Visitors to writer Donna Storey’s Web page are faced with a dilemma: Click on the glass of milk to read her nourishing literary fiction, or select the red chili pepper for more titillation? Vitamin D or exotic heat? It’s presumed mothers will choose the former.
Storey knows what it’s like to live with presumptions. As the mother of two boys, it’s the main reason she doesn’t advertise her career. When people see her with her children at soccer games, they see Mom. They don’t know she has a PhD in Asian literature and taught at the University of California at Berkeley. Nor would they ever guess that her most reprinted story describes a married couple who videotape their intimate moments for the pleasure of a dot-com millionaire. Mothers don’t do that kind of thing!
But what could be more connected than motherhood and sex?
Indeed, everything about having a child is sensual. Pregnancy marks you publicly as a sexual being. Strangers touch your belly. Your breasts take on porn-star dimensions. After the birth, you discover orifices you only vaguely knew you had—and my goodness, how many liquids they emit! Then there’s breastfeeding, with its luxurious skin-on-skin contact, the sensation of little fingers grasping locks of your hair, the intense eye contact. Sigh. Your body, heart, and mind are given over to another being. What could be sexier?
So where is the sexy mama in mainstream parenting magazines? Smiling women in khakis and peach-toned makeup fill these vanilla publications. No pouts or puckers, unless you count the toddlers, and breasts and hips are strictly under wraps. Would it be too much to let these mothers sashay as they make fruit juice Popsicles and check bedding for dust mites? Couldn’t that lady with the fringe bangs stop comparing diaper brands and consider instead the hottest films of the year, or, hell, the best priced vibrators? I am not asking for Demi Moore clutching a babe to her naked breast, Esquire-style, but it would be nice if the two portrayals of female life could coalesce.
Let’s ditch the Madonna/whore dichotomy already. We need a new language, a new imagery. Madonna is pitching storybooks these days and has said that she regrets “being overtly sexual for the sake of showing off.” Anyone who came to fame singing “Like a Virgin” undoubtedly knows how to push buttons—so to speak. But isn’t that part of the point of being an artist? Especially as a woman, one has a unique license to explore sexuality. In fact, women who explore sexuality in their work are often viewed as boundary breakers—Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker, Anaïs Nin.
The exploration doesn’t need to stop because one becomes a mother. Storey attributes her own interest in erotic themes to motherhood: “About six months after I weaned my oldest son, I experienced a strange creative explosion,” she recalls. “Stories started coming to life in my head, and I’d wake up at four in the morning anxious to write them down.”
Soon, they took on a sexual nature.
“Once I was back to ‘normal,’ my husband and I were much more appreciative of our sexual intimacy,” she says. “We paid attention and valued it because it had been taken away from us. We were much more creative with it, too.”
Artists who deal with sexual themes get asked, “But what will your kids think?” There is a fine line between over analyzing this question, a surefire way of killing the muse, and a healthy dose of honesty. One painter told me that she recently took her adolescent daughter with her to a life drawing class. Once the girl got over the hesitation that “nude implies sex,” she became entranced by the new artistic experience.
For now, Storey has told her son she writes fiction for adults. If and when he asks to read her work, she’s unsure how she will react, but she believes that it’s eventually good for her kids to know that their parents are sexual beings and that “dad was mom’s inspiration!”
More difficult still is the situation of Krista Jacob, who writes frequently about abortion, including in a new book, Abortion Under Attack. Although passionate about her work, she worries there could be negative ramifications for her children. That hasn’t kept her from shielding them from the topic though. Her six-year-old has gone to book readings with her, and begun to ask about the nature of her writing. “I’ve approached the issue of abortion with him in the same way I do with adults,” she says. “In order to understand it, you need to understand a lot of other issues, too.”
Which brings us full-circle back to that very personal act, an act that no matter how cathartic or painful, steamy or mundane, has the potential to make us a mother. And yes, after we become a mother, we’ll buy diapers and make PB& J sandwiches. We might even wear khakis. But that doesn’t make us any less of a force.
Remember that the next time you’re shampooing a wailing four-year-old or picking Cheerios out of the backseat. Conjure up your sensual self. Reignite what made you a mama to begin with. You may need to clear the laundry off the bed and remove the Lego spaceship from under the duvet—ouch! Take the Wiggles off the stereo. A candle or two might be nice.
Still not doing it for you? Then I’ll leave you with a bit of Storey’s prose: “Smiling, he nudged one last praline between my lips. ‘Don’t chew on it,’ he said. ‘Just let it melt.’”
