Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Bubble Hotties: Dating In Public
filed under: Web Sex Index, Bubble Hotties by Melissa Gira
Like many of the great sex and romance axioms of our time, this one was born out of Instant Messenger.
Goes a little something like this: once, there were clearer markers of what was public and what was private, who has celebrity and who’s just climbing a ladder to the stars, and what to expect of the man (or woman) with the camera who might pop up to document a kiss, where those pictures might end up, and what everyone will think of you in the morning. Rising to cultural notoriety required a bit of strategy, and the people one appeared in public with were central to this ascendance. Fame was communicated like a social disease, transmitted through the friction of proximity.
The future and the Internet, we hear, have made micro-icons of us all, famous to fifteen people at a time (thanks, Dr. Senft, for turning us onto that, and into that, concept). Anyone who has a web presence makes choices, then, on how revealing they wish to be about who, how, and how often they’re doing it, in public or no. Dating, then, becomes an even more social activity, straddling the rapidly deteriorating public/private divide. As we date in public, we’re negotiating not just who to bring in nearer, but how near to appear to them to others.
But many assume that to bring dating and sex into their online life would somehow dilute or degrade their otherwise “professional” presence, and whether this is more a symptom of their propriety or a result of the culture’s sexual hypocrisy is hard to tease out exactly. No matter — for some, to hint that they, full grown adults, get laid is not ever going to be in the cards so long as X Company or Y Spouse or Z reporter can track them on the internet. To be revealed as a sexual being for this “sex generation” would be to risk being perceived as immature, effeminate (for better of for ill, women’s sexuality is very public), or desperate for attention.
But what of the flip side, the new wave of bubble hotties who have never fucked in a world without a publicly-traded Netscape? Whose first porn of themselves was made with a cellphone? Who never thought not to treat MySpace like an opportunity for personal branding and bootycalls?
What, then, changes in dating when every “private” act creates an opportunity for documentation and spectacle? When sex isn’t “just” a physical expression, but an opportunity to better position oneself in the public eye? What this illumines for the sex culture of the bubble hottie is that no sex is ever completely contained by the motions of bodies. No sex lives entirely behind closed doors. For the bubble hottie, being “admittedly” sexual in public isn’t about begging for voyeurs. Sex itself is a meaningful social act with which we mark ourselves, our histories, our communities.
As the reign of the bubble hottie takes hold, it will be exhibitionism, not privacy, that lays dying — and with luck, we’ll be here making out something fierce over its body, for the whole world to see.
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