Untitled Document

A new study comes out this week by Northwestern University that strongly suggests women's sexual arousal patterns are less tightly connected than men's to their sexual orientation. That's right you heard us - in contrast to men, heterosexual women tend to become sexually aroused by both hetero and girl-on-girl sexually explicit visual action. According to the experts of the study, most straight women are thought to have, a bisexual arousal pattern. Hmm??? Tres interesant! Of course, we've known this all along. Through submissions to The Pleasure Club and Surrender the Pink from women around the world, CAKE has found that many "straight" girls fantasize about getting down with other women. But is there another story here as well? Damn straight!

You see, if women, in general, are just as sexually aroused by watching two women have sex as they are by watching a man and a woman have sex, then there is a multitude of visual stimulation that turns women on. Maybe then we indeed have the freedom to make self-assured decisions about our pleasure. So...this got us thinking...Where do most women learn about sexual interactions and what do they learn?

You remember it like it was yesterday - "Now, I've, had, the time of my life and I owe it all to you…" That's right, a little dirty flashback to 1987 when Patrick Swayze suavely taught us teenaged girls what really good, de-flowering, sex was supposed to be like. You may have hated Dirty Dancing, or you may have loved it - but if you saw it during your virgin years, we KNOW it had an impact on the way you viewed sex and losing your virginity. Don't get us wrong, we still love to watch it from time to time, - but as one of the sole references for a women's first sexual experience, it sets one's expectations a bit...well...in the realm of complete fantasy.

Women are desperately seeking visual imagery to aspire to and learn from, but because the choices are either LALA LAND or bust, we still get FUCKED in the process.

If honest and up front discussion of sex and sexuality is scarce, it's easy to look towards visual representations of sex to get your information. Yes, unfortunately, this is the reality of America's cultural relationship to sex today. When it comes to figuring out how to have sex we look to pretend people, or ahem, the media, to show us what to do. Worse still film, TV and magazines fall tragically short when it comes to fulfilling female sexual pleasure, while reinforcing the female body as the eternal symbol of sex.

To solve this puzzle, maybe we also need to understand how women relate to each other as sexual subject, i.e. "She looks, acts like me so I like her." as well as potential sexual objects, "I look and act like her - I would want to fuck her(me)." Is it a possibility that other women on screen, in photographs, on the street give women the permission to feel sexual?

As Lauren Greenfield points out in her photo essay "Girl Culture," (a MUST READ by the way) the body has become the primary canvas on which women express their identities, ambitions, insecurities, realities, etc. The exhibitionist nature of modern femininity is expressed through moments of performance in every day life. While women's bodies are canvases for expression, the social context within which we live provides inaccurate representations of our sexual personas. Thus, the disconnect between images onscreen and the realities that we put forth in the bedroom.

But yet, visual imagery is all around us. Sometimes it makes us hot and horny, sometimes it leaves us flat. In the end though, our culture is built on visual imagery that lets us know "how to do it." Quintessential milestones and rites of passage are handed down to us through the media to be playacted in millions of bedrooms around the world. How to have a threesome, masturbate and what physical position works for you is probably not going to get accurately expressed in mainstream media, but yet the faulty way these experiences are actualized in film, TV etc, (e.g. the woman never gets off or if she does it's easy and picture perfect) affects the way we position ourselves with our partner(s).

So it is up to us to take what we learn from the outside world, internalize those images and express them in our physical/emotional interactions with our partners. CAKE has compiled CAKE.Girl's favorite sex scenes to help you along your sexual journey. It's not all bad out there. Here are some CAKE.Girl's FAVES to watch and learn from.

Sex and Lucia

A sunkissed heaven in the Mediterranean.

The Thomas Crown Affair

After the come back from the black and white ball and they have sex going up the stairs - and then clear everything off the desk and pour whiskey all over each other.

Y Tu Mama Tambien

The threesome scene, ala CAKE "Sam'ich," of course.

Bound

Lipstick lesbian tough girl stuff, one woman experienced, the other never been with a woman. Juicy.

Laurel Canyon

Hot scenes and a cool perspective on female sexuality including threesomes, a hot mama, a swimming pool, stripteasing, older woman with younger man.

Jerry McGuire

The standing up sex scene in front of the refrigerator when she's screaming "Never stop fucking me!"

Monster's Ball.

On the couch and on the floor.

9 1/2 weeks

Kim Bassinger/Mickey Rourke on the stairwell in an alley, in the rain.

40 Days and 40 Nights

The orchid scene.

The Secretary

The office scenes.

The Lover

The first time the two lovers get together is so hot! and when they screw right there on the FLOOR, with the throng of the marketplace right outside the door...the passion is absolutely palpable

Original Red Shoes Diaries Movie

David Duchovny playing with Brigitte Bako while she's in the bathtub, the way he says "yeah, baby, what?"

Mulholland Drive

Naomi Watts with (herself???)