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Sparkle (4)
Sexting has a somewhat of a bad reputation: politicians and celebrities have faced public shame for their extra-marital antics and teens have been humiliated by peers who unscrupulously shared their messages. With all these stories in the media, it’s no wonder people are weary of sharing suggestive messages over their phones.
I don’t blame them. But at the same time, I don’t think this is entirely fair to sexting. Sexting is different from texting only in purpose. Sexts are suggestive messages sent over a mobile phone, and texts are all other kinds of messages sent over a mobile phone. Texting, we know, is only a mode of communication, which can be used to give directions to a lost colleague as easily as it can be used to harass someone. We know texting is not inherently bad. Yes, it can be distracting and should not be done while driving – like mascara. And it certainly should not be done in excess while in someone else’s company because it’s rude, like picking up a book and ignoring them would be.
But none of these things, we know, are inherently bad, distracting or rude. They’re tools. It’s our actions that give them context. In the same way, sexting is not inherently inappropriate or shameful. In fact, it can be an excellent way to communicate with those with whom we’re intimate.
In her book The Nice Girl’s Guide to Talking Dirty, couples therapist Dr. Ruth Neustifter argues that sexting can help revitalize the passion in a relationship. While she spends a significant number of pages elaborating about how “nice” girls can benefit from being “vixens” from time to time and other notions that make my slut-shame alarms go off, she does eventually get around to the point that sexting can be helpful in identifying our desires and developing more confident forms of communicating our sexual needs.
Image by Enrique Gutierrez.
In its simplest form, sexting can become a means to shape behavior by what educational psychology refers to as modeling – the exhibition of a behavior to be imitated by the other party without outright instruction. Instead of staring at the ceiling trying to find a polite way to tell him you’d like to try a new position this time around, you can let your main squeeze know – before he even gets home – that you have a mad craving to save a horse, ride a cowboy that night. Or whatever terms you think will get the message across.
That’s the thing about sexting: people often assume that sexting is a matter of putting a few dirty words down and hitting send. They couldn’t be more wrong.
THE MODERN LOVE LETTER
Most of us who have ever enjoyed physical book stores have encountered at some point or another books that chronicle the love letters of the greats. Oh, to live then when words were used to convey such incredible emotion! Anyone who tries to argue that sexting is anything like these love letters has to be insane.
Except I’m not. I’ve read my fair share of letters and journals of people between the great to the obscure and I’ll tell you this: there was no shortage of sexy in those days. It’s a different tone than the letters proclaiming love and longing, but it isn’t less passionate or ardent. Often, the love, longing and sexuality are all present. Observe this missive by the great French novelist, Gustave Flaubert:
I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.
And another, from the renowned novelist James Joyce:
My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or fling you down under me on that softy belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shape of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair.
And a rather tame one from Henry Miller, one of my favorite
