata, our one-and-only, our Bride, our Delight. But those are personality things, emotional things, spiritual things, individual things.

But we also like women. Physically. Generically. Generally. En masse. As a class of beings. We like how they look, how their voices sound, how they move, how they stand. We like how their faces fit together, how their hair falls, how they look hipshot, or sitting, or dancing, or sleeping. We like the high curve of the tops of their breasts, the slender taper of their fingers (or the square sturdiness of their hands - women come in a delightful assortment of sizes, shapes, and proportions, and that's another thing we like about them). We like the swell of their hips, and the roundness of their bottoms, the intricate curve where their belly meets their thigh.

We like how they laugh when they're silly, the frown that furls their brow when they're thinking. And...I hope this doesn't shock you, dear, but we like making love to them and we think about that from time to time when we look at them.

We don't really think about having sex with them when we see those women in their yoga pants and leggings.

Because, I'm sorry to say, dear, we don't need the yoga pants and leggings to think about having sex with them.

We don't need leggings...or yoga pants, or pantyhose or high heels or pushup bras or bustiers. We don't need accessories or special outfits or fetish wear. We're guys, Ronnie. Guys! We can look at a cool stylish matron in a chic suit and think of lust in the back of a limo. Or a ponytailed jogger in Nikes and imagine sweaty gym sex. Or the tattooed barista at the coffeeshop and picture wild lovemaking in a loft full of modern art.

Hell, don't even get me started on burkas or habits or granny shoes, darlin'. We're men and all of life is one ginormous Rule 34 for us. We look, and we think, and...if we love you, that's all we do.

Just looking - and thinking - doesn't mean we're going to tear off their yoga pants in a mad frenxy of lust. It doesn't mean that anytime we see a woman in a cute outfit, or a bathing suit, that we're gonna screw the poor girl to the wall. We may think about how pretty and sexy they are. We may get a little thrill of excitement looking at them.

But then we take all that home and if we're lucky get to feel and think the same way about you.

My own Bride, who is a very sensible and pragmatic woman, has a term for it: "You go ahead and work up an appetite wherever you want, big guy. Just come home to eat."

She knows we look, and she knows we know she knows, and she's okay with that. She's a smart woman and she knows that if what we have is good, and strong, and right that the looking is no more than enjoyment, and that she will reap the benefits.

And so can you so long as you remember this simple little rule: Guys Are Gonna Look - It Doesn't Matter What You Wear

So you pull on those Carharts, Ronnie dear, if it makes you feel better. But just remember - it's not about the leggings. It's about the legs, and he's gonna think about those legs - yours, hers, your Aunt Louise's - and probably will no matter if you and every other woman within sight are dressed in goddamn garbage sacks.

Cock o' the North (Portland)...

Driving out of the 'hood today (finally) I caught a reminder that, yes, I do live in a college town:

Kinda makes the ordinary snowman and his little carrot look like brine shrimp, no?

Seems like a thousand years ago I would have taken the time and effort to construct this sort of magnificent snow-herm. But I would have, sadly, because college guys do shit like this.

Today the thaw has begun. In drips and runnels, the mighty Shaft of Snow melts away like every other symbol of male pride, beaten down by time and the hard light of day. Tomorrow the Pride - or is it the Shame - of North Portland will be just another wet spot.

Burnin' love

Speaking of ghost towns, did you know that the road into the Pennsylvania ghost town of Centralia - abandoned because of an accidental coal seam fire set fifty-one years ago - is a congeries of spray-painted art including (of course) the ubiquitous symbol of the human male with waaaayyy too much time on his hands, the graffiti penis?

Well.

Now you do.

Peckers aside, the story of Centralia is actually kind of a sad story, like the little towns of Doty and Dryad; once living places that were simply thrown away because they were no longer convenient, or wanted, or, in the case of Centralia, victims of an ignorant mistake.

At least one thing never changes through place and time.

If we have a dick, we're thinking about it.

Men.

Jayzus, we're worse than goats.

Hot for Something: Hakkaa päälle 2

I should add that there's only one dream of Finland that will profit you anythingand that's dreaming like this guy.

Just some beefcake for a Tuesday night, is all.

Please return to your regularly scheduled evening.

Mars and Venus: The Ugly Truth

This post over at Rangeragainstwar got me thinking: why ARE us Y-chromosome types so frigging stupid when it comes to love and sex?

As opposed to the lower animals? Because, honestly? Guys are generally a) stupid about relationships, and b) too stupid to know we're stupid. We are. IF we're honest we admit it and work on improving our behavior. If we don't, we generally blunder through life making some poor woman's life more difficult.

We hit puberty and we're pretty much a life support system for a penis. We have little or no emotional subtlety and usually don't want any. Most of us, if we're under 40 - and a LOT of us if we're under 90 - will be lying to you if we saw we want "emotional intimacy". Mostly what we want is to get laid, and after that have some sort of meal involving meat.

Whenever one of those scandals comes up, a Clinton or a Gary Hart or something like that, my wife just can't get it. "How could he be so freaking stupid about some booty!?" she snarls.

I explain it to her this way: in a lot of respects, a man's mind can be very complex and powerful, like the electronics suite of a multibillion dollar Aegis missile cruiser. But every once in a while something shapely flies past and a $1.98 heat-seeking warhead on a moisture-activate muffin missile comes active and fires itself, slaving the entire vessal, hardware and software, to that utterly moronic cheap little warhead. The result is usually bad for all involved.It's not that we CAN'T do better, it's that it would take character, resolve and maturity to resist the hardwiring of that stupid little gadget and many of us don't want to be that grown-up.

I'm sorry, women of the world, but this “...truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.” (Winston Churchill)