Since married is the new separated, separated is the new divorced, and divorced is the new single, that married guy is pretty much available anyway based on simple associative logic.

Oh, and now, divorced is the new widowed!

‘In the past, widowers used to get dates based on a “poor baby” sympathy a divorced man would never receive — until now.

Now, women are overlooking his part in it because then the divorce might make the divorced man undateable and that just wouldn’t do.

Blame the victim, the wife, for not understanding him the way you do.

So, divorced is the new widowed.’

Even after all of these years, even smart women like Amy Sutherland still think they can change a man. Women, you can’t change a man. Unless, of course, he wants to change (for you). Men and women are both wild things.

If you noticed from my article, Best Practices Guidelines for Approaching Women, I compared women to majestic, intelligent, wild things. In What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage, Amy Sutherland compares men to noble whales and dolphins — in captivity.

Are we men prisoners? Are we contained in some brackish blue-bottomed tank, encouraged to do shameful tricks for tub fulls of dead smelt, tongue and nose rubs?

After doing research on exotic animal trainers and exotic animal training schools, Amy Sutherland got it into her head that her husband Scott is a whale, trainable using the simple “approximations” method.

“The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy matters, but being in a group doesn’t so much. He has the balance of a gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes naturally, but being on time does not. He’s an omnivore, and what a trainer would call food-driven.”

Sorry, Amy, but Scott is no longer an alpha male. Apparently, you are. He is a trained seal. He is a fool. He is in captivity.

Poor Scott.

Thanks to David for sharing this article with me.

Two-piece garments worn by women for athletic purposes have been observed on Greek urns and paintings, dated as early as 1400 BC.

Modern origin of the Bikini

According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis Reard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946 (introduced on July 5), and named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the atomic bomb. However it should be noted that women in Paris were wearing bikinis one year before the bikini was “invented.” This fact is documented with pictures in the July 16, 1945 issue of Life Magazine.

Of course the magazine article did not attach the name “bikini” to the swimsuit. At that time the public had not yet been informed of the atom bomb project, and few people had ever heard of Bikini Atoll. The article instead spoke of the “French Bathing Suits.” But although the name had not yet been adopted, the swimsuits that the Parisian women were wearing are clearly recognizable as bikinis in style and coverage.

Coincidentally, the date of publication of the magazine, July 16, 1945, was the very same day that the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Reard’s suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the “Atome” (named for its size) and advertised it as the world’s “smallest bathing suit”. Reard split the “atome” even smaller, but could not find a model who would dare to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, as his model.

Bikinis in modern culture

It took fifteen years for the bikini to be accepted in the United States. In 1951 bikinis were banned from the Miss World Contest. In 1957, however, Brigitte Bardot’s bikini in And God Created Woman created a market for the swimwear in the US, and in 1960, Brian Hyland’s pop song “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” inspired a bikini-buying spree. Finally the bikini caught on, and by 1963, the movie Beach Party, starring Annette Funicello (emphatically not in a bikini, by mentor Walt Disney’s personal request) and Frankie Avalon, led a wave of films that made the bikini a pop-culture symbol.

In Malta bikinis took time to be introduced. In the 1960s the police fended off Bishop Michael Gonzi’s request to ban bikini clad tourists following fear of compromising Malta as a tourist destination. Malta Labour Party girls felt protected to put on bikinis during beach parties but this was unacceptable by those supporting the Nationalist Party.

People who are familiar with the history of Bikini Atoll—particularly opponents of nuclear proliferation—may find the etymology and use of the word “bikini” for a garment as inappropriate, as its tongue-in-cheek “explosive” reputation effectively reduces the significance of a serious historic humanitarian crisis—one that still influences the politics of the Marshall Islands—to a mere popular culture sex symbol in the minds of most people. The term two-piece is considered a neutral alternative.

The string bikini is one of the first and most classic renovations of the traditional bikini. It generally consists of the barest minimal fabric coverage for the top and bottoms. For some women, the string bikini may actually be the most flattering bikini style. The string bikini style looks best on women with small busts or boy shapes. Because women with small breasts do not need a large amount of bra-style support, a traditional triangle top can serve to add more shape and curve to the breasts. In addition, triangle tops with built-in under wires can work similarly to a push-up bra to maximize the breasts.

The bikini is a sex symbol that often makes the woman wearing it significantly more attractive in the eyes of men. Girls often wear a bikini to impress men or to fit in with the other women in bikinis. Many magazines market themselves by placing a woman in a bikini on the cover. Men often just buy the magazine for the picture of the woman and women may buy it to learn how to look like the woman on the cover. Because of the influence of the media, women try to lose weight before the summer so they can have the ideal “bikini body.” These weight loss goals are often unrealistic and unhealthy in their means and result. The image of the bikini in the media sometimes brings about eating disorders in people striving to have the “perfect” body. Though in reality, most women do not achieve their weight loss goals, but still wear bikinis anyway. That’s why there are different styles of bikinis, in different sizes and in different colors to suit every woman’s body type

Evolution of the bikini

A woman wearing a string bikini.In recent years, the term monokini has come into use for topless bathing by women: where the bikini has two parts, the monokini is the lower part. Where monokinis are in use, the word bikini may jokingly refer to a two-piece outfit consisting of a monokini and a sun hat. The term was coined by Rudi Gernreich.

The tankini is a swimsuit combining a tank top and a bikini bottom. A string bikini is a more revealing alternative style where both top and bottom are reduced to triangles of cloth connected by strings.

The lower part of the bikini was further reduced in size in the 1970s to the Brazilian thong, where the back of the suit is so thin that it disappears into the buttocks.

Female athletes who play beach volleyball professionally are required to wear two-pieces.

Media depiction of the Bikini

Women tanning often wear bikinis.The obvious sex appeal of the apparel prompted numerous film and television productions as soon as public morals changed to accept it. They include the numerous surf movies of the early 1960s and the television series, Baywatch. Iconic portrayals of bikinis in movies include Ursula Andress as Bond girl Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962), Raquel Welch as the prehistoric cavegirl in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C., and Phoebe Cates in the 1982 teen film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. These scenes were recently ranked 1, 86, and 84 in Channel 4 (UK)’s 100 Greatest Sexy Moments (in film).

In addition, a variant of the bikini popular in fantasy literature is a bikini that is made up of metal to serve as (admittedly rather impractical) armor, sometimes referred to as a “chainmail bikini” or “brass bikini”; the character Red Sonja is a famous example. A term for such usage, where sex appeal is more important than actual practicality, is babes-at-arms (parodying “men-at-arms” for fully armoured soldiers).

Brigitte Bardot From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brigitte Bardot (born September 28, 1934) is a French actress and model, considered the embodiment of the 1950s “sex kitten.”

In the 1970s Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s she was outspoken about her political views on such issues as immigration, Islam in France, race mixing, and homosexuality.

Career

Bardot was born in Paris to Anne-Marie Mucel and Charles “Pilou” Bardot, an industrialist.

In 1952, she appeared on screen for the first time in Le Trou Normand. That same year, at age 18, she married director Roger Vadim, with whom she had been romantically involved for several years.

Although the European film industry was then in the ascendant, her personal rise was remarkable: she has been one of the few European actresses to receive mass media attention in the United States. She and Marilyn Monroe were the icons of female sexuality in the 1950s and 1960s and whenever she made public appearances in the United States the media hordes covered her every move.

Her films of the early and mid 1950s were lightweight romantic dramas, some of them historical, in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She played bit parts in three English-language films, the British comedy Doctor at Sea (1955), Helen of Troy (1954), in which she was understudy for the title-role but only appears as Helen’s handmaid, and Act of Love (1954) with Kirk Douglas. Her French-language films were dubbed for international release. “She is every man’s idea of the girl he’d like to meet in Paris” said the film-critic Ivon Addams in 1955.

Vadim was not content with this light fare. The New Wave of French and Italian art directors and their stars were riding high internationally and he felt Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art-film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in And God Created Woman (1956) with Jean-Louis Trintignant.

The film, about an amoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a big international success. She may have had an affair with her co-star Trintignant, but this was more likely a pre-release publicity gimmick. The film is often wrongly described as her first film (it was her seventeenth) and to have launched her overnight, but it did help move her towards the cinematic mainstream.

It also ruled out a transition to Hollywood, where she was thought too risqué to handle. The Doris Day era was in still in full swing and even Jane Russell in The French Line (1953) had been thought to be going too far by showing her midriff. Erotica like Bardot’s Cette sacrée gamine (That Crazy Kid, 1955) was considered fine at the box-office as long as it was clearly labelled “European”. Bardot’s limited English and strong accent, while beguiling to the ears of men, did not suit rapid-fire Hollywood scripts. In any event, staying in Europe benefited her image when the 1960s began to swing and Hollywood slipped into the background for a while, and Bardot was voted honorary sex-goddess of the decade.

Divorced from Vadim in 1957, she married actor Jacques Charrier (1959-62), by whom in 1960 she had her only child, Nicolas-Jacques Charrier from whom she is estranged. She once referred to her only child as “a tumour”. The marriage was preyed on by the paparazzi and there were clashes over the direction of Bardot’s career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining to most of the world a glamour model.

Poster for Bardot’s film Le Mépris (Contempt).Vie privée (1960), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. The scene in which, returning to her flat, Bardot’s character is harangued in the lift by a middle-aged cleaning-lady calling her a tramp and a tart was based on an actual incident, and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century.

Soon after, Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France and is now known to have attempted suicide, but as the sexual revolution of the early 1960s gathered momentum her lifestyle began to seem more like the norm and the pressure lifted. Through the sixties, she was happy to appear in glossy star-vehicles like Viva Maria (1969), to dabble in pop music and to play the role of glamour model and icon. In 1965 she appeared as herself in the Hollywood production Dear Brigitte starring Jimmy Stewart.

Her other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs (1966-69), and French right-wing politician, Bernard d’Ormale (1992-present). She has also had reputed relationships with many men including singers Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In the late 1950s, she shared an exchange she considered “croiser de deux sillages??? with writer John Gilmore, then an actor in France for a New Wave film to have starred Jean Seberg. Gilmore told Paris Match, “I felt a beautiful warmth with Bardot but found it difficult to discuss things to any depth whatsoever???.

She is recognised for popularising bikini swimwear in early films such as Manina (Woman without a Veil, 1952) and in her appearances at Cannes and in many photo shoots. She even sported an early version of the monokini from time to time. Though this was not considered extraordinary in France, it was considered nearly scandalous in the US. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her and she joined Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, in becoming a subject for Andy Warhol paintings.

In 1970, the sculptor Alain Gourdon used Bardot as the model for a bust of Marianne, the French national emblem.

Activism and controversy

In 1974, just before her fortieth birthday, Bardot announced her retirement. After appearing in more than fifty motion pictures, and recording several music albums, most notably with Serge Gainsbourg, she chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. She is accused of being a misanthrope and preferring the company of animals to that of humans.

In 1986, she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. Today, she is one of the world’s most influential animal rights activists and a major opponent of the consumption of horse meat.

She is also one of the most celebrated supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing Front National political party, with which her husband is associated. With the publication of her 2003 book, A Scream in the Silence, the reclusive Bardot has come under considerable fire for anti-Muslim, and anti-gay comments. In May 2003, The MRAP (“Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples” – Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples) announced that it would sue Bardot for her published views. Another organisation, The “Ligue des Droits de l’Homme” (League of Human Rights), announced that it was considering similar legal proceedings.

Bardot, in a letter to a French gay magazine, wrote in her defense, “Apart from my husband—who maybe will cross over one day as well—I am entirely surrounded by homos. For years they have been my support, my friends, my adopted children, my confidants”.

Bardot has lost a considerable amount of sympathy from her fans due to her now-frequent anti-Muslim, anti-gay and anti-immigrant comments. On June 10, 2004 Bardot was convicted by a French court of “inciting racial hatred” and fined 5,000 €, which was the fourth such conviction/fine she has faced from French courts[1]. The courts cited passages where Bardot referred to the “Islamization of France” and the “underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam”[2], her descriptions of France’s Muslim community, the largest in Europe. In the book she also referred to homosexuals as “fairground freaks” and she condemns the presence of women in government.

Considered a militant for animal protection, she condemned seal hunting in Canada during a visit to that country. She sought to discuss the issue with Stephen Harper, though her request for a meeting was denied.

I really want to be a dad. I would love to have girls. I see teenage girls as children. I can’t work myself through Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica: How nice girls got so casual about oral sex by Caitlin Flanagan in the January/February 2006 issue of The Atlantic. It makes me want to cry. It makes my heart sad. Someone please tell me this is urban legend.

Excerpts from Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica: How nice girls got so casual about oral sex by Caitlin Flanagan:

“The moms in my set are convinced—they’re certain; they know for a fact—that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can. They’re ducking into janitors’ closets between classes to do it; they’re doing it on school buses, and in bathrooms, libraries, and stairwells.”

[snip]

“Nowadays girls don’t consider oral sex in the least exotic—nor do they even consider it to be sex. It’s just “something to do.” A friend who attended a leadership conference for girls from some of the country’s top schools told me, “Friendships haven’t changed a bit since our day. But sex has changed a lot.” One of the teachers, from an eastern boarding school, told the students that when she was young, in the 1960s, oral sex was considered far more intimate than intercourse. The kids hooted at the notion. ‘It’s like licking a lollipop,’ one pretty girl from a prestigious girls’ school said, flipping her hair in the ancient gesture of teenage certainty. ‘It’s no big deal.’”

[snip]

“A huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen. Obviously, there was no previous data to compare this with, but millions of suburban dads were quite adamant that they had been born too soon.”

[snip]

“How, exactly, in the course of thirty years, did we get from Katherine to Gin? How did we go from a middle-class teenage girl (fictional but broadly accurate) who will have sex only if it’s with her boyfriend, and only if her pleasure is equal to his, to a middle-class teenage girl (a gross media caricature reflective of an admittedly disturbing trend) who wants to kneel down and service a series of boys? Katherine and her mother (who still enjoys a pleasurable sex life with her husband) represent two points on a continuum. In the mother’s generation sex was contained by marriage; in the daughter’s it was contained by love and relationships. The next point on this progression ought to be a girl who feels that nothing save her own desire should control her choice of sexual partners. Instead we see a group of young girls who have in effect turned away from their own desire altogether and have made of their sexuality something that fulfills all sorts of goals, but not the one paramount to Katherine and her mother: that it be sexually gratifying to themselves.”

[snip]

“I am old-fashioned enough to believe that men and boys are not as likely to be wounded, emotionally and spiritually, by early sexual experience, or by sexual experience entered into without romantic commitment, as are women and girls. I think that girls are vulnerable to great damage through the kind of sex in which they are, as individuals, as valueless and unrecognizable as chattel. Society has let its girls down in every possible way. It has refused to assert—or even to acknowledge—that female sexuality is as intricately connected to kindness and trust as it is to gratification and pleasure. It’s in the nature of who we are.”

“But perhaps the girls themselves understand this essential truth.”

“As myriad forces were combining to reshape our notions of public decency and propriety, to ridicule the concept that privacy and dignity are valuable and allied qualities of character and that exhibitionism as an end in itself might not be beneficial for a young girl, at the exact moment when girls were encouraged to think of themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy and to act on an imperative of default aggression—at this very time a significant number of young girls were beginning to form an entirely new code of sexual ethics and expectations. It was a code in which their own physical pleasure was of no consequence—was in fact so entirely beside the point that their preferred mode of sexual activity was performing unrequited oral sex. Deep Throat lingers in the popular imagination because it was one of the few porn movies to trade on an original and inspired premise: what a perfect world it would be if the clitoris were located in a woman’s throat. In a world like that a man wouldn’t have to cajole a woman to perform fellatio on him; she would be just as eager to get it on as he was. But this was a fantasy; a girl may derive a variety of consequences, intended and otherwise, from servicing boys in this manner, but her own sexual gratification is not one of them. The modern girl’s casual willingness to perform oral sex may—as some cool-headed observers of the phenomenon like to propose—be her way of maintaining a post-feminist power in her sexual dealings, by being fully in control of the sexual act and of the pleasure a boy receives from it. Or it may be her desperate attempt to do something that the culture refuses to encourage: to keep her own sexuality—the emotions and the desires, as well as the anatomical real estate itself—private, secret, unviolated. It may not be her technical virginity that she is trying to preserve; it may be her own sexual awakening—which is all she really has left to protect anymore.”

“We’ve made a world for our girls in which the pornography industry has become increasingly mainstream, in which Planned Parenthood’s response to the oral-sex craze has been to set up a help line, in which the forces of feminism have worked relentlessly to erode the patriarchy—which, despite its manifold evils, held that providing for the sexual safety of young girls was among its primary reasons for existence. And here are America’s girls: experienced beyond their years, lacking any clear message from the adult community about the importance of protecting their modesty, adrift in one of the most explicitly sexualized cultures in the history of the world. Here are America’s girls: on their knees.”

All previous Excerpts from Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica: How nice girls got so casual about oral sex by Caitlin Flanagan.