Inner bitch, meet inner bastard!

[imomus]

The other day I got asked to write something for Zoo magazine, and started browsing through their site to get an idea of what they were about. It's the Franco-Dutch-German Zoo, by the way, not the British one, a boob-heavy downmarket lad mag. Although, actually, both magazines feature a lot of naked women, just with a slightly different semiology. Anyway, I came across an interesting interview with Nobuyoshi Araki which begins:

"Araki says a woman's face should speak of her inner bitch, and he believes he has always had a knack for drawing that out. Among the 27 Japanese women who pose for him in this issue of Zoo are those who have elevated bitchiness to an art form. "Japanese women are so good at that!" affirms Araki. And then there are others who located their inner bitch only after Araki got through to them."

I could sort of see what Araki was saying -- being sexy is often about making our most primitive and selfish needs utterly legible. It reminded me of something I wrote two years ago, blogging my way through my sex partners in a piece called the joy of sex:

"After Zoe," I wrote, "I went a bit crazy. It all becomes a blur. I was a kid in a candystore. I discovered that girls like bastards, and began to resemble one. I came back from Paris to London with a French attitude to pursuit and seduction... I could have three girlfriends at a time if I wanted to. I became 'Alfie', I became a sort of intellectual Benny Hill."

I've drifted in and out of touch with my inner bastard. You can hear it in my records. There are "bastard" songs like "How Do You Find My Sister?" (the anti-hero pimps his own sister out to increasingly powerful politicians) and "Professor Shaftenberg" (this dubious academic is "sponsored by Lufthansa to screw the pants off Japanese girls" -- and have lunch with Araki when he's done). Then there are "husbandly" songs like "Rhetoric" and "Permagasm", songs of endless love for, and commitment to, the women they address.

I seem to have been most, well, animal in my sex life during the couple of years surrounding my 30th and 40th birthdays, which co-incided with the arrival of the nineties and of the noughties. Perhaps becoming a "playa" was simply the best way I could find to dissipate "pre-millenial tension", or perhaps I went through two consecutive midlife crises. Perhaps I was just getting away with stuff while I still could. While I was still attractive enough to lure accomplices into my bed.

Of course, looking back at this bastardy, I don't approve at all. I utter the world's largest "tsk" at the man with the world's largest tusk, engaged in the world's oldest -- and most pleasurable -- task. I find dismissive phrases, as long as his ramrod-hard rampant prong, to condemn him. "Stop that, young man!" I call down the decades (they have a hollow echo) with the voice of Saint Augustine. "What you're doing is silly and bad! It's nothing more than phatic, phallic consumerist self-assertion! It's Dionysus in the throne of Apollo! It's moronic 90s lad culture! It's repressive desublimation, the kind Saint Herbert of Marcuse warned us about in his Fourth Epistle to the Californians!" The bastard doesn't listen, of course. His glazed masturbator's eyes are fixed on the next threesome, the next splash of sperm.

Of course, what's worst about your inner bastard is that he hurts people. But wait, they're not just any people, they're bitches, right? The insensitivity is already written into the contract. You've located your inner bastard and you're riding his cock horse all the way to Banbury Cross. But the vampire's victim is a vamp -- a raunch feminist who's learned to be on very good terms with her inner bitch. Who wants it all because she knows she's worth it. Or as Zoo magazine puts it, of Araki's tied-up inner bitches showing their innards to the camera:

"Every woman pictured here is powerful and independent with a deliberate, steely sexiness designed to please themselves. It's as if they're saying: the hell with the male gaze. Araki of course, is the exception."

Do I believe that these powerful independent women are really saying "the hell with the male gaze"? Only if every man deeply in touch with his own inner bastard is added to the list of exceptions. In other words, frankly, no. Here's Araki's male gaze talking:

"The day a woman doesn't want to be looked at is the beginning of her demise. When that happens, she should be left alone... You know, sex is a woman's greatest weapon. No matter what they choose to do in life. Even Noda, she started out looking all proper and formal and inside of three minutes her face seemed ready for sex. That's always the definitive moment, and why the camera exists at all, as far as I'm concerned."

There speaks a man comfortable with his inner bastard. It reminds me of poet Tamar Yoseloff, interviewed in a documentary about me called "Amongst Women Only", made during one of my "bastard periods" (my first -- or was my first one in 1968, when I learned I could get round my mother's severe side by rolling my eyes and saying something funny?), saying "Nick loves women. That's the problem. He loves all women."

"Every week I get stacks of letters from women who INSIST on being photographed," says Araki the animal, as Zoo confides that women "travel from all over just to see him and stand (or sprawl) before his lens":

"I love them, they're all so adorable. Even the older ones with nipples like karinto (brown-sugar crackers) and cesarian stitches across their bellies... I fall in love all the time and to me, all female bodies are beautiful. I love them for their bodies and an affair can last a couple of weeks...and then the next one comes along."

It seems to me that bitchery and bastardy are mutually-reinforcing and contextual. Not only do we get the partners we deserve -- and in a sense create the partners we deserve -- but exactly the same person can be a beau one minute, a bastard the next. Only the perceptions -- and therefore the words -- change. I've lived just such transitions. They can be tragic, life-changing. I once -- suddenly, out of the blue -- smacked a girl in the face, a girl I adored, a girl I'd never shared a single discordant moment with up until that moment. I immediately knew that she would hate me forever from that moment on. "You're going to hate me forever now," I said. "I'm not," she said. But she did. And in the terrible, soul-destroying split that followed, she transformed from angel to bitch, and I turned from beau to bastard. But the funny thing is, neither of us really changed one iota.

Comments

[diggets.livejournal.com]

The whole "male gaze = disempowering" thing drilled into me by turtleneck wearing college instructors never clicked for me. It's the sort of thing we're expected to accept wholeheartedly, and woe betide anyone who resists -- expect the wrath of a 23-year-old grad student who will read you the riot act straight from Womens Studies 101. There were some good aspects of "political correctness" but this ain't one of them.

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

Yeah totally. If that were true, then Melissa Etheridge's gaze would warrant an ACLU intervention.
What's wrong with people just looking at/liking other people who are hot...Because they're hot?
I know I don't see inherant wrong there.

re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

I don't know why, but the one of the women with the lipstick and the glaring makes me fall over with laughter.

"You know, sex is a woman's greatest weapon."

Hahaha. Funniest post ever.

Re: re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[(Anonymous)]

Have you ever seen a Victoria's Secret catalog? I can't stand the girls, not only because they're all hermetically airbrushed, but they all look furious/constipated. Exactly when in pop culture did "angry" and "threatening" get confused with "sexy?"

Oh, and Momus, I'm going to have to start turning images off when I browse your site (which is a shame, because you always choose and place pictures so well)! If anyone ever checked the server here at work, I'd be out of a job!

Laust

Re: re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Momus, I'm going to have to start turning images off when I browse your site

Well, that's a shame, but I can't start clipping Click Opera's wings to fit it for "the most puritan common denominator".

Perhaps the imagery taken on its own would disturb your employers, but take a look at the addresses: this isn't from redhotasians.com, it's from the Asian Cultural Council and Artnet.

Re: re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

It's not yours to dictate what someone should or should not censor in their own blogs, honey. By that standard, it could be stretched further and further into what people claim causes them "distress" and then there'd be no freedom of speech anywhere.
Or something. Where is the story of your life to go without a little defiance?

Re: re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But I do want to say I very much agree with this bit:

Exactly when in pop culture did "angry" and "threatening" get confused with "sexy?"

The "angry" model (I sometimes call it "sharky") corresponds with the "strong independent woman who wants it all because she knows she's worth it" stereotype.

I'm never quite sure if the "wants it all" part of that includes wanting to do things on behalf of other people. Because if it doesn't, the whole formula becomes a hollow and incomplete portrayal of "strength". Social power is all about representing and mediating the needs and claims of others, not just your own needs and claims.

Imagine a scenario we'll call "the bitch and the father". In this scenario the male character is wise and just and good. He has other people's interests at heart. The female character is a bitch. Wherever she turns, she's encouraged to be selfish, narcissistic, and self-assertive; to have no interests other than her own at heart. It's the male character who's encouraging her to be this way -- after all, he has other people's interests at heart. But the female, by centering herself so much on her own needs, becomes weak and narcissistic and Oedipal. In fact, she loses social power rather than gaining it. She condemns herself to eternal adolescence, eternal rebellion. Meanwhile, by appearing just and disinterested, the male character assumes stature and social power.

Now imagine another scenario, one we'll call "the bitch and the bastard". Now both parties are equally narcissistic, focused on their own narrow interests, "situated". Neither claims to represent the interests of other people. There's no pretense of altruism, fairness, justice, authority; these are two snarling consumer-narcissist pups, fighting over the foundation cream. They may seem "equal" -- if only equally vile. But because they're both out for themselves, the strongest party wins. Finally, old inequalities are reproduced -- just at a lower, more selfish level than before.

Re: re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I hardly meant that he should censor his blog. I'll just have to make do without the pictures or start reading it at the library or something.

Re: re-posted, because I'm too stupid to type quotation marks

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

I think you're talking about something else than I am, but nevermind, nevermind, I'm sure you mean well.

[contraries.livejournal.com]

araki is my favourite photographer so i enjoyed this.

[me-vs-gutenberg.livejournal.com]

A while ago, you asked the question if there was anything about "Click Opera" that could possibly appeal to 'right wing people'...

[(Anonymous)]

You're both assuming that in a post-ideological age terms such as right-wing or left wing actually mean anything anymore.
Thomas.S.

[(Anonymous)]

where can i get the piture of gecko and girl in high resolution?

[honeychurch.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking a bit about similar things lately - I'm out of a long relationship, and dating again. I had most every intention of entering the dating pattern I was in a few years ago - meeting guys online, going to dinner, sleeping with them within a few hours, maybe seeing them once more before losing touch. It was a really enjoyable period for me, that ended only because a younger man lured me into a relationship in a vulnerable moment.

It hasn't been that easy this time, though. I haven't felt quite as sexually driven - not that I'm not looking for it, but I'm less likely to have sex with someone I don't really like just for the sake of bedding them. I've also gotten a little attached to one fellow, which has me very nervous.

I was feeling puzzled as to why I felt so different this time around, wondering if it was age - reading your piece, it only now occurred to me that it probably has something to do with the nature of this most recent breakup as opposed to the one before my last run of dating. This breakup was upsetting, but only because I don't know why it didn't happen sooner - I think it was for the best. That breakup was devestating - it was out of the blue, and I was still in love with that man long after we broke up. I hadn't even thought of how driven I was by anger - I don't think it was conscious, but there was something of the vamp, the bitch, coming out then.

thanks for interesting musing to distract me from civil procedure reading.

[(Anonymous)]

I read something similar to this in my big sister's 'cosmopolitan' magazine.

ahhhh beautiful gaze

[(Anonymous)]

yes, indeed!
I have been lost in that gaze for 2 weeks nows.Reavenous 1/4 second gazes from an incredibly cute girl(cute as in not of a lack for any other suitable promiscuous word).Someone who thinks he has lost his/hers innocence may look down in contempt but there are times when I take the longest route or don't go to the library at all , just so much as to not have to see her.
I'm kindof affraid really.I've had some bastard time of my own and I'm really not into her for the sex or her body.It's intensivly platonic and yet I never want to speek to her cause I know I'll just consume her.It's a "something I have to have" feeling.
I'm really enjoying pushing the limit as to how far can we stand this game without either of us trying anything,but that's what I say to myself in my room.I skip a beat whenever our eyes meet.
She's doing her work and I'm doing mine.
It will have to be left at that.
The reason I really dont want to talk to her at all is because I know what I've just written would be dead wrong.

Alex

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

So the worst type of relationship has one person in bitch/bastard mode and the other person in loving, long-term relationship mode?

I love Nobuyoshi Araki!!! But I always default to Björk's Telegram, especially the picture on the back.

I'm trying to figure out what's sexy about bitch/bastard. It isn't something that I've ever thought of, or been aroused by.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

sometimes i feel sort of bad that i love Araki so much...though the first work i saw of his were the burned B&W street scenes and flower images that were so gentle & tragic. i'm not sure if that was just after his wife died. i would like an araki cat t-shirt...the sort he wore in his documentary.

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

I think people in romantic relationships should just regularly engage in the exercise of fighting like demons on crack trapped in a reality show, and then apologizing and hugging/whatever as a ritual to display how all of these facets are in the same people, and one can't so easily be considered "changed" as a result of the petty things people so often feud about.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I wonder if Barthes wrote anything on this in A lover's discourse.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, every time I hit girls in the face they stop being nice to me too, it's a crock of shit innit?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a hit, it was a slap. Not even a particularly stinging one, either. Nevertheless, it was a huge mistake -- undoubtedly the thing I regret most in my life.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Americans are rather fond of the idea of "judging people by their actions". Instead, I like the idea of discriminating against people based on their personalities because even the smartest people on earth do stupid things on occasion.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't exaggerate,I cannot imagine said instance being one's greatest. singular lifelong regret

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I only wish I were exaggerating. For months after that I could hardly eat or sleep. I turned the scene over and over in my mind. In fact, even now I'm reliving and regretting it instead of sleeping.

[(Anonymous)]

What a load of pointless crap!

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

What a load of cowardly anonymous-postage!

[(Anonymous)]

So if you don't have a Livejournal, you're a coward?

Signed, various ASCII characters

[(Anonymous)]

The photographs are pretty. I like the third one...the girl's pose is very elegant! The elbow-to-knee.

But I'm confused about the "inner bitch". You've outlined the inner bastard quite well, but what is the bitch? Because on her face she shows the desire for sex? Or because a woman who chooses to sleep with a man in his "inner bastard" phase must be an inner bitch by default? Just curious.

I have to say I don't agree with this, though:
The day a woman doesn't want to be looked at is the beginning of her demise. When that happens, she should be left alone... You know, sex is a woman's greatest weapon. No matter what they choose to do in life. Even Noda, she started out looking all proper and formal and inside of three minutes her face seemed ready for sex. That's always the definitive moment, and why the camera exists at all, as far as I'm concerned.

You should know...you wrote that piece about the trouble with being a beautiful girl. Usually the most beautiful girls in the world don't want to be looked at...usually stemming from being a young girl and men thinking they have the right to touch you because they desire you. That's a weapon not every girl wants despite what Araki says.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think girls want that, but they want control over the consequences too.

The phrase is Araki's, so I can't speak for him. But I guess the inner bitch is all tied up with some kind of childhood or adolescence thing -- the combination of a desire to act irresponsibly and selfishly with a feeling that you can do so in complete safety. And only children can really act irresponsibly in the sure knowledge that they will be safe pretty much whatever they do. Or people playing video games, or dreaming.

unrelated

[tyrsalvia.livejournal.com]

Hello! kineticfactory referred me to you. He'd an admirer of your lj, and suggested I befriend you. I'm coming to Berlin in a month or so to speak about Discordianism and Illegal Art to the Chaos Computer Club. So... hello. Nice to meet you.

Re: unrelated

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hello!

Who listens to what music?

[(Anonymous)]

Hello. Good day
Who listens to what music?
I Love songs Justin Timberlake and Paris Hilton