The Love Goddess | 03/17/2009 8:45 am
The Love Goddess: Rainbowing. You Better Sit Down for This One
Sit down, you won’t believe this. I’ve been talking to young girls — girls like your daughters and granddaughters — about two new sexual events: One is called “rainbowing,” and the other involves bracelets.
Rainbowing, on the chance that you don’t know, is when each girl at a party puts on a different color lipstick. And then, each teenage girl performs fellatio on one teenage boy.
Now, brace yourself for bracelets. Bracelets in different colors and widths are worn by teenage girls to alert boys as to what they will and will not do, sexually.
The mystery here is not what girls and boys are dreaming up. The mystery is why, now that these dazzling young girls are permitted to have sex, they are still in the role of pleasing. I mean, rainbowing! Wow! Girls get to service a boy and see their artwork, their smudges of blue and green, on his organ! What fun! This, then, is the upshot of sexual freedom?
Granted, “rainbowing” is a way of avoiding penetration, so some people will breathe a sigh of relief. But that’s not my point here today. This cool, new, “sexy” world where teens (and tweens, too, I’m afraid) are learning, in effect, how to be prostitutes, is as pleasureless and one-sided for girls as was the old, repressed one. (And please, for the moment, don’t talk to me about sexual abstinence. I’m talking about reality here, not wishful thinking.) These girls are telling me that, with their blue lipstick and group sex and pink bracelets, they’re doing the same old, same old — thinking about pleasing boys. And that the “rainbow” is satisfying for no one but the rainbowee.
So when I read in The New York Times style section the other day about One Taste Urban Retreat Center in San Francisco, where women’s pleasure is the focus, I thought, Yes. Here, in a carefully supervised environment, residents experience a meditation in which the men, who remain clothed and are not touched, learn about women’s bodies as do the women themselves. We can pick this idea apart in two seconds if we’re inclined to do so — Does this encourage true intimacy? Is this just more California craziness? — but I’m not. What strikes me as genius, and as deeply serious, is owner and founder Nicole Daedone’s absolute focus on women’s pleasure. Here, the point of view changes. Women don’t learn how to please. The male residents do. Both learn about women’s bodies and the feelings in those bodies and, clinical though the terms of the discovery may be, they begin to understand what women and men have so long been mystified by. As Daedone puts it: “In our culture women have been conditioned to have closed sexuality and open feelings, and men to have open sexuality and closed feelings. There’s this whole area of resistance and shame.”
Bravo, Ms. Daedone. By changing the point of view — encouraging women to understand the pleasure that lies within them, not just in their ability to give pleasure — and by offering them a safe place in which to experience, you are doing an important and brave thing.
-TLG
Like all savvy goddesses, the Love Goddess has her own blog, which you can visit by clicking here.
Read more about: News, Nicole Daedone, Parenting, Rainbowing, Relationships, Sex, The Love Goddess, The New York Times, Tweens, women
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59 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
The bracelet thingy and the Rainbow business has been around for quite awhile––I found out about it years ago when one of my students described the process when I asked about the bracelet she was wearing. To say I was repelled would be putting it mildly, although when talking with her I remained calm and non-judgemental. I wanted to understand why a girl such as herself––pretty, smart, popular, would succumb to anything like this. "It’s no big deal", she said, "it’s like a game, sort of". She refused to go any further in the discussion . I notified our social worker who already had workshops on other issues like alcohol and abuse and she rounded up a group of girls to start another workshop on this very subject–––the subjugation of teenage girls. From her findings, which to me were disquieting to say the least, was just what my student had told me––"It’s no big deal." In fact most of the girls looked at it as their being in control––they didn’t let the boys do anything to them, it was almost as if the dick in hand was some sort of play thing. The other strong factor here was peer pressure––wanting to be a part of the gang—the group––the in-crowd. So I thought, how did all this evolve? In my day, at that age, spin the bottle was daring and later a lot of necking, petting, but one stopped. There were boundaries. Do we blame the media? Films? What? Our young people see, hear, read things we never did–-our exposure was limited and censored. Is teaching your daughter/sons to respect themselves, their bodies, prevent anything like this?
P.S. the article in the times that our love goddess is referring to is, in my estimation, a crock, and another way of someone making money from directing people in how to FEEL GOOD.
Interesting comments, Phyllis. These new "traditions" are probably passed on in the same way as other oral traditions (pun intended!). It used to be nursery rhymes and skipping jingles, now its "how to sing a rainbow."
As for the article in the NY Times, it’s another example of how the Times is trying to appeal to a younger hipper generation than ours as its readership goes down (pun intended, again!).
Both of these are urban myths that no one can show any evidence for real life origins. I had never read your column before and I was interested to see what it was about, but I’ve lost any respect for you as a source of any type of reliable information because (a) this is an OLD urban myth and (b) a quick google search on the topic would reveal that it was the product of mass parental hysteria. It’s possible that somewhere at sometime, probably after hearing about such things from the media, some teens decided to spice up their already existing sex lives with some bracelets, but seriously, this is more indicative of the fear and fascination adults have about teen sexuality than how things actually are.
http://www.snopes.com/risque/school/bracelet.asp
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/fashion/thursdaystyles/30rainbow.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
I came home from a renaissance fair once wearing an ear cuff I bought. My husband asked me what it meant. I told him it meant I bought an ear cuff at the renaissance fair - what else was it suppose to mean? As for teenage sex, seriously, has anyone explained to them what ‘age of consent’ means? Why don’t parents pursue statutory rape charges? Parents hope their kids will make smart choices, but do nothing if they don’t. If no one is willing to lock teenagers into chastity belts, boys and girls alike, then lower the age of consent and call them adults at 15.
Meh (it is in the dictionary now…sigh). This is old news, and I know the practice just alters what lets you know who will do what with whom.
The parent who stated that the practice "makes them simply sperm vesicles for boys/man" is, perhaps, misguided in her statement. Most of those boys/men likely don’t care where their sperm goes so long as it … goes.
The problem is we are teaching our children this behavior. Before you scream, "I am NOT!" Think about it. You dress them to meet "current guidelines" and "standards" that would/do shock your parents (the grandparents), soap operas show lingere everywhere these days (according to my mother-in-law), and music videos foster the behavior.
If you let your children watch those videos and do not explain what is going on IN the videos, they will accept "what is taught" since you, the parent, are not doing your job.
I let my kids watch "Starship Troopers" and other movies "rated above their age." However, I watch with them, and we talk after the movie. I discuss "issues" about language, actions, fairness, etc. The kids I see partaking in "rainbowing" do not have a good parent-child relationship. Rather, sometimes the "parent" is trying to be a cool friend rather than a parent.
The solution is to teach your kids reality. Tell them about what is going on and educate them as to the "whys" that are involved with the action(s). Of course, if you have spent the time with your kids, they might not be in the position to feel as if they need to rainbow anyone.
By the way, why do you think boys are the only recipient? Have you not heard of multiple boys "servicing" a single girl?
Gender may have something to do with who does what, but it is the "lets do what we aren’t supposed to be doing" that is the attraction to "feel older and more sophisticated."
Similar to menthol/peppermint, ice, heat, … Sex is desireable. Teaching appropriate behavior is the responsibility of the parents.
How are you acting? What are you watching when your kids are around to see? Do you leave your books around that they can read? Many kids learn from experience.
Of course, what is right for me may be wrong for you. However, lets try to teach kids to be fair, responsible, and safe.
You are so right about kids and adults today..I’m a grandma and great grandma and what my grandchildren have told me sometimes I’m speechless. I write my blog www.grammology.com and I have enough info to last a lifetime.
Great article I’ll visit your blog..hope you check out mine.
Dorothy from grammology
grammology.com
If we want to change the world it has to start with us, not our daugthers.
I’m not purchasing magazines with photos of almost naked women on the covers, I’m not purchasing sexy clothes with plunging necklines, I’m not buying movie tickets for movies that include violence or lack of respect towards women. I’m not supporting this culture. If we cut off the money supply to these influences, then we cut off their power.
But then, the most liberating experience for me at the age of 18 was to spend a summer in Europe, discovering my sexuality, nude beaches and the freedom to be "pretty me"! (And I came home still a virgin.) I think we need to take a page from the Europeans. We are such prudes on the outside, hiding from ourselves our inner sexual desires. Our children are just acting out the shadow…which is what teenagers usually do.