A collection of pleasure products, goods, and services found in Panama City, Panama, curated by pleasure concierge Deborah Porter, with sensual articles and essays.
Cultural Pleasure Point
The Weight of My Wanting
As a young girl I was called chicken legs. As a young woman I possessed a body that could stop traffic. I woke up with the sunrise and clothed myself in the shortest, tightest, clingiest fabrics, and the highest heels. When I moved to New York, I learned about healthy eating and going to the gym. My personal trainer worked me hard. At one point I could leg press seven hundred pounds. I had Tina Turner legs. I loved the cut at my breasts. The diamond cut of my deltoids. I was proud of my "guns."
I wanted to look great in and out of clothes. My inspiration for all this hard work — attracting a man.
But after three failed marriages and four kids, I accepted that marriage and even partnership was not part of my destiny, and with that surrender, my body grew thicker and flabbier. The inspiration I got from love making or even heavy petting was no more. Cronuts and brownies became my constant bedfellows. Men no longer stared at my pert tits. My belly protrudes further than my breasts. I've become invisible as I walk down the street. I'm still a clothes horse and women constantly compliment my fashions, but men barely notice me except to offer me a seat or help me cross a street. And I'm not that old.
Somehow my sexuality to men was lost with my thin muscular physicality. Honestly, I wouldn't be comfortable removing my clothes in front of a lover. I'm ashamed to look at myself.
So, as I travel the world, to ninety-some-odd countries, the possibility of a local tryst is an absolute no. I can't imagine anyone would have me. Yet, I see women larger than myself who are full of sensuality, sexuality, and confidence with a roster of lovers to prove it. I don't know how they do it.
I have noticed that some dress more provocatively than I do. Their hair is coiffed; their nails are polished. They wear lashes and liner and lip color. My beauty routine is all in the African textiles and bespoke designs. Skip the waist cinchers, push-up bras, and stilettos. And even so, the majority of my women friends — even the ones who put in the "effort" — are not getting any ACTION.
Sexuality in the West is sold to us as something we must acquire with expensive purchases of beauty products and health gimmicks. We have to study with experts on how to attract a man, how to speak with a man. I spent thousands of dollars on books and sessions with experts like Harville Hendrix, John Gray, and Dr. Pat Allen. I bought it. I used Ingrid Millet Pearl de Caviar on my face, I got the best weaves, I waxed all the pertinent parts, and really rarely got "lucky."
And I know I'm not alone in having a paucity of pursuers. I have friends who haven't seen a naked male anatomy in person in more than a decade, much less been touched by one they weren't paying. Is it any wonder that fertility is down and Europe and America are not having enough babies to even replace themselves?
Not so in the Global South. In Africa and Oceania, women are having a minimum of three babies. In Ethiopia, the average is four; in Nigeria, it's five.
Many would brush this off as oppression, patriarchy, and lack of access to birth control. Let me enlighten you to the fact that indigenous women have used herbs to practice natural birth control for centuries. My observation is that these indigenous women are having a lot of sex. The plethora of small children is evidence. There is not a skinny, fat, disabled, or homely woman who isn't getting some, as attested to by the baby on her back.
And they are not wearing bras or Spanx. Fashion does not exist in the mismatched patterns of Western hand-medown T-shirts and shorts. Most hair is natural and plaited or left wild. No one is even using kohl on their eyes. Bare skin — what we in the West would call raggedy clothes, covered in dust — and they're getting laid enough to have a child almost every other year. The children in most villages well outnumber the adults. And their houses are one room, maybe two. Sex is going on with children in the same room, probably on the same pallet. Nothing is deterring their urge to express their innate sexuality.
Well, lo and behold, it rubbed off on me!