Is raunch culture invading our everyday language?
For those fortunate enough to plead ignorance to the meaning of the disrespectful MILF term, let me just say I am just plain envious. I’ve not been spared that good fortune since I have a relative who’s a raging sexual compulsive, and his idea of bonding with me is to share his latest sexual exploits with me. Since that’s a non-stop endeavor of his, I hear way too much, stop him though I try. He blames me for creating “distance” when I remind him there’s lots of other topics to talk about besides swinger vacation clubs, best strip clubs ever, and his by-now-ubiquitous “fave porn star of the day” category.
(Note to the disbelievers that sex addiction is real: when an otherwise-intelligent man’s entire conversational and experiential repertoire can only revolve around sexual pursuit, there’s definitely a problem. Ahem.)
Said relative was recently visiting me for the afternoon and we went out to lunch. Perusing the menu items in the French restaurant, I was chagrined by the amount of calories I’d be consuming, since I was trying to lose a stubborn 10 pounds that had mysteriously accumulated on me recently. I tried to make light of it by mentioning my quandary, but my relative interrupted me with:
“Oh don’t be ridiculous! You’re hot! In fact, you are one of my all-time favorite MILFs”
“Huh?” I responded.
“Oh, don’t be coy! You are one hot MILF!” he continued, tearing into a buttery croissant.
Puzzled, I shrugged, thinking how either he’d developed a serious lisp since last I saw him, or perhaps he was lightheaded with hunger also. I picked up a croissant.
“Nah, come on, Lili, you’re kidding me, right? Tell me you don’t know what MILF stands for? Seriously.”
“No, I do not,” I assured him. “Should I?” His charade was starting to irk me. I had low blood sugar and wasn’t at all interested in learning a new word just now.
“Oh my God, Lili, what rock have you been living under? It stands for: Mothers I’d Like To Fuck, and that’s one of the most popular categories of porn, everyone knows that!,” he scoffed, finishing his croissant and eyeing mine.
I sat there dumbstruck.
Stunned gave way to a state of shock. I wondered whether I should enlighten him that even though we’re not living in some backwater homestead, that incest is still generally frowned upon. Or, should I tell him his brain was turning to mush from all the porn he watches non-stop? I started to tear apart my croissant.
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Was it just me, or was I being bullied, along with everyone else, into having to accept porn’s invasion into everyday life with its coarseness as the new norm?
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Was it just me, or was I being bullied, along with everyone else, into having to accept porn’s invasion into everyday life with its coarseness as the new norm? The new conventional? Contemporary. Vulgar. But always cool.
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Unperturbed by my disassociated staring down at the fleur-de-lis tablecloth, he felt obliged to help refine his definition for me: “Well, it’s like…you are hot! It’s just that the MILF term doesn’t refer to the hot young chicks. Which, given your age, isn’t really your category anymore. You know? Like, now you have your own category. That’s kind of sex-positive, don’t you think?“
Unfixing my stare, I started to look around for sharp instruments on the table. I knew I should’ve saved my visit with him for after my glucose levels had risen sufficiently to afford me better levity. He never fails to push the envelope of my patience.
“See,” he began again, very carefully selecting his words, “You aren’t a hot chick. That’s just the really young girls. You are now more like one of the soup chickens. You know? Like, they’re not as tender as the chicks are, but in my opinion, they’re actually a whole lot tastier.”
Pleased with himself, he wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin and threw it down triumphantly on the table.
As the room began to spin, I prayed silently: Dear God, please, immediately remove any serrated eating implements from off this table or prepare to accompany me in prison for the next 20 years.
I left him at the corner three short blocks from home and stumbled, narcotized, through the rest of my afternoon. I couldn’t yet identify the traumatizing effects of the newly-installed, heartless meme going around and around in my head, hectoring me relentlessly:
“Lili….you are a soup chicken…you are a soup chicken… you are a soup chicken…you are a soup chicken…”
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You know how you’ve never heard of a word before in your life and then when you do, you just know it’ll crop up again within a few days? Sure enough, two days later, while sitting on a bus, I was leafing through a glossy magazine someone had left behind on the seat. It was one of those high-end “Life in the Big City” types of magazines, complete with endless pages of the Manhattan glitterati posing with cosmos at their important charity balls, all laser-whitened, perfect teeth offsetting Hampton-tanned, Juvederm-plumped skin, ballyhooing the good life.
I thumbed through pages of photos showcasing spectacular penthouse apartments for sale with wraparound gardens and Hudson River sunset views in the 20 million dollar category plus baronial-looking ads from agencies seeking to place butlers, governesses and groundskeepers for employment on your estate. Wow. So, this is how the other half lives. Fascinating! Sure beats the heck out of looking out the rain-streaked dirty window of the bus I was in.
Just as I turned the page, I spot a noticeably large ad for a gym showing a photo of a young woman with a tiny bit of a belly, gleefully jumping up in the air in her workout clothes. Next to her are huge, colorful graphics that scream:
“New Moms! It’s Almost Summer! It’s Beach-time! Is Your Body MILF-Ready?”
What?!
No, it can’t be. Must be a misspelling. I pull the magazine up closer to my face in the event that my reading glasses have failed me.
There it was, again: Is Your Body MILF-Ready?
A maybe six year-old child was sitting on the bus next to me, leaning in, half in my lap, eagerly looking at all the pretty pictures in my glossy magazine. As I peered down at the ad, I imagined a horrifying scenario: this precocious-looking child next to me, no doubt having already mastered reading the entire Harry Potter series, scrunching up his face at me and asking me,
“Um, what is M-I-L-F?” It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities; the giant, brightly colored block letters on the page could easily lasso his attention.
Rut-row. Time to switch to a different seat. Quick, before my reverie about this child could become a reality.
I look down at the ad again. Does this gym here actually mean to conflate that nasty porn-derived term with motherhood? Does this mean that within two days time, I have to go from not knowing what this word means, to knowing what it means, to now having to allow opprobrium to chalk up another win? Oh, just damn, Skippy!
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Are women ever allowed a break from not looking their dang hottest, not even a few weeks after just having a baby? Good God, MILF with a tiny infant? What have we become?
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Are women ever allowed a break from not looking their dang hottest, not even a few weeks after just having a baby? Good God, MILF with a tiny infant? What have we become?
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And I am not alone with these porn-into-mainstream experiences. Recently, my friend Terre went to her Netflix account and checked out the tab labeled, Our Recommendations for You.
First on the list of films they thought Terre would like, was a film called MILF. She never clicked on their second choice.
Instead, she called to tell me and with both of us taken aback, we just sat in silence on the phone together. After all, what is there to say when you’re trying to digest something you find distasteful and dare I say it and brand myself as the uncoolest of uncool ever: crude?
I’m well aware that that descriptor word generally greases the track for big success in any pop culture product nowadays, but I’ll say it anyway: crude fails as an art form for me.
A popular genre film titled, MILF? What?!
It’s not like Terre wandered into a XXX video store, after all. Yeah, she and I get it about humor in films. And we wonder about that kind of humor, the kind that has to keep upping the ante on grossness because last year’s gross doesn’t even earn a chuckle this year.
But, mostly, what we resist is the insistence that everyone just accept that it’s cool to lift and use terms from the increasingly popular lexicon of pornography.
Advertising that seems to say: “It’s so catchy! It’s cute, even! Make these terms part of your daily vocabulary and you, too, can be cool and not notice any class, decorum, or regard for yourself or others slipping away from you whatsoever.”
Painless, this reach for being cool.
In just one week, three references to MILF had invaded my world, and I was filled with increasing heaviness. I’ve only felt this bleak despair while handing tissues to tearful wives of sex/porn addicts as they share their heartbreaks with me during counseling sessions.
Optimism was fast evaporating, and the gloss of the high life I had momentarily escaped into had sunk to the bottom of a big, black dross pit. Uh-oh.
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—Photo /Flickr
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About Lili Bee
Everybody is free to use the language they want.
Yet if I was a woman and somebody called me a MILF, I would probably head butt him (meaning hit his nose with my head in an attempt to break it and cause pain and confusion).
Then I’ll probably go and get some ice, say sorry for the pain and explain that sometimes we need to make bad things for the greater good and one day he will understand.
Unless he is really big and not a friend/relative. In that case I would probably calmly get my heels off, hit it on the knees with a big stick, and start running.
Wow! This article is SOOO incendiary. It just makes me broiling mad! Porn with it’s images, innuendos and slithering euphemisms, has become so virulent in our everyday lives we barely even notice it. Just as women took off their bras in the 60’s and 70’s to proclaim their sexual freedom and emancipation, I want to put mine back on to reclaim my sexual dignity and be appreciated for my good deeds, my heart and my intelligence.
1. There is nothing wrong with sex.
2. Therefor, your fear of its becoming involved with aspects of your life outside our bedroom is invalid.
3.
I had an insight today. As wrong as porn is in terms of its insensitivity, its occasional degradation, and its usual misunderstanding of sexual physiology, we probably like it some of the time because it summons something which is true about good sex– it’s dyonesian. Its excesses, its anti-sociality get us past “reasonable” sex and into realms of real sensuality. To me, good sex has an element of uncontaindness, even if it occurs within the context of a monogamous relationship. I’m not very fetishistic in the traditional sense, but I like sex that breaks social rules, even if I don’t practice it currently. So I often like porn that shows three-ways, interracial fun, and so on. The rule breaking is a turn on, and I think should be one.
One of the problems with the way sex is often said to be desired here is that it’s too apollonian. It’s too reasonable, too contexualized within monogamy, with too much “right thinking” demanded. It’s probably a good idea for most of us to live this way (believe me, I’ve tried many of the pleasures I allude to above, and they weren’t all that comfortable.) But I think good erotica, not the poirn we have now might point the way to deeper, wilder, more fullfilling sex.
To put it another way, Henry:
We live in an age wherein companionate monogamy is the ideal. Even serial relationships expected to be outwardly monogamous. We don’t exactly denigrate polyamory, but it’s clear we’re not about to teach kids that such is “where it’s at.” And the former ethic of coupling for social reproduction first is seen, in the Western world, as quaintly anachronistic.
Oddly, though, we’ve joined companionate monogamy to the idea that lasting love is achieved only through work. Previously, efforts to attain and manitain what the Romans called ‘concordia’ centered on remembering given precepts. Now, couples, often with outside paid help, are enjoined to put ongoing effort into fulfilling each other’s emotional needs. It’s become one’s second job. Laura Kipnis hit this nail on the head in “Against Love.”
This is the context in which sex has been Apollonized. This is why you’re right to point out that porn is where Dionysianism is found for the majority of us. And it’ll continue to be that way for a long time to come. Why? That ‘right thinking’ you allude to. The essence of that right thinking is that no demand from women for “emotional availability” is unreasonable. And lots of men quite correctly see that not every sentiment is emotion. They’ll chafe, women will withold and lots of porn producers will go to the bank as a result.
I liked your use of Nietzsche on another thread, S. It’s possible that, paralleling Geneology of Morals, women have self repressed in order to repress men. Many women operate with what seems like a sexual governor (such as found on fleet-purchased gasoline engines) even when they are having sex that’s orgasmic. One woman told me on another board (when I suggested the sensual effects of cannibis [which I don't currently use]) that she didn’t want to lose her personhood. Men probably do this too. We live in such a productionistic and bureaucratically defined society. I see much of feminism and some of eroticism as the bureaucraticism of gender. It all seems to serve very middle-class sensibilities (in a bad way.) I’ve resisted postmodernism up till now (being a social scientist) but I’m pretty much onboard with Foucault at least in terms of sexuality.
While I agree with much of what you say, I do get nervous when people talk about “erotica” vs”pornography”. So often the difference is defined as “If it turns women on, it erotica; if it turns men on, it’s pornography” (I wish I could attribute the quote, but I’ve forgotten the author). Pornography is a element of fantasy. Fantasy is very often the mental expression of things that we KNOW are bad ideas in real life.
I think people also need to be realistic about the mismatch of libidos between men and women. I know it’s politically correct to insist that women are just as sexual as men but survey 100 married men and 99 of them will tell you it isn’t so for them. So men in committed relationship have to do something with the sexual energy their wives/girlfriends can’t or refuse to handle. In the 19th century it was considered “normal” for men to meet their excess sexual needs with postitutes, so which is the greater evil?
This writer makes a very big mistake. Too many women think that having a child ends their sexual life. Mom is not supposed to be sexy and a practicing sexual being. Heretofore that was the cultural message to get men to work harder enslaved in the frustration of a sexless or nearly sexless marriage.
I thought GMP articles weren’t a place for “man-haters”, but it looks like I was wrong (Lili, you really sound like one).
And, BTW, if you despise so much that person, why meeting him? Just because you then can talk bad about men?
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To all the men: please, stop being ashamed because you like sex or porn, or you would like having sex a lot. That’s totally natural, that’s the way we are “built”, and it’s ok feeling that way. Feelings are never “wrong” (OTOH, behaviour can be).
Obviously there can be abuse or addiction (and that’s a problem for sure), but porn in itself is just tailored to our male sexual imaginarium (and that’s why is so effective). It’s “unreal”, sure, just as much some female romantic fantasies (and books and movies…) are. They are both fantasies, and playing with fantasies can be good and healthy.
Regarding MILF: I see it as a getting rid of an old chauvinist cliché (“Only young women are hot”), and as such it can be positive for both genders.
If you feel offended by it, just ignore it; I dislike some kind of women (shallow or gold-diggers) and I just ignore them… I don’t go around trying to bash them. To each their own.
Thanks for clearly articulating a very disturbing problem. Though I agree with some of the other commenters that sexuality for both men and women is important through-out our lives, that doesn’t mean that the crass, objectifying, and sexualizing of non-sexual things should be accepted.
I remember a few years ago when my sister told me that her then boyfriend told her that she was going to be a MILF. She, like you, did not know what the term meant. Even though I am wont to believe that he was trying to say that she will continue to be attractive as she is older, much along the lines of the explanation your relative stumbled over. But I didn’t have the heart to explain to her what t he term meant. But it deeply disturbed me, to have my sister be referred to as such.
It’s not that I don’t want my sister to have sexuality as a part of her life, or for her partner to not be attracted to her. But within the context of the world that MILF came from, it absolutely disturbs me at a deep level. My sister (and all women) deserves respect and dignity. I can think back when I was married and I would never have described my wife’s and my intimate acts as (ugh, I can’t even type the word) the f-word or whatever. It was much more special and intimate and mutually connecting. Not crass and only self-gratifying.
But I fear that this leaking of the porn mindset into popular culture is only warping our mindsets of how our relationships, our sexuality, and our lives can be. Everyone can have dignity. Everyone can be sexual and have pleasure in their own way. But it isn’t degrading.
If a raunchy acronym upsets you to the point where you feel it’s “warping our mindsets,” one can only ask two things. First, how do you get out of bed in the morning? Second, what would you make of a writer like Henry Miller?
S. Gallo- to have written this to Travis just underscores the lack of empathy evident in many comments posted on so many sex and porn-related articles on GMP. Why would Travis, using examples of his own wife and sister, have trouble getting up in the morning? I think he probably gets up with his head held high. A mature man with a conscience can do that. As JFK Jr. rightly said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”.
If some people want to spend their lives in a non-stop rave, girls-gone-wild type of Peter Pan mindset, enjoy yourselves and hope that fulfills you, but I see no need to tarnish those who do not want that. If we felt secure in our beliefs then we would not feel the need to convince others that ‘my way is the best way’, which is a need to validate an insecure-immature belief structure.
As for Henry Miller, I’ve read a couple books and respect his work, which is quite often lurid. I visited his odd bookstore/museum near Big Sur. To my knowledge Henry has not coined any acronyms such as MILF which have saturated our society. I suppose this is due to the medium of literature not being as pervasive and influential as film, especially film targeted for a teenage audience such as American Pie.
I’m sorry but I can’t believe you followed the phrase “a mature man with a conscience” by a quote from JFK Jr. in response to article about porn! LOL LOL
Yeah, he was part of the solution as soon as he finished banging the two girls in the swimming pool. Not that he wasn’t a good president, but that was pretty ironic.
Agreed Jeni. I’m unaware of that one in the pool but I do know that we have many parts of ourselves, some wise, some not. We can’t always toss out one for the other or we’d be running pretty low on heros. For instance, Mahatma Ghandhi is notably one of the heros of the last century yet he was known to have beaten his wife on occasion. I can’t prove this but it is what I’ve read. If true then it was likely acceptable domestic rules of that culture. That wouldn’t fly at all today, in the USA anyway. JFK, for that era and power status, it was likely common place for such things as those swinging pool parties. And among his peers he was probably normal. I’m not condoning it, just pondering.
JFK Jr. wasn’t president. His father was. He was the one that banged two women in a swimming pool.
You’re right! My bad!
Michael, my riposte had nothing to do with tarnishing Travis because he adheres to sexual continence as an ethic. He would have been doing fine if he’d just stuck to being offended by what I admitted from the outset was a crude acronym, directed at his sister. Instead, good little Puritan that he apparently is, he put forth the inanity that this trope of garden-variety demotic crudeness is “warping our mindsets.” That crosses a line for some of us, in ways that his inability to utter the word “fuck” doesn’t.
As for your opening contention: why do I get the feeling that the ‘empathy’ you refer to consists solely, in this case, of agreeing that raunch, porn and racuous bonhomie constitute the Moe, Larry and Curly of societal decline?
S. Gallo, my main course of thought is targeted for the future generations of mankind. I look at how the raunch generation(s) may be able to lead humanity as leaders, parents and role models into the future. As a father I feel this concern with every cell of my body and as a native American I am concerned with how all of our actions may affect our World.
And what I believe to be a keynote of empathy is the way we afford others common courtesy, regardless of their stance (in communications and not in French fencing terms) but more in the true spirit of the term ‘bonhomie’.
We’re not going to slide off any ethical precipice because a few people casually use expressions like ‘MILF.’ We’ve had more than one generation of youth for whom “mother” is half a word, if you get my drift. Crime is down, despite the dearth of “role models” that supposedly plague these kids, and the seeming—repeat, seeming—aggregate rise in crudity. It’s even down in this, the worst economic climate in the US since the Great Depression. That certainly isn’t the entire explanation, but it’s enough to cause the prudent to take the word of Travis and Lili Bee as something approaching bargain-basement histrionics.
Cosign. And I’m extremely suspicious of attitudes and comments that imply that sexuality is the opposite of dignity or leadership. Lying at the bottom of this, I think, is the sex is taboo/dirty business. It’s amazing how many of the comments here seem to be rooted in ultimate sex=bad assumptions. With Alex Comfort, I think this is fairly wrong. Sex can and does complicate and problematize relationships. There’s much spiritual energy there and this shouldn’t be made light of. For a great treatment, see Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. It (and the science fiction novel The Day after Tomorrow) predicted a world where para-sexual representations would be used to sell products but at the same time to deny real sexuality. It’s here.
sex is over rated but its fun nice stuff throw ps im a bad spiller.
Intersting topic. I don’t see this as man-hating. Disliking porn is not the same as disliking men. Pornography and sex are not one and the same. People can be pro-sex and anti-porn. Heck, people can even be pro-porn and not think it belongs in the mass media (the stuff our children are exposed to).
I was also wondering why you would continue meeting with this person. Especially, if you can not set clear boundaries with him about what you are comfortable talking about.
We are helping each other by rubbing up against one another….pushing each other’s buttons big-time. He allows me a look at any places in me I might be compulsive, and I hope his takeaway (from time with me) is a look at his own inner yearning for intimacy, which he’s expressed finally being able to recognize.. That said, I am going to be setting a few boundaries….starting with, “You can share whatever you like about your own life and experiences but leave any direct references to me, out of it”.
Thanks, Tatyana
The term doesn’t come from porn. It wasn’t even popularized by porn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MILF_%28slang%29
I was going to say that I first heard MILF as a reference to Stifler’s Mom in the movie American Pie. Porn just reflects society, not transforms it. I wonder if there is as much problem to the word “Cougar” in the same context. In the vulgar sense they are synonyms (and porn uses them interchangeably). Yet it appears on mainstream TV.
This author should have taken a few minutes to peruse google to find the actual origin of MILF, which she of course immediately thinks is from porn. The first usage of this word in any mainstream media was in the film American Pie which was a teenage raunch-comedy that came out nearly a decade ago. The proliferation of the word after this movie only served to allow the porn community to rebrand a genre of porn (younger men with older women). Not everything is porn based, sometimes it’s just a dirty joke that’s been co-opted. When I see the acronym actually used in an ad I merely roll my eyes. It’s offensive, it’s stupid, but it’s not a symbol of male dominated porn culture invading every aspect of our lives. Chill out.
“Happy Endings” is a term I just learned from reading this article. Who would’ve known?
sex is over rated but its fun