Lena Chen is mentioned in the article as the ultimate anti-virgin. She's a junior at Harvard and has a blog. She's also something of a sex-columnist-extraordinaire. Her blog ostensibly began so that she could write about her lush and prolific college sex career, but now it seems much consumed with dealing with the tractor beams the public eye seems to have locked upon her.
Last week, she posted this picture on her Tumblr, The Ch!cktionary. She's ruffled quite a few feathers with it because she is not, by any stretch, a porn actress. She's a 20-year-old sociology major at arguably the most prestigious university in the land. And yet that is a very... very... VERY dirty picture.
And what do I think of it? As if you really had to ask. Of course, I think it's probably the hottest thing I've ever seen. Oh, wait-- I mean, I think it's a beautiful expression of human sexuality.
Regardless, the photo fascinates me in that it's acquired an even more connotatively palimpsestic aspect than most photos ever could -- sexy or otherwise. She says that she never expected it to be controversial or incendiary at all... and yet she calls herself "a living, walking, subversive abomination" in a more recent post. The photo, in and of itself, is so simple-- just a close-up of her little urchin face. As she says, she's not even naked in it. And perhaps it's nothing more than the fact that her face is so very child-like that throws us all for a loop. But I (*wink*) doubt it.
The photo suggests so much. This is a debauched woman. A woman who is happily so. Look at her eyes. She looks like she's never been so turned on in her life. She's staring straight at the camera with all the defiance of the "Demoiselles D'Avignon". She owns that cum -- she caused it and she's proud of it and she looks like she could eat the guy behind the camera alive.
And yet it winds up on Gawker, being called an "overshare" and she tells us some concerned soul wrote a letter to her parents, advising them to find help for her. But then, Susannah Breslin, of Reverse Cowgirl fame says this: "The fact of the matter is that writing about sex isn't easy. Chen is a human being. And while I won't be posting photos of myself with a pop shot on my face anytime soon, you gotta respect the girls who have the balls to do it. Why? Because you don't."
So, folks, what is it? What is it about little Lena's face all smeared with seed that has some of us worried for her mental health and/or her immortal soul... and some of us cheering her as a feminist icon? In case you hadn't notice, I'm in Susannah's camp, of course. But more interesting than taking sides is figuring out why exactly the photo is controversial at all.
Is it because, deep down, we think porn-ishness should be left to its own arena? Is it because we think girls who are
Oh, I think she knew the photo would catch her some flack when she posted it. She had to have known. I mean, she'd just got done quoting Camus on The Ch!cktionary: "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." She's just owning her red harlot/"subversive abomination" nature, after all. She can hardly help it. My psychic once told me I've got a little bit of natural "fuck-you!" in my personality. Lena's got it in spades.
Truth be told, Lena seems to be having the college experience that I was far too big a kid to have had myself-- but always wanted. Yeah, I messed around with a few handfuls of boys-- and a couple girls. But, sadly, my sophomore year, I fell madly, nihilisticly in love with the boy who lived across the hall from me. He had a girlfriend, with whom he'd periodically break up and then come knocking on my door. But I always knew my white-hot, juicy love/lust for him was mostly unrequited. And when he finally told me (in so many words-- he was 19-- he basically just avoided me-- what else do 19-year-old boys do?) that there were no more hook-ups to come, I launched myself into a tortured three-year practice of brahmacharya. That's celibacy, for those of my readers not fluent in Sanskrit. Yep. It's true. Sexual bravado aside, I spent the latter two years of my college experience as an everything-but, re-virginized sad little mess. There was still kissing, of course, but I got called a cock-tease more than once.
Let this be a formal apology to all those boys I didn't fuck senior year in college-- I'm sorry! If I could go back and do it all again, I would have taken full advantage of every one of your sexual peaks. It's just that, at the time, my head was just too fucked for me to properly process being properly penetrated.
Three days after I moved to DC, I ran into the aforementioned heartbreaker. We hadn't really spoken since the opening reception for my senior art show-- he'd come up and clinked his beer bottle against mine. I didn't even know he lived in the area. It was the week before his wedding. He was still cute, though with far less hair (is it bad that I gloated a little that I hadn't gotten fat?). I was so glad to see him! In those first seconds of re-meeting, I felt a huge release of all the amorphous wistfulness I'd always felt every time he ambled into my head. His wife is lovely, by the way. I see them every now and again. He's a fantastic person-- and I recall so well why I was so enamored. But, blessedly, 10 years eroded the sexual charge and now we are free to be friends. Sometimes, it's good to be a grown-up.
Regardless, though, it's clear that my collegiate sexual education got derailed by the first of many boys who'd be destined to tell me that I'm cute,
What I mean to say here is that I'm obsessed with Lena Chen because she's yet another sex blogger whose life I envy. I'll be adding her to my blogroll because I think she represents a sort of logical outcropping of the type of feminism I've been espousing-- sex-positive, self-deprecating, funny and audacious. And heartfelt. I'm eager to watch as this woman develops a career for herself, post-Harvard. She says she's unmarketable. I think that's a crock of shite.
It would be tempting to think of her as a little sister of the spirit, but I have a hunch she's far more worldly-wise than I. Cum-faced or otherwise.
UPDATE: In strange six-degrees-of-separation news, a picture of Lena's current gray-area entanglement wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of my own high school (which is tiny, single-gendered and located in Nashville) can be found here. ...Wonder from which former Harpeth Hellion he might've filched such a thing...?
