Old Playboy vs New Playboy

I just read an article on Bust's website [NSFW] about a Tumblr [NSFW] consisting solely of pictures of vintage Playboy models.
It's weird: When I was a child I remember all of the feminists talking about how these images promoted unhealthy body images for women. I would sneak peaks of my grandpa's Playboys whenever we visited my grandparents in Chicago, where my grandpa was also a member of the Playboy Club, which was the first of the clubs. I thought these women were beautiful and glamorous and thought, "I hope I look like that when I grow up."
Fast forward about thirty years and you'll find me saying, "The women in Playboy promote unhealthy body images for women." I created a memory that the women from the '70s and early '80s Playboys were not so different than those today. Mostly white, mostly blond, mostly fake tanned and fake titted and mostly unnaturally thin. The only thing I remembered was that the whole infatuation with hairless vulvae did not exist back then. (Translation: There were lots of large, scary, unruly bushes back then; even in Playboy.)
Trotting over to the Tumblr [not kidding: NSFW] page, I found myself pleasantly surprised. These women may not be fat, but some are certainly zaftig by today's standards in media-- soft porn or otherwise. I even recognized my upper arms on one woman, my breasts on another, my bum on another and on and on. Yes, the women had large breasts most of the time, but there were also women with fairly small breasts and, as far as I can tell, these breasts were original operating equipment. Yes, there was an obsession with tan lines back then, but they were so much cuter than the orange fake-bakers of today's Playboy who want us to believe they all live near nude beaches or something.
These images were so much healthier for girls and boys as far as realistic expectations. So why did my generation and the one before ours corrupt these fairly wholesome, healthy looking images into the plastic looking women of today? And if Playboy and other nude magazines keep going at this rate, what will the women look like ten, twenty, thirty, even 75 years from now? Will it circle back around or will bizarre fetishes continue to force the models to deform themselves until they are almost not even human anymore? When Mr. Hefner created his visions for Playboy, it was supposed to be wholesome, girl-next-door nude fun. “Clean sex has greater appeal than tawdry sex,” he said. So how did the fetishes for hairlessness and oversize breasts (along with other fetishes which used to have their own, special magazine) creep in? What will it take for it to creep back out?
At this point in history, I doubt Playboy will ever go back to the au naturel girl-next-door types since they are competing with the abundance of internet porn creating stiff--er, no pun intended--competition for the Hefners to keep up with if they want to make a buck.

Poindexter and Vajayjay

Today I was wearing my long, puffy black coat with the fur hood, my black knit UGGs and a hand crocheted slouchy tam. I thought it was very hipster-douchebag of me, but I was comfy. But then I looked in the mirror and realized that I'm not even cool enough to be a hipster-douchebag anymore. And that my head is pointy. Literally pointy. I've always know that my head is not one that will ever look good bald, but I guess it never occurred to me that it's because my head. Is. Pointy. I thought it was the hat and tried to smooth it down, readjust it, whatever. Nothing worked. Because my head is pointy.
In other news:
My troubled female plumbing led me to have the laparoscopy which led to a removal of a hideous adhesion. The day of the procedure I stood in front of a mirror and sucked in my considerable gut to see how much swelling there was at the site. Pleasingly, I noticed that I was able to suck in my gut farther than I had been. Sweet! I didn't lose any noticeable amount of weight, but I guess the muscles are where they're supposed to be now or something. I don't know what the explanation is and I don't care. Then, today, I put on a pair of jeans for the first time in a week. (The waist is well below my bellybutton but the rubbing of the waistband when I slouch or bend is annoying.) And the freshly washed jeans yielded an extra ½" to ¾" inches of space around my waist than normal. SWEET²!
Lastly:
(One more female plumbing trouble story, bear with me, please.) One of the post-operative care instructions the nurse gave me before she sent me home was not to insert anything into my vagina for two weeks. She started this instruction by leaning in towards me and half-whispering, "Don't have relations with your husband for two weeks." This was in front of my husband. I got a few things out of this exchange. First, she didn't want to embarrass me by implying that I might actually have sex with my husband. Second, until the next part of the instruction ("Nothing at all in your vagina.") I wasn't positive that relations just meant sex. The way she said it almost seemed to imply any relations at all. No talking, even. The whole thing was just bizarre coming from a nurse. Oh. I just realized that without the second part, she may have been whispering because she was implying sex with men other than my husband was okay. Maybe she was freaky-deaky. Hmmmmmm...

The Scoop Which Hopefully Doesn't End in "The Scoop"

I talked to my doctor for a while on the phone today. We went over all of my recent problems, the tests results and further actions we can take. In the end I believed we've done everything which can be done without looking under the hood. So I told him I'd like to go ahead and schedule a laproscopy to check for adhesions and endometriosis, neither of which usually show on ultrasounds or x-rays. The scheduler will be calling me soon to set up a pre-op evaluation appointment and the laproscopy itself.
My decision on my uterus is this: If there is something visibly wrong with my uterus itself when they open me up, then they can take it, regardless of how bad the "it" is. I don't want to have to be opened up again because the scar tissue or endometrial tissue grew back. However, if there is nothing visibly wrong I will not have a hysterectomy. There is too much too risk for not much guarantee of relief. A uterus helps work as a placeholder for keeping everything structurally sound and without it, I feel there is too much of a chance the empty space could cause as many problems as having the uterus there what with my IBS and the inflammatory actions of my autoimmune disease and all of the other "normal" things which could go wrong.
If I do have my uterus removed, I will be asking them to take my cervix with it. I've had abnormal paps several times, so at least the idea of not getting uterine or cervical cancer are comforting ones. Many women don't want to lose their cervix for sexual pleasure reasons, but I can honestly say I've never noticed any particular sexual gain from that bit of flesh.

My PSA for the day

I'm sharing this, not because I agree with the author, but so I can comment that sexual assault has many different forms and it isn't always for sexual pleasure or about committing violence. I, too, have been sexually assaulted, but I understand that sexual assault is about power; power being taken away from the victim and given wholly to the perpetrator.
Yes, the case of the mother who was not informed what was going to be done to her, nor allowing her to consent to it is sexual assault. Her breasts and her labia were touched without her consent and without any warning. It traumatized her. That's it. That's sexual assault. If a person came up to you on the street and cupped your groin and breasts and you called the police, they WOULD arrest the person who committed the act.

I understand some sexual assault is violent or more physically invasive than what happened to this woman, but we spend years telling our children, "If someone touches your 'bathing suit areas' without your permission it is not okay," then we tell adults, "Hey, touch away, no permission needed. It's open season on my vulva/scrotum. Have at it!"

• Voice of Dissent: It's NOT Sexual Assault, so Please Stop Calling it That.
• TSA - Sexual Assault
  

Giving new meaning to "Bow-chicka-wow-wow"

All of my dogs and cats have been neutered or spayed on the very day they turn five months old because my vet won't do it before five months. (Or when they are older animals: before they enter my house.) Because of this, none of my animals have ever had problems with marking or humping. One of my hounds--a girl named Zelda--occasionally mounted my old yaller dog Zeke, but that was totally a dominance thing; she thought she could steal "alpha dog" from him, alas, to no avail.
Then there was Zev, my "special dog." (See previous post.)
He will, once in a great while, try to hump his older brother, Hahn. I do not think it is a dominance thing. He seems to genuinely enjoy it, but we actively discourage it and it has been quite some time since the last "incident."
Until yesterday.
I took both dogs to be groomed. It was Zev's first grooming. When we came home, until bedtime last night, he repeatedly mounted Hahn every time he thought we weren't paying attention.
Poor Hahn.
I have two working theories:

1. He felt so sexy from having been prettied up that he just had to work it.
2. He thought Hahn looked pretty damn fine after a day at the spa.

Either way, he seems to be "hump-free" today. Thank god.

My kids are bad in my dreams, and I'm kind of a scared mom in real life, I guess.

Ever since the boys were young, my plan has been to have a fishbowl full of condoms in the house so that they and their friends can partake as necessary without it being too obvious to Nate and I--because there are so many in the bowl that we won't notice a few gone at a time.

So the other week I finally got a cheap glass fishbowl at Petco and a 100 Condom Super Sampler Pack online and placed it near the French Doors on a bookcase.

They were told to take what they need as could their friends, but they were not allowed to waste them on water balloons and whatnot.

The other night I had a dream that I happened to notice that about HALF of the condoms were gone already.

I found the kids and yelled the following at them, "You are NOT allowed to use the condoms to make water balloons, but you sure as hell better be just using all of those for water balloons!!"