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Is sex getting to be boring? I mean the actual act and even the build-up to it — what you expect from it or what it does for you. Is sex getting to be boring? I mean the actual act and even
the build-up to it — what you expect from it or what it does for you. It would seem so if you go by all the hoopla in the American media recently, both in print and in the blogosphere. Is
the millennium ushering in the age of chastity — and of sexual malaise? Are we witnessing a requiem for the exalted state of sex? The recent flurry of articles about the taming of libidos,
especially of women, was triggered by the disapproval last month of flibanserin, a new medication to treat female sexual arousal disorder: a female Viagra you could say. The US Food and Drug
Advisory panel committee rejected the application to market this new love pill for women because the members thought that the drug would not really enhance sexual desire in women.
Controversial author and humanities and media studies professor at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia Camille Paglia kicked the hornet’s nest with her article in The New York Times. In
her delightfully pugnacious style Paglia concludes that “lust is too fiery to be left to the pharmacist”. Pharmaceutical companies will, according to her, never find “the holy grail of
female Viagra — not in this culture driven and drained by middle-class values”. Ennui has descended in the bedrooms of middle-class America for other reasons as the Paglia doctrine has it.
“In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitised
office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation”. Even the superwomen juggling work and family are beginning to show the wear-and-tear. ‘Not tonight,
darling I have a headache’ has become more the rule than the exception. Certainly, hyperactivity in the connectivity sphere (Internet, Blackberrys, Iphones, Ipads, etc) is decreasing
connectivity in the bedroom arena. Another reason for the sexual aridity in many marriages is, according to Paglia, the way American men dress. Rather, don’t dress. “Nor are husbands
offering much stimulation in the male display department: visually, American men remain perpetual boys, as shown by the bulky T-shirts, loose shorts and sneakers they wear from preschool
through midlife. The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane”. Something is rotten in the state of… desire.
Gradually more, intimacy and romance no longer pave the way for sex. It’s sex, neat: some movie producers even hire sexual choreographers for love scenes on the internet. No wonder
abstinence is getting to be trendy — at least temporarily. Not only have there been some first person accounts in the media chronicling bouts with chastity, Hollywood has been quick to draw
upon the zeitgeist of the moment, to sniff a trend even before it has a chance to settle in. In novelist Stephanie Meyer’s hugely successful vampire romance series , _The Twilight Saga_ the
immortal and deathly pale hero, Edward, keeps his fangs on hold and straps in his lust so that the mortal woman he loves can hold on to her much-prized virginity until their wedding night.
And now in the new film _Eclipse_ — the third to be based on Meyer’s novels — love is all about reining in sexual appetites. In his astute review, critic AO Scott writes that the Twilight
Saga films “embrace the sensuous pleasure of sublimation with the kind of fervour (sic) you usually find only in old Hollywood or present-day Bollywood entertainers.” Quite. But I would add
that Bollywood is going the Hollywood way: sex is in the driver’s seat, and romance an occasional passenger.