In Which I Start Off Talking About The Marx Brothers and End Up Going on Some Rant About Feminist Linguistics.

I am feeling much better today, after having spent a week or so feeling especially persnickity. Maybe because it's my day off and I have no plans to do anything whatsoever. Unless I go see Duck Soup in the park tonight. I do love me some Marx Brothers...

Totally unsurprising fact about me- I own every Marx Brothers movie in existence. I also firmly believe that if one were to combine all of the Marx Brothers into one man, and have him not be dead, that I would totally marry him. At the very least, I would let him hit it.

Surprising fact- I can play "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" and "Everyone Says I Love You" on the ukulele.



This little clip actually brings up something I've been wondering about lately. In all these old movies, people say things like "Are you making love to me?" when CLEARLY no intercourse is taking place- and really, if it was, one would assume that that the lady would be aware of what's going on. Maybe it was one of those Hayes Code things? So now I'm curious as to how the phrase underwent the transition from apparently meaning "flirting", and then to mean "fucking" and then to become an insanely creepy, horrifying and ladybonerkilling way of saying 'fucking'.

I think it's one of those phrases/words that tends to be 87,000 times more shudder inducing to women than it is to men. Like the word "moist." Moist is a terrible word because it is most commonly used to refer to either baked goods or vaginas (or towelettes, but they don't count in this scheme)- baked goods make you think of yeast, and then you bring the ladyparts into it and what do you get? Yeast infection. Bad times for everyone. Mystery solved.

There are a few good reasons for why "making love" is similarly terrible, I think:

1) When you get "the talk" from your parents, this term tends to pop up a lot. At this point in your life, you're probably a little "ew, boy germs" about the whole thing (at least you are if you're 8 and you're me.). Then it's the sort of sex you associate with your parents- which, duh, even if you're the most liberated person ever, you don't so much want to think about it- and thus, also the sort of sex you associate with the baby making process. Which I totally try to avoid, for the sake of all humanity. It's "when a man and a woman love eachother very much and want to have a baby" sex, and that is just too much pressure for any lady to handle.

2) I don't think women are so much comfortable with the idea of two separate kinds of shtupping. Like, it's a good, dirty, fun time if you don't like the person all that much (fucking), and then if you love them it's supposed to be totally boring and involve candles and rosepetals and such (making love). I am so not into rosepetals, and should not be allowed near an open flame for any reason. For me, it evokes that whole scene in The Godfather where Connie's husband is out getting blowjobs from bimbos or something, and then won't let her do it because she's the mother of his children and is thus supposed to be a saint or something.

3) For me, anyway, it's something that elicits a red alert when used by a dude I don't know too well. You know, because either he's trying to pull the old boyfriend fake-out, or he's a genuine creep who thinks he's your soulmate 10 seconds after meeting you.

4) It sounds censored, and one gets the feeling that if you have to use a priggish, Haye's code sounding euphemism like that for sex, you're not all that comfortable with it. Thus, you are probably not all that good of a time. Blah.