VICE’s “I banged my high school teacher and it sucked” article was interesting…
It shone this coruscating spotlight on that whole “fantasy vs reality” concept.
Ya know, like the time we learned that Emma Watson is really a drag queen underneath:
That’s a problem a lot of people have – distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
We do it with public figures and movie characters and airbrushed images all the time – without even consciously processing it. So when it comes to the real world – which ebbs and flows and can’t match some static artificial image – we get shocked and then disappointed. This kid’s account was no different when he turned 18, graduated, and hooked up with his ex-instructor who’d conveniently gotten the conversational ball rolling with him before bidding her class adieu for the summer. He secretly recorded it for proof, but halfway through the episode, the reality of her aging body grossed him out. He was used to seeing taut, tan, hotties in this context. Though, he said in his piece, there was nothing wrong with her body – it was just jarring. Not what he’d expected. She was ten plus years his senior, after all. And it didn’t help that as they started making out, she delivered this gem of a line: “I’ve been waiting to suck those lips all year.”
I’m getting a little weirded out even thinking of the head cheerleader of his high school who’s his age and flawless saying that, but I’ve heard weirder I suppose. Still, when it’s your aging teacher who’s supposed to be mature, it makes you feel like they’ve been secretly sexually vetting you during the entirety of a time during which they’ve been entrusted to … not do that. Before they officially split ways, he noticed that she was fond enough of him that the ball was “in his court”. So he used that. And got her to buy him things. A kind of subtle emotional blackmail.
The whole thing, he said, was sort’ve creepy.
Whether it’s an older dude or chick, person in power, BDSM fantasy, whatever – what happens when we try to drag daydreams into a tangible sensory experience? Is it just forbidden factor that’s titillating – made boring the moment it’s transgressed? Or is it that when we relive a fantasy in our heads enough, reality can’t possibly match up to it? This article shone a brilliant retrospective spotlight on what it was like. Starting with that lip-sucking comment she said in a moment of Mrs. Robinson sans the class.
Totally mimics that “Do you like… muscles?” moment in American Beauty:
The reality of a sexy situation hits and it can never meet expectations.
You know, we all have fantasies. Not just sexual ones – I mean healthy illusions.They help us frame our days, go after long-term goals, plan vacations, give us hope of summer’s return through the horror that is winter, and so on. But the difference between some motivating hypothetical versus a fetish or obsession is that one can become real and the other usually cannot live up to the ideal. This makes it unhealthy for you – and unfair to the people who might be the subject of it. I think this is part of why I get so upset with myself when I give in and have a Hollywood entertainment bender. Because the whole thing’s just a magic show that plants fantasy seeds in my brain. Between the lighting, makeup, augmented camera angles, and a soundtrack (which I still think I should have accompanying my daily routine), it’s no more than Copperfield level photoshop in motion. And before we know it, the curtain’s drawn, house lights come on, and there’s Margot Robbie – who’s suddenly transmogrified from a young Jaime-King-meets-Kate-Upton…
… to me after a week of eating my feelings and catching the flu.
Or just me first thing in the morning, really. ‘cause let’s be honest here.
(Funfact: I tend to think she downgraded on purpose. She never wanted to take a “sex object” role, she says. Probably partially for the same reasons as this thing I’m writing. So I think this’s her IRL equiv of Gone Girl’s on the run make-under)
And if that was her motive – unsexy-fying herself – it raises a good point. Even though I was horribly disappointed because the whole movie I was obsessing over this female Platonic ideal. Fast forward a few months and kill-myself-workouts later, and I realized I was chasing after a lie. Nearly no one looks like that without a lotta help. I was chasing after a unicorn. Like that stupid infographic that shows a rhino on a treadmill looking at a poster of an actual unicorn which it can never be. Because it was born a rhino. It’s never gonna have a forehead horn just like I’ll never have Robbie’s cheekbones or tiny frame. Plus… unicorns aren’t real. Just like fantasies. We build up a Hollywood hypothetical in our brains – typically putting a poor unassuming human with flaws or the ability to get puffy if they eat some ice cream after starving for a role at the center of our mind movie. And then the second they ad lib with something like a lip-sucking or muscle-liking one liner, it deviates from our brain script… And reality hits.
It’s not so egregious that a former teacher effed a former student who was of age. (No different than Franco trying to bag that one legal teen chick, really, right?) I mean, I don’t personally “get it”. For me, it seems gross just because it goes against my personal desire to have either an alpha male or someone who’s at least had comparable life experience to my own. But to each their own – and she did wait till he graduated – so it was legal. The problem here, from my view, is more the fetishism. In this case, because of what I assume is a combo of screwy childhood stuff and romanticized cinematic narratives (The Graduate, To Die For, Palo Alto Stories, every other Lifetime original flick, that new J.Lo movie that’s coming out), the prospect of large-age-disparity sex turns into a fetish. For her, she was fulfilling some void, I suppose. For him, it was likely the selfie-era validation amongst pals that would follow when he showed them the tape. In fact, he admits that. It’s why the kid recorded the whole thing. So, while she was stuck in some daydream world she’d had all year about sucking his mouth flaps – he was off on some future event where he could show the footage to his friends. None of them were really even there for the act. Why bother? You know, if there is a takeaway here, it’s this:
Weird or not – do what you do, if it’s hurting no one.
Just do it without expectations and for the experience itself. Not some idea in your head.
(Yes. This coming from someone still using “Wolf” version of Robbie to motivate my literal extra cardio mile.)