The Pampering Myth...

Response to a Times article: The Pampering Myth: Of Massages, Cuddle Parties and Julie Burchill

Whilst hanging around the Times Online’s ‘Women’ section I happened to come across an article with the engaging title: "Forget the back-rub, it’s a good seeing-to I want". Intrigued, I clicked and found an intemperate rant by Julie Burchill on the topic of ‘pampering’. (Burchill, I suspect, has only two settings; ‘intemperate’ and ‘incandescent’). To give a flavour of it, here’s a choice little quote: "You hear all this stuff about modern women going off sex — the Desire Deficit — and is it any wonder, when they’re getting groped left, right and centre by money-hungry stroke-merchants?"

Having read the article, I was uncertain as to exactly how I should respond. Should I respond in the original deliberately provocative tone of the article and string together some witty reprisals? Or should I attempt to seriously engage with the issues which are buried just under the surface of Burchill’s outrageous prose? It’s Christmas, season of excess, so I’m going with both. Those of you wishing to read the parody review, please select ‘1’ from the options below. Those of you wishing to read the serious review, please select ‘2’ from the options below. Those wishing to read something less complicated, you probably have not got over your festive season hangover and shouldn’t really be operating a computer in that state. Try switching off and an Alka-Seltzer. Also, I am aware that Burchill quite possibly wrote the article just to piss off the serious-minded, so possibly I am doing what she wants – but what the heck, I feel the need to write!

Cuddle parties

Burchill: "This set-up allows affluent Americans to pay $30 each to some sort of prissy procurer in order to use their apartment for a three-hour, strictly non-sexual grope-fest; touching, massaging, tickling, stroking, fondling and — hang about, I’m really going to chuck now — "spooning"."

1. Yes, they should all go out and fill their empty, feeling-devoid lives with an orgy of drinking, credit-card shopping, illicit substances and drunken sex with partners whose names they can’t remember the morning after. Hang on….
2. This was probably the only part of the article I really agreed with. Like Burchill, I can’t really see this as anything other than a cheap substitute for the real thing. Much like paying a prostitute for sex, it seem to be to be about trying to get something meaningful without doing any of the hard work, like engaging with other people’s feelings and building a relationship. Okay, I feel sympathy for people who feel so devoid of human comfort that they have to pay to get some non-sexual physical contact – the sort that we all need to experience on a regular basis, and which in our original mode of existence within extended families and clans, we got without having to ask from our children, partners and family members. I really don’t think cuddle parties are the solution. Some sort of recognition that the economy exists to serve individuals and society, not the other way round, might be in order. Then people who go home on time to be with their families would no longer be objects of suspicion and derision. I must admit though, like Burchill, I too would wish to do serious damage to anyone who yelled ‘Puppy pile!’ at me and seriously expected me to pile on top of a bunch of strangers.

Massage and therapy as extortion

Burchill: "You hear all this stuff about modern women going off sex — the Desire Deficit — and is it any wonder, when they’re getting groped left right and centre by money-hungry stroke-merchants? People used to use sex to de-stress — I for one was always given to understand that this was its primary function — but now they’re too busy getting stoned and dipped in chocolate, like some fiendish human cherries."

1. Yes, qualified massage therapists sit through days of training and examinations in a centuries-old art in order to fleece the gullible. And their clients are too dumb to realise they’re being rooked.
2. I’m really not happy with Burchill’s theory that massage and sex can be equated. I’d guess that a lot of the motivation of people wanting massage stems from a) sitting in front of computers for ages and b) stress. In which case, see above under ‘economy should serve society, not the other way around’. Her comments about women who like massages seem to smack of the nasty old attitude that unmarried women are in some way mentally odd and to be pitied, as they’re obviously not getting the regular rogering from their husbands that all women need to be normal (thank you, Dr Freud). I also don’t much like the idea that instead of having a massage to ‘de-stress’, you should go home and jump on your partner. If a man acted like that, wouldn’t we be quick to condemn him for being selfish and ‘using’ his partner? Shouldn’t sex be about two people’s needs?

Yes, qualified massage therapists sit through days of training and examinations in a centuries-old art in order to fleece the gullible. And their clients are too dumb to realise they’re being rooked.

"Male" and "female" forms of sex

Burchill: "I can’t help thinking that the boundaries between "sensuality" and "sexuality" have been blurred, and that touchy-feeliness has won out at the expense of a good old-fashioned seeing-to. Let’s face it, nobody ever propagated the species by giving back-rubs and whiffing away at scented candles."

1. Ah, so lesbian couples and impotent men, who can’t reproduce via the erect penis, should be forever childless?
2. I’m guessing Burchill doesn’t regularly read the f-word, or indeed the Sun’s Page 3, as presumably then she’d be more aware of the many, many, annoying ways in which our culture displays a preoccupation with the style of sex she describes. Scantily-clad blonde women with flat stomachs and curvaceous hips, butts and breasts, often posing in sexually alluring positions (watch out for the recent Disarrono liqueur ad where a flirtatious woman wraps her lips around a piece of ice – yes, I think we all got the message the barman is meant to be picking up from it about what she’s offering him) are everywhere. Page 3, men’s mags, film posters and trailers, record covers, music videos, to name but a few. I don’t think the ‘old-fashioned seeing to’ style is going to go out of fashion. Unless what Burchill is getting at is that ‘touchy-feeliness’ has won out over ‘good seeing-to’ in women’s heads. In which case, why the hell not? Why shouldn’t we stand up for what we prefer during sex? Men don’t seem to have any difficulty in doing so (ahem).

Ah, so lesbian couples and impotent men, who can’t reproduce via the erect penis, should be forever childless? Furthermore, I’m also not thrilled at the suggestion that there are distinct male and female styles of sex, and any member of either sex who displays an interest in behaviours that might be out of their particular sex-category is in some way abnormal. Presumably men who like massages and who enjoy touching and being touched by their partners are utterly beyond the pale in the Burchillverse, ditto for anyone who doesn’t want to do it in order to reproduce. I do hope that Benjamin Thurgood, who wrote an fword article about this, doesn’t feel too badly hurt. Ditto, presumably, for women who like the odd quickie against the wall now and then (unless we’re putting up with it for the sake of reproducing the species or keeping our men happy). Burchill seems to be suggesting that, on the one hand, women want lots of touching as well as, or even instead of, penetrative sex, but on the other hand, it’s a bad thing if this starts to threaten what she sees as the male, non-touchy-feely style of sex. Anti-feminism much?

If you don’t want sex all the time, to the exclusion of other kinds of physical contact, there’s something wrong with you…

Burchill: "[some] women [are] carrying on about shopping being better than sex and still expecting to pass as "cool" — rather than the frigid little freaks they are — whereas a man who said that football was better than f***ing would be roundly reviled as a monster."

1. Nope, can’t come up with a witty reprisal here. That ‘clung’ sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the ground.
2. Quite possibly if a man stated in a newspaper or down the pub that he preferred football to sex he would be vilified, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Why this preoccupation with sex? Yes, it’s a fun part of life, but why must it be the only thing? Recently the word ‘asexual’ entered our vocabulary, when research was published showing that some people can actually be quite happy without ever having sex, or only infrequently having it. Many people find that their sex drive varies throughout their life depending on what else might be a priority (study, work, children, spirituality) at the time. Why shouldn’t women occasionally find shopping more satisfying? Or men find football more satisfying? Or vice versa? People have a whole set of needs, and they’re not interchangeable. Or perhaps those women who prefer shopping are fed up with only getting the ‘seeing-to’ style of sex and have given up, and if so I don’t blame them in the least.

Nope, can’t come up with a witty reprisal here. That ‘clung’ sound you just heard was my jaw hitting the ground. Women are taking over the world.

Burchill: "Don’t get me wrong — I’m a total feminist and I like women a lot (especially with their kit off), but should their pursuit of soft-focus sensuality really be allowed carte blanche to ride roughshod over the male-centred sex-drive that has seen us thrive for so long?"

1. I really haven’t a frigging clue what on earth Burchill is going on about here. If by this she means that there are lots of articles about massages and alternative therapies in women’s glossies and that alternative therapy centres are springing up right, left and centre, well yes, but I don’t think that signals some sort of sexual revolution in which penetrative sex is being consigned to the dustbin. (And don’t even get me started on the equal importance of the female-centred nurturing instinct, or indeed the dumbness of assuming either trait – sexual desire or nurturing – belongs to one sex exclusively.) Perhaps I should go away and write me a rant in which I expound at length on how the preponderance of articles and sale outlets about something men enjoy spending spare time and money on is threatening female sexuality. Cars for instance – they’re hard, fast and thrusting, aren’t they? There are lots of magazines devoted to cars and men’s magazines all have car pages, don’t they? The car is obviously threatening female sexuality. Bring me the head of Jeremy Clarkson!
2. Whoops, used up my serious argument above. I really shouldn’t write articles in a dazed state during the festive season. Except to conclude by saying that I would like to nominate the quotation above as an all-time classic ‘I’m not sexist but…’ quotation.

I really haven’t a frigging clue what on earth Burchill is going on about here. If by this she means that there are lots of articles about massages and alternative therapies in women’s glossies and that alternative therapy centres are springing up right, left and centre, well yes, but I don’t think that signals some sort of sexual revolution in which penetrative sex is being consigned to the dustbin. (And don’t even get me started on the equal importance of the female-centred nurturing instinct, or indeed the dumbness of assuming either trait – sexual desire or nurturing – belongs to one sex exclusively.) Perhaps I should go away and write me a rant in which I expound at length on how the preponderance of articles and sale outlets about something men enjoy spending spare time and money on is threatening female sexuality. Cars for instance – they’re hard, fast and thrusting, aren’t they? There are lots of magazines devoted to cars and men’s magazines all have car pages, don’t they? The car is threatening female sexuality. Bring me the head of Jeremy Clarkson!