Customer Reviews

The Erotic Lives of Women

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In the year 2000, in response to a personal loss, I culled many, many books from my library as I was planning to move and needed to limit the poundage of items to pack. There were only two books I have since missed terribly, and this book is one. Its honesty isn't always easy to take, yet the women's stories of their experiences stayed with me. Having lost track of the names of the photographer and interviewer, as well as the exact title of the volume, today I am celebrating the fact that my long term search on Amazon for this book is over by ordering a replacement today. P.S. The other book I will be replacing is Andre Acimen's "False Papers." Blessings to all in the great community of readers.

...a text and photographic interview with 35 women of all ages from America, Europe, and the Middle East. The book is just as much about, for example, a 43 year old American photographer, a 56 year old teacher from France, a 36 year old cigarette vendor from Morocco, a 47 year old civil servant from Germany, a 59 year old events coordinator, a 49 year old Norwegian health councilor, a 37 year old Israeli philosopher, as it is about the few women -- a filmmaker, age 30, from the States, or a 53 year old Israeli sex educator or a 25 year old Moroccan belly dancer -- who you might call sex workers in the broadest sense.

The authors, who themselves appear in the book, asked various women four questions:
- What does the word "erotic" mean to you?
- Do you remember your first erotic feeling and could you show it to the camera?
- Can you remember your strongest erotic feeling and show it to the camera?
- Do you have a certain fantasy and could you show it to the camera?

The answers are sometimes earthy, and sometimes lack what we used to call critical consciousness, but they're vivid, varied, and honest.

The most innocent reply is from a Moroccan woman who says after being bartered away as a wife to a nomad, "It was only after my divorce that I got to know erotic feelings. It was when I felt love for a man whom I still see today. With him I am free to express myself. I can love now in more than only the one or two positions which we traditionally know in nomad life. Sleeping together in one big bed the whole night long is exciting for me. I am free to praise Allah for these feelings."

Her photos show her lifting the bottom of her headdress to show... the full-length dress she's wearing underneath.

Some of the other interviews are wilder or more explicit, but each woman's story offers similar insight both into the breadth and the limits of eroticism in everyday life.

I bring this up because I just bought it in a bookstore. It seemed like an appropriate gift for a friend on her 40th birthday...it's neither moronic nor at all about porn stars or prostitutes... It's a cool book. I'm not sure it was worth [the price], but it's certainly worth five stars.

figleaf

I found this book in the seatback on an Amtrak train from NY to DC so I don't know if it was forgotten or just left as the trash that it is. It took about ten pages to realize that it was just pure sleeze, and i gave up after getting half way through it within 15 minutes. I could slap myself for wasting that much time. I enjoy good erotica, but this is more like pulp putzing.

This book is a joke! It covers different stories told supposedly by women in Exotic positions, such as strippers, prostitutes and porn stars. The stories are very well made up, at least the author has a creative mind. All it really talks about is the hundreds of lovers these women take on, nothing else.

I just finished reading this book and i was appauled. The book covers nothing but stripper stories which do nothing more than make the stripper out to be a major whore! I have no opinion on women selling their bodies, stripping, or making movies, but this book would definately make me respect them less than I already do.