“It’s every girl’s dream to be on the Internet in her underwear.”

I was at my day job, and the TV was on, tuned to the E! Channel. The show was called The Sexiest Jobs in Las Vegas, or something like that, and the first thing I noticed, besides all the pole dancing, was that the screen was frequently blurry in certain spots.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why they were spending hours on topless dancers, until I caught the gist of the show (I was working, catching glimpses here and there). In one segment, there was a guy talking about how the women who work these jobs make videos and put them on the Internet to get discovered. And that’s when he popped out the quote above.

I was a bit shocked to hear that. I mean, where have I been? I thought girls still grew up wanting to be ballerinas and maybe supermodels, with an occasional astronaut thrown in. It never occurred to me that posing in lingerie for Internet videos was even a profession, let alone a desired one.

But this clearly is a trend, and so I set out to understand it.

Now, I’m not exactly sure that astrology will explain this, but the timing was interesting. The show (a rerun from 2004) was being aired while Mercury was in Taurus – Mercury being the planet of communications, and Taurus being one of the two signs ruled by Venus, planet of love and desire. I admit that this could be a mere coincidence.

The bigger trend at work here appears to be the return of feminine energy to the planet. There’s been a lot of discussion about this in the astro-blogosphere, and we assume that return of the feminine means that we will see a resurgence of values such as nurturing rather than killing, cooperation rather than competition, intuition integrated with logic, and many other attitudes and behaviors that are kinder and gentler.

But what about feminine sexuality?

Tell me that this subject doesn’t make a lot of people nervous. I was squeamish watching hour after hour of firm, smooth cheeks in thongs writhing around a pole. I had to have a talk with myself to understand my discomfort. And I think the simple answer is, we’ve been programmed to believe that it’s bad, so even if we’re cool with it intellectually, we make up “reasons” to object. The biggest is that it’s degrading to women, that it sets up an impossible ideal that most women can’t meet – and that even the women in question didn’t meet until they were surgically enhanced – that we want to be loved for more than our bodies … all the usual suspects.

Enough already. It has to be OK for women to be sexual beings, in any way we wish, and if pleasing men is the objective, that’s OK, too. Ideally, when the masculine and feminine energies on the planet are integrated, the pleasing will be a two-way street. That’s what we should be aiming for, but someone has to go first.

I hope that this is what’s behind the surge of soft porn on the Internet, so I’ve made a pact to allow this energy to flourish. Something to think about as Venus enters Taurus, the day before the sexiest holiday of the year.

Dancing around the May Pole indeed.

Pat

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marina, pictured above, is a 27-year-old Russian philologist and Internet phenom whose video series “Hot for Words” gets millions of hits a week. If I thought I could get millions of hits posing in my underwear, I might try it, too. :-)