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Being on top: A woman’s guide to being more confident in the bedroom Miss Bea Haven Consultant I’m going to save you some tuition money and about 100 years worth of feminist texts and tell you that women’s positions in the bedroom have not always been equal. Sex has consistently been positioned as something that is done to a woman, rather than something that she is actively participating in. Unfortunately, I can’t change thousands of years of female subjugation with one article. As you residential college sexpert, I can encourage my female readers to take small steps to ensure that you make the most out of your future intimate experiences. When you look good, you feel good This is one of my favorite mottos and is something I live by every day. You know those students who get extra dressed up on the day of a midterm, just so they can walk in feeling semiconfident? That’s me. And after countless exams, I can confidently say that this wacky psychology trick actually works. Even if I absolutely bomb a test, I still manage to strut around for the rest of the day in reasonably high spirits knowing that I look good. Fortunately for us, looking good doesn’t have to be restricted to a classroom. So if you’re looking to put a little confidence in the bedroom, the first step is to pick out something sexy! Or rather, pick out something that makes you––specifically––feel sexy. If your idea of looking good comes in the form of your favorite bra and underwear, perfect! If looking like a MILF from the 1960s gets you goin’, awesome! If you feel your best in an oversized button-down and some socks, rock it! Looking and, more importantly, feeling sexy is just as much for you as it is your partner. Taking
some time to focus on yourself is the first step in introducing a more confident you into the bedroom. Protip: If you pick out a playlist and sing along while you get ready, it’s almost like you’re starring in your own makeover montage from the early 2000s. I recommend Lizzo and Rihanna for maximum hot-girl energy. Choosing to be kind to yourself In a perfect world, putting on good lingerie and a pair of false eyelashes would be enough to make us instantly prepared to shake up the sheets. But unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. In order to take steps towards more confidence, we have to address why you aren’t feeling your best in the first place. Perhaps it’s childhood or religious trauma that is stopping you from enjoying the midnight hour. As a former Catholic myself, I distinctly remember images of hellfire being associated with anything to do with sexual pleasure. Although I’ve long gotten over any hang-up to do with religion and hanky-panky, generational trauma when it comes to having sex can be ingrained in us long before we went to college. Luckily, you now have the freedom to explore and reflect what the idea of sex and intimacy means for you and your personal journey. If it ever starts feeling like too much to handle by yourself, that’s okay. There are always counselors available to discuss issues related to sexual health. Personally, I found comfort in my girl friends who were also facing these same struggles. Confiding in others helps us remember that sex is a complicated thing, but it does not need to be navigated alone. If your hang-ups are not a result of
familial pressures, there is a chance it might also be pressures from yourself. Case Western Reserve University students are notoriously self-critical in almost every facet of their lives, from schools, to grades, to extracurriculars. When you combine this unfortunate personality trait with media and porn telling you that only people who look a certain way are sexy, it is amazing we ever take our clothes off at all. Here, I remind you to give the same compassion to yourself that you would afford to others––because you are just as deserving of kindness as everyone else. As a test, next time your mind starts to wander about every stretch mark or pimple that you have, I want you to think about your friends and your partner. I want you to think about their flaws and marks––maybe try and imagine a list of things about them that you don’t think look good. You are inevitably going to struggle to come up with problems, likely because the people you are surrounded with are pretty great. Which is exactly my point. To those who care about you and choose to be intimate with you, a blemish is going to be the last thing on their mind. Truth is, they’re probably just thanking whatever Lord is above that they’re in this position––pun intended. Putting your pleasure first So how exactly does one decide what makes the horizontal mambo so enticing? Well, the quickest way is experimenting and trying things by yourself––but that’s for a whole different article. The second way is something that improves every relationship, romantic or otherwise: communication.
Make requests and speak openly about what you want. Don’t let sex be like the ever-exausting food debate where you let your partner try and guess what you want. If you want sushi, ask for sushi. If you want fried chicken, ask for fried chicken. And if you want to try a threesome, ask to try a threesome. If you’ve accepted your partner only putting in five minutes of foreplay before jackhammering it and going to sleep, you are doing both yourself and them a disservice by not speaking up. Also, if any men have made it this far, I’d like to remind you that a whopping 70-80% of women can’t reach an orgasm from penetration alone. That means if you have not been using all of the tools at your disposal, and every single one of your past girlfriends still seemed like she was getting off–– someone was lying to you. “What? You can’t possibly mean me!” Yes, I mean you. Now, I understand that being more demanding might feel strange to some women, it is an unfortunate consequence of a society that places male pleasure on a pedestal. Luckily, confidence is like every other aspect of life––sometimes you can just start small and work your way up. Request a back massage without fulfilling the expectation of anything extraneous. Encourage the use of toys without any feelings of competition or toxic masculinity getting in the way. And if your partner ever expects oral without offering to return the favor–– kick him to the curb. It’s 2022 and we are no longer accepting the DJ Khaleds of the world who think that there are “different rules for men” and women’s pleasure comes secondary.
Alberto Giacometti’s artistry reenters the limelight in Towards the Ultimate Figure Elie Stenson Staff Writer Alberto Giacometti’s haunting sculptures of thin and twisted branches—stripped bare by cold autumn winds—have earned him a significant standing in the canon of mid-twentieth-century design. The Cleveland Museum of Art’s special exhibit, “Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure,” sheds new light onto the complex and varied nature of his creative voice. Encouraged by the work of his father, post-impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti, Alberto Giacometti began his career at a young age, sinking his teeth into plasticine and watercolors. His early pieces litter the CMA’s exhibition space, juxtaposed with later pieces in a manner that begs the viewer to observe the patterns and organic changes in his style over time. After moving to Paris in 1922, Giacometti immersed himself in surrealism, spending hours crafting depictions in ink and clay of his friends, lovers and people he claimed to have met in dreams. The desire to draw and sculpt consumed Giacometti. The countless sketches executed on scrap paper, hotel stationery and spare newspapers that line the gallery walls reveal snippets of his ever-churning mind. His fascination with illustrating human heads led him to experiment with the physicality of facial features—soon chins became longer, skulls more narrow and eyes even more blankly fixed. Sculpted studies of Diego, his younger brother, appear throughout the exhibit, his identity distinctly betrayed by his slightly
uneven ears despite Giacometti’s style warping the nature of his face beyond recognition. As the exhibit progresses through Giacometti’s artistic evolution, his manifold works are balanced out by black-and-white photographs of the artist himself. Giacometti took great pride in his minuscule Parisian studio, which measured only 23 square meters. He invited the greatest photographers of the era to capture him at work. Portraits by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Inge Morath and Man Ray line the walls, capturing Giacometti in moments of movement. The candids show him rushing across the room cradling a craggy bust, or displays the faint quiver of his cigarette as he continues a painting of his wife, Annette. In the 1950s, Giacometti shifted towards full-body sculptures. He took inspiration from the tall conifers and rocky mountains that lined his childhood village in southeastern Switzerland as well as the stoic forms of ancient Egypt and west Africa. Balanced atop thick podiums, his trademark renditions of toothpick-like people wrought from cast bronze emerge triumphantly, achieving his impulse to “[r]esolve [the] tension between abstraction and naturalism.” The statues range in size from tiny figurines that pay homage to the centuries-old votive statuettes of the Mediterranean, to towering figures that dominate in spite of their fragile elegance. All bear Giacometti’s iconic abstraction: beyond the textured metal are traces of the hu-
Alberto Giacometti portrayed the human form like no other, in sketch and in sculpture, such as in the “Walking Man” (pictured above). A visit to his exhibit at the CMA may give you a greater appreciation for the elegance and mystique that we all embody. Courtesy of ClevelandArt.org man form. This elegance is particularly seen in his frequent portrayals of nude women, yet each statue takes on a certain harshness—a glaring reminder of the isolation and reduction of humanity in the face of social expansion. The exhibit closes with two of Giacometti’s finest triumphs: “Walking Man” and “Standing Woman.” Both pieces represent the culmination of his lifelong aspiration to complete “The Ultimate Figure.” For Giacometti, the
perfect rendition of the human form was one that evaded realism and instead epitomized the emotional weight of living and the internal struggle constantly waged over crisis and satisfaction. “The object of art is not to reproduce reality,” he once stated, “but to create a reality of the same intensity.” “Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure” will be on display until June 12 and is free to Case Western Reserve University students.