Naomi Wolf's third book, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, overflows with soothing feminist nostrums and a giddy preoccupation with "the female experience." Wolf argues that adults should empower teenage girls by telling them the phase they're going through is "magical" -- neatly intersecting with Donna Shalala's advocacy of the "secondary virginity" fairytale.
Promiscuities tries to be many things: earnest memoir, historical overview, sociological commentary, and trendy manifesto. "We are all bad girls, in the best sense of the word" writes Wolf -- a good girl ineffectually longing to be a bad girl in the worst way. Wolf supplies the reader with plenty of confessional material, admitting that she "technically" held onto her virginity, while doing "everything but," during her mid-teens. In college, she flirted with a charismatic professor -- then threw up, horrified that he subsequently made a pass at her. The only thing she won't admit is that this is the stuff good girls are made of. No matter how racy feminist politics may become, a rationale of entitlement is never far out of reach. As Wolf would have it, any woman -- even the prissiest -- is entitled to wear the mantle of the slut. Wolf is confused: Sluthood's an accomplishment, not a default setting for the sexually unimaginative. Wolf is surprisingly prudish about modern prostitution, while she gushes over the ancient practices of temple harlots. In embracing and mythologizing a form of whoring that is essentially obsolete, Wolf consolidates her pretzel-poseur pro-sex feminist anti-prostitution position. Today's female sex worker, she believes, is a girl "to whom anything can be done." If, according to Wolf, hookers and exotic dancers are just there to soak up abuse men dare not impose on "nice girls," and since "nice girls" are keener to perform sex acts which were once the province of whores, prostitutes as painted by Wolf are the much-put-upon casualties of the sexual revolution. Nice try, Naomi.
What distinguishes a pro from an amateur is how she deals with her sexual competition. Professional "bad girls" know that there will always be competition, a need for variety in the sexual marketplace. Promiscuities is dotted with references to "cleaner" sexuality and to a yearning for the good old days, before the era of Playboy, Penthouse and that topless '60s icon, Carol Doda. In 1942, Anne Frank's sexual ignorance apparently resulted in bliss: her sweet fantasies, devoid of adult sexuality, were "vague" and "appropriate to her age," Wolf tells us. But women mature physically at different rates, some earlier than others, and that is true of our emotional development as well. A fantasy appropriate for the fourteen-year-old Anne Frank might seem childish to another teenager -- yes, even in 1942. In the rose-tinted Promiscuities, Wolf can't accept the fact that becoming sexually aware -- in any era -- is messy and sometimes painful .. In the 1970s, as in the 1940's and other decades, an adolescent might be repelled or puzzled by her own erotic curiosity. According to Wolf, this is the fault of the sex industry, for flaunting its explicit, adult images at us when we were young. If adult sexual images cause an adolescent to squirm, perhaps we should regard this discomfort as a healthy sign of growth. Isn't that why we call certain changes "growing pains"? Was Anne Frank really better off than those of us who came of age in the 1970s? Like Alison Gertz, Frank never had a chance to grow up. Who knows where her desires might have taken her? Perhaps the unambivalent sweetness that Wolf raves about might have led ultimately to a disastrous reality check -- an unplanned pregnancy, or a kitchen-table abortion. |
Wolf can't accept the fact that nice girls don't have a monopoly on the male sex drive. Where a trashy chick might vilify her competition with disparaging remarks about her competition's thighs, a nice girl like Wolf, too genteel to engage in low-class name-calling, spins wild social theories. She undermines the professional by calling her a victim of abuse. She won't acknowledge that a sex worker's erotic market share is actually due to valuable skill. Why does Wolf find it necessary to denigrate the male urge that other women profit from?