Invasion

I saw a TV show the other night that struck me as so wrong that I just have to write about it. I rarely watch TV, but I was visiting a friend who had it on. The show was sort of like Candid Camera, where Howie Mandell sets people up in weird situations while secretly filming them.

This situation was that two older women had signed up to be in some kind of workshop. They were learning to pole dance, being taught by a couple of younger women, and they had been told that they were being filmed so that they could see their dances. There were several camera men around the set. The idea of the workshop seemed to be about teaching them to open up their sexuality. They were very sweet, really, in their innocence and willingness to experiment.

The first disturbing thing was that the audience that was viewing this film laughed as the women played at letting their sexuality out. As if it is funny that older women can be sexual!

But it got a lot worse. A couple of male strippers came bursting in, ripped their pants off and began “dancing” in their G-strings. Their dancing was really more like just thrusting their pelvises. It was a shocking invasion. Then more men burst in, dressed as police, and began busting them for making a porn movie. It was even more invasive.

It made me feel sick inside. These lovely women had taken a chance, made themselves vulnerable, and decided to open up. The message they got was an overwhelming smash-down. Just when they thought it was safe to come out!

The fact that people thought this was funny shows that we have a long way to go.

Venus Takes a Closer Look

Venus goes retrograde tomorrow (March 6), and will be retrograde for several weeks. As her apparent motion as viewed from the Earth goes backwards, it prompts us to look inward, especially in the areas she rules: love, romance, sexuality, and finances. It’s a time for reassessing values in those areas, finding what really works for us.

I’m certainly on this program at the moment. I think that I would be even if I didn’t know about Venus going retrograde. I’m grappling with some big questions: can I ever open my heart fully again? Do I even want to? Is it just some romantic ideal that I’ve outgrown? Do sex and intimacy necessarily have to go together? Am I avoiding an area of my own growth by saying no to a relationship that might go deeper? Is it an illusion that it might grow deeper? Or is it that I just really don’t want to engage in that way?

Big questions. The only answers I can find are in how my body feels – when it feels constricted, when it feels lighter. I’m using it as a guide for what my path is. And hoping that I’m on the right path!

What about you? Is relationship up for reassessment?