The Naked Truth About Unicorn Girls

Betty the naked unicorn girl 

photographed on Brighton beach by 

Ben Hopper as part of his ongoing project 

Naked with Masks

As most readers will be aware, the unicorn is a legendary creature with a single large, spiraling horn said to possess magical and medicinal powers projecting from its forehead. A symbol of purity and grace, the unicorn could be captured only by a virgin. In one of his notebooks, Leonardo informs us that, whenever the fabulous beast encounters a seated maiden, it overcomes all instinctive fear and ferocity and contentedly lays its head upon her lap.  

As many readers will not be aware, however, the unicorn girl is a contemporary urban myth. For some, she is quite simply the girl whom you always long to meet but never do; a fantasy figure who forever lies out of reach and out of your league.    

But for others - belonging to a slightly kinkier, polyamorous world - the term unicorn is a synonym for hot bi-babe. That is to say, a very good-looking young woman prepared to go down on members of either sex and come up smiling and willing also to form a threesome with a pre-existing (usually heterosexual) couple.

The danger for such bi-poly women is, of course, that they become a type of exotic pet or unicorn bae, who is vulnerable to exploitation by a couple who often wield the power and dictate the terms of the relationship very much to their own advantage; insisting, for example, that their unicorn be single and not take on any additional lovers, nor do anything that might threaten to disrupt their primary relationship, such as favouring one partner over the other.     

I would encourage any unicorns trapped in such a triangle to liberate themselves immediately and instruct those couples who attempt to control their sexual and emotional freedom to go fuck themselves.

On the Truth of Masks

A stone mask from c. 7000 BC 

Musée Bible et Terre Sainte (Paris)

I.

Worn by peoples belonging to many different cultures since the very earliest of times and for a wide variety of reasons - ceremonial and practical, sacred and profane - the mask is that which is más que la cara and which seems to mock the very idea of a real face.

Indeed, it ultimately exposes the shocking truth that the human face isn't a unique natural formation, but a type of social machine that covers and overcodes the front of the head and, eventually, the entire body, thus ensuring that any asignifying or non-subjective forces and flows arising from the libidinal chaos of the latter are neutralized in advance.

As Oscar Wilde knew very well: we are least ourselves when we present our grinning white face to the world and speak in our own name; it is only when we put on a mask and dare to disguise the self we have been given, that we find the courage to speak with free anonymity.      

II.

Like Wilde, Nietzsche also asserts the philosophical profundity of masks and says that every artist recognises the need to wear such. Indeed, the greatest of men often don monstrous masks in order to best inscribe themselves in the memories, dreams and affections of humanity.    

And of course, beautiful women too are lovers of the mask. Indeed, there are some women who, no matter how carefully you attempt to look beneath their surface, have no natural depth or interior truth but are purely their facades.

Men who love these seductive creatures of veiled appearance and cosmetic disguise, are fated to seek their souls or uncover their nakedness in vain. Yet, it is precisely such women who are often best able to (fetishistically) arouse male desire. 

Remember: after the orgy, the masked ball ...

Maschalagnia: Brief Notes on Armpit Fetishism

Sammy-Lee Smith (aka Fruit Salad) 

Photo: Ben Hopper from the Natural Beauty series

Both sexes have scent glands in their underarm region. But women have a greater number and produce a more enticing aroma - or range of aromas - as far as the heterosexual male nose is concerned. 

One such nose belonged to the 19th-century French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. He noted that brunettes and dark-haired girls have an audacious scent which, unfortunately, can sometimes prove fatiguing. Redheads, on the other hand, have a sharp, fierce smell; whilst in blondes, the armpits can be as heady as a sweet wine. 

Huysmans also tells us that - whatever their coloring - les femmes de Paris tend to have something acidic about them; something suggestive of ammonia or chlorine. In contrast, the bodies of honest country women aromatically convey something of wild duck cooked with olives and shallots. 

Whether this makes one hungry for love or simply hungry, I suppose depends on one's disposition. But there are certainly individuals who desire not only a hearty home-cooked meal, but to sniff, lick, kiss and ultimately fuck the armpits of their beloved (this latter activity is known as axillism).         

If some men prefer a smooth, hairless armpit (as they do a smooth, hairless pussy), the genuine devotee of this particular partialism always prefers an unshaven haven and a strong, pungent fragrance.

Thankfully, European women - in contrast to their Anglo-American sisters - have long understood that body hair and body odor play a powerful role within human sexuality at its filthiest and most inhuman. And they don't mind if you wipe it on the curtains.   


See: Joris-Karl Huysmans, 'The Armpit', in Parisian Sketches, trans. Brendan King, (Dedalus, 2004), pp. 126-28.

And see also the feature by Ellen Scott in the Metro (8 Aug 2017) on Ben Hopper's stunning Natural Beauty project which attempts to normalise the fact of female underarm hair: click here.

Yellow Fever (Notes on the Politics of Asian Girl Fetish)

Bérénice Lim Marloe as Sévérine 

There's something about Asian girls. They're cute. They're smart. 

They have a kind of thing going on.

A friend asked who was my favourite Bond Girl ...

When I replied it was the character Sévérine, portrayed by the beautiful French actress Bérénice Marloe in the 2012 film Skyfall, she smiled and said that this exposed my Asian Girl Fetish (Marloe's father is of Cambodian and Chinese descent) and that this in turn indicated I had politically suspect views and subscribed to a number of pernicious racial and sexual stereotypes.

This may or may not be true, but it kind of made me wish I'd answered differently - although if, for example, I'd named Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), couldn't this be said to reveal my Nordic Girl Fetish and indicate subscription to an equal number of stereotypes, perhaps even more pernicious and politically suspect in character ...?          

However, happy to play along, I asked what she meant. And she explained that many men who identify as members of the so-called alt-right have a particular penchant for dating women of SE Asian origin, despite their fantasies of white supremacy and purity of blood.

Not surprisingly, this topic has caused heated debate on various white nationalist and neo-Nazi websites and demonstrates to many commentators that there's an amusing level of erotico-ideological confusion within the alt-right world. But, as Audrea Lim points out, there is, actually, no real contradiction in this Asian fetish when one realises how it arises at the intersection of two popular racial myths:

"First is the idea of the 'model minority,' in which Asian-Americans are painted as all hard-working, high-achieving and sufficiently well-behaved to assimilate. If Asians are the model minority [...] then perhaps that opens the door to acceptance from white supremacists.

      The second myth is that of the subservient, hypersexual Asian woman."

For many misogynysts, across the political spectrum, the sad fact is that most white women are - thanks to feminism - simply too much trouble; i.e., too unwilling to serve and to pleasure their menfolk. Asian girls, in contrast, are so much more amenable - and - whisper it - far more uninhibited in the bedroom. This idea - deeply ingrained within the pornographic imagination - has its roots in America's post-war experiences in the bars and brothels of Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

Thus it is that the alt-right Asian fetish combines these ideas and "highlights a tension within the project of white supremacism as America grows more diverse [...] The new, ugly truth? Maintaining white power may require some compromises on white purity".

May require, indeed, sleeping with the enemy ...

See: Audrea Lim, 'The Alt-Right's Asian Fetish', New York Times (Jan 6, 2018): click here to read online.

On the Inspiration of Touch: An Afterword on the Question of Delicacy in a Molecular Age

The beautifully delicate structure of graphene

Image by AlexanderAIUS on Wikipedia

Someone wrote to say how much they enjoyed the recent post on the Lawrentian notions of touch and tenderness and to agree on the need for delicacy and lightness of hand. But I fear that they have a rather more utopian understanding of these things than I do and thus misconstrue my position. 

To be clear: I'm attempting to problematise Lawrence's work and would agree with Steven Connor that delicacy isn't the ideal binary opposite of grasping or rough-handling. In other words, it's not an entirely innocent form of contact, nor is it completely free from the exercise of power within the world. Further - and this might rather offend some Lawrentians - the term delicacy might even be said to refer to a form of touch that is more mental (more abstract) than other heavier, less refined forms of tactile sensation; a form of touch-in-the-head.

Conner notes:

"Delicacy involves work on a scale that makes it a matter of mind, work that approaches the condition of weightlessness [...] work that seems untouched by human hand [...] work that refines the idea of work."

If weightlessness is one of the defining features of delicacy, so too does it involve "the apprehension of altered scale". To touch something delicate in a delicate manner, is ultimately to draw closer to the invisible world of the tiny object which can be viewed only through a microscope. This has become increasingly true in an age of molecular science, quantum mechanics and nanotechnology. For what is more delicate, for example, than a sheet of graphene; a carbon allotrope consisting of but a single layer of atoms prettily arranged in a hexagonal lattice?

The fact is, power is not simply "mitigated in delicacy" and we are obliged - like it or not - to recognise that "our world is one in which delicacy itself has become a modality of power." In a crucial passage, Connor writes:

"Sensitivity used to be at the opposite end of the scale from power, which needed to make itself blunt and insensible to maintain its power. The rise of biopower means that power involves, no longer the brute manipulation of life, but insinuation into it, infiltration and manipulation of the miniscule balances that maintain systems.
      Power used to be applied. That is to say, it needed to be brought up against its object, which would either resist, buckle, or be displaced by the pressure. Such meetings, impressions or collisions take place on the outside of things [...] Now, it is not that there are no comings together, no bearings down, no adversity any more. It is that it is no longer quite clear where the outside of things is to be found. In the age of interface which is now upon us [...] everything is at once inside and outside everything else."      

In other words, there is now a promiscuous and paradoxical intermingling of all bodies, all objects, large and small. And delicacy is just a more subtle form of violation; a method of overcoming the natural reticence and resistance of the Other. For serious readers of Lawrence, this means they must perform a radical reappraisal of the ethics and erotics of (phallic) tenderness. Simply put, the world of Lady Chatterley is long lost and the lightness of her lover's touch can no longer be so clearly distinguished from the hand that wields power.

See: Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, (Cornell University Press, 2004). Lines quoted are on pp. 267, 268, 280 and 281.

Note: those interested in reading the post to which this forms an afterword can click here.

On the Inspiration of Touch

Michelangelo: Detail from Creazione di Adamo (c. 1512) 

What Tommy Dukes refers to as the inspiration of touch is an idea that continues to fascinate and intrigue. For if we must still think of the soul, then let us think of it not as some kind of immortal essence located in a mysterious region of the body, but, rather, as something that exists momentarily in the contacts formed between a body and its external environment.

In other words, the soul is a flash of interchange between objects and not an an intrinsic quality belonging to either. This is illustrated, for example, in Michelangelo's famous fresco, The Creation of Adam (c. 1512) - at least as I interpret it.

For rather than conceive of Adam as a useless lump of clay just waiting to be animated by the all-powerful index finger of God's paternal right hand, I prefer to imagine inspiration is born between the two as entities who unfold into being within a democracy of touch. Unequal as objects perhaps, but equally objects nevertheless upon a flat ontological playing field.

It's often pointed out that, as a matter of fact, the two hands don't actually touch. But that's ok. What counts is the active reaching out of fingertips and that magical space and spark created between them that we might think of as the shimmer of possibility that lies betwixt things and forever beyond the grasp of any single entity.   

And what also counts, as Steven Connor rightly indicates, is the delicacy of the shared touch; it has to have a certain lightness and softeness. People with greedy, heavy hands who believe they must grab life by the throat and tear open the flower bud are essentially soulless. Connor writes:

"Delicate and subtle things have a life of their own, and call, not for grasping or prodding or palpation, but for caress [...] for in the caress, there is an approach or address to another skin capable of sensation, capable of its own experience of the borderline between thought and feeling. To caress an object in the world is to treat it as though it possessed such a sensitive skin."

Arguably, another word for this sensuous, subtle form of touch is tenderness - a term privileged by D. H. Lawrence in his late works and elaborated into a provocative ethic that encapsulates his ideal of blissful bodily interaction that is free from any will to dominance or exploitation. One might hold the other, but, at the same time, one must hold back from holding the other too tightly. 

It is interesting to note how the French philosopher Michel Serres develops this notion of reserve in his work, suggesting that humanity - in the best sense of the word - is defined not by its power to manipulate and destroy, but by its ability to show self-restraint and recognise limits. To exceed limits and to seek to exercise control over others - to refuse either to let them go or let them be - is to fall into a fatal form of ego imperialism (à la Clifford Chatterley).      

See:

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, (Cornell University Press, 2004). Lines quoted are on pp. 262-63. 

 
Michel Serres, The Troubador of Knowledge, trans. Sheila Farier Glaser and William Paulson, (University of Michigan Press, 1997). 

Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley, (Continuum, 2008). 

Note: to read an afterword to this post that develops the idea of delicacy and problematises Lawrence's notions of touch and tenderness, please click here.

On the Myth of Maternal Impression (with Reference to the Case of Joseph Merrick)

Joseph Merrick (aka the Elephant Man) 

Photo from c.1889

I remember being amused by the suggestion made in David Lynch's mawkish and moralizing movie The Elephant Man (1980), that Merrick's unfortunate condition may have been caused by his mother having been frightened by a rampaging elephant during her pregnancy. 

At the time, I thought this was just a cinematic fantasy, or a typical piece of Hollywood hokum. But I eventually discovered that the folklorish idea of maternal impression (or what is sometimes referred to with the German term Versehen) is a genuine - though long-discredited - theory of inheritance from a world before genetic science. It was particularly popular in the 18th century.

Basically, this superstitious concept rests on the belief that a powerful mental stimulus experienced by a woman-with-child could produce an impression on the gestating fetus, thus causing the newborn baby to be marked in some manner. Or as my friend Simon Solomon would say, a psychic disturbance or trauma is realised on the physical plane as some kind of birth defect or congenital disorder (thus demonstrating that mind and imagination shape matter). 

Whilst we now know that this is essentially nonsense - that a woman frightened by a cat is extremely unlikely to give birth to a child with whiskers - there is of course evidence to suggest that physical or psychological illness in the mother can affect the fetus in adverse ways, as can the consumption of alcohol or the smoking of cigarettes, for example.

So, ladies, don't over do it on the vino when pregnant and lay off the fags; but, please, don't worry too much about any perverse longings, being attacked by monsters, or coming into direct contact with animal skins ...   

Golden Girls (with Reference to the Case of Jill Masterson)

Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson in Goldfinger (1964) 

looking burnished and beautiful 

For many skin fetishists, epidermal eroticisation involves marking the surface of the body; with a tattoo needle, for example. Others look to impose more serious abrasions, lesions, or lacerations and delight in scabs and scar tissue. But there are also those individuals who hate any blemish or disfigurement and dream of a perfectly smooth, gleaming skin designed to produce a reassuring fantasy of impenetrability and becoming-inorganic.

Sometimes the latter achieve this fascinating look with latex or tight leather clothing. But it's perhaps best accomplished with the use of metallic body paint that displays the flesh in the manner of a precious object whilst, at the same time, immaterialising it by reducing the physical body "to the spill and shimmer of light across a surface". 

This is illustrated in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger (dir. Guy Hamilton), in which the character Jill Masterson, played by Shirley Eaton, is given the kiss of death by Mr Goldfinger, the man with the Midas touch. Seeing her, lying naked on a bed and gilded from head to toe, is one of cinema's most astonishing (and kinkiest) moments.

Amusingly, Bond pseudo-scientifically explains to his superiors that Miss Masterson died of skin suffocation and that this has been known to happen to cabaret dancers with a penchant for performing nude apart from a coat of paint: 'It's alright so long as you leave a small bare patch at the base of the spine to allow the skin to breathe.'

Even more amusing is the fact that the filmmakers seemed to believe their own claptrap and decided to be better safe than sorry by leaving a patch of Miss Eaton's abdomen ungilded. Today, there are still many people who genuinely believe that she risked (or even lost) her life filming this scene. It's an urban legend which, according to Steven Connor, testifies "to a willingness to believe in the skin's capacity to drown or suffocate in its own waste products, to which gold, the radiance of the body, can always revert".

For Connor is convinced that the secret pleasure of fetishistically painting a woman in metallic gold or silver paint is a scatological one rooted in the "extreme ambivalence of images than conjoin the radiance of a skin that is all aura and effulgence with the suggestion of faecal daubing, thus either lifting faeces into the condition of light or lowering light into shit".

Personally, I'm not entirely convinced by this (psychoanalytic) line of argument. I think that the thrill of becoming-mineral and hardening into pure objectivity and brilliant exteriority is far beyond this Freudian game of Gold und Scheiße.


See: Steven Connor, The Book of Skin, (Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 53, 176-77. 

Lily and the Brontës

The Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, West Yorkshire 

with Lily Cole (inset)

As a member of the D. H. Lawrence Society, the recent fuss concerning the appointment of the very lovely model and actress Lily Cole to a prominent role within the forthcoming bicentenary celebrations for Emily Brontë, has, technically, nothing to do with me. What the Brontë Society choose to do (or not to do) is entirely a matter for trustees to decide (although one would like to think they also consider the views of ordinary members, which is not, regrettably, always the case within literary societies).

However, as someone who cares a good deal about Emily - her novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), has been discussed on this blog on several occasions [click here, for example, or here] - and as someone who hates snobbery and bigotry, I feel that I should say something ...      

Miss Cole, who first graced the cover of Vogue aged 16 and who was also named as Model of the Year in 2004 by the British Fashion Awards, is not just a pretty face. She has 'A' levels (at A grade) in English, Politics, and Philosophy. And she graduated from Cambridge in 2011 with a double first in the History of Art. She has since shown herself to be a canny entrepreneur with a strong social conscience; along with (rather predictable) humanitarian and environmental involvements, she's a founder of impossible.com a social network and gift economy website.

So, as I say, not just a pretty face ...

In fact, I would've thought she'd make an ideal creative partner to any literary society and can't see why her appointment has been criticised in some quarters. To describe it as an insult to the memory of Emily Brontë, is, ironically, to bring shame upon the latter's name. This isn't merely a triumph for the modern obsession with celebrity or an attempt to be trendy. For Cole wasn't chosen because she once modelled for many of the top fashion houses, or once acted on-screen alongside Heath Ledger - but because she's clearly a strong, independent, intelligent, and talented young woman, just like one of the Brontë sisters.           

Nick Holland's decision to quit the Brontë Society in staged outrage is up to him. He might be an expert on all things Brontë, but his presumptuous claim to possess superior insight into what Emily might think about Miss Cole's appointment is simply ludicrous and reveals his own resentment towards those whose fame and success is greater than his own rather than any mediumistic abilities.

Miss Cole's considered response to Holland's provocative nastiness and rank stupidity proves that the Brontë Society have made a smart move in enlisting her and allowing him to leave. I'm only sorry the D. H. Lawrence Society didn't first attempt to enlist Lily as a member and representative. 

Readers interested in joining the Brontë Society should visit their website: click here. 

Readers interested in joining the D. H. Lawrence Society should visit their website: click here.

There's an Insulting Stereotype For That

The British Gas campaign that encourages consumers to rely upon local tradesmen - whatever the job - rather than attempt to fix things themselves, is probably the most irritating and offensive ad on TV at the moment. 

It opens in a store with some poor bloke holding a plunger, filthy from head to toe, clearly having tried - and failed - to clear a blockage in his plumbing system. The other people queuing at the till look on disapprovingly as the young woman serving - Sarah - informs him with a suppressed smirk: "There's a local hero for that." He glances at her with impotent rage, knowing full well that, whilst she's obviously a complete cunt, there's nothing he can do or say. 

In the second scene, another unfortunate fellow is in the shower, having trouble with the water control; as he presses a button, the bathroom lights go out. A woman - presumably his wife or girlfriend - carries on brushing her teeth at the sink in the dark with superior indifference, whilst also smugly reminding him: "There's a local hero for that."

In the third scene, an attractive woman sits having dinner in someone's flat. She's dressed as if on a date, wearing her favourite little black dress and there are wine glasses on the table. But her useless boyfriend is struggling to flush the toilet - clearly having broken the handle. Like Sarah, she pulls a knowing face before sliding her smart phone to him under the bathroom door, saying: "There's a local hero for that."

Later, in a scene that returns us to the above apartment, we finally see one of these local heroes. And, surprise, surprise, he's one of those friendly, helpful black characters that advertisers and TV executives love. Not so much a magical negro - for he's not there to impart ancient tribal wisdom - more a house nigger who can be trusted to fix things and provide service with a smile, before letting himself out the door and exiting the white-bread lifestyle into which he's been temporarily inserted. 
        

In brief, we have 30 seconds of insulting bullshit: thank you British Gas.  

To watch the British Gas 'Local Heroes' ad on YouTube, click here.