Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression [Hardcover]

Susie Bright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 25, 1999

Hailed by Utne Reader as "a visionary" and the San Francisco Chronicle as "the X-rated intellectual," Susie Bright is indisputably the sexpert of our times. Now, in a frank and intimate look at our own erotic experience, she delves into the most personal aspects of sex and shows us how our sexual passion can be a source of creativity and inspiration. By her own example and insight, she helps us to discover our own erotic story and sexual philosophy.

How do talking, reading, and writing about sex affect your actual sex life?

What are the real differences between men's and women's sense of the erotic?

Why is it so threatening to consciously address sexual desire in the first place?

Is there a line to be drawn in erotic creativity--can you go too far?

Is the best erotic expression soulful?

How can articulate erotic expression make us better lovers and, more important, better people?

Bright concludes with an "erotic manifesto" that is a call for everyone to reclaim sexuality, cast off sexual shame, overcome repression, and become true sexual beings. She offers up "rules to live by," which include debunking your own fantasy life, appreciating the simplest erotic gesture, and taking inspiration from everyone but instruction from no one. Bright's work celebrates the joy of sexual creativity--and the very uniqueness of each individual's sense of the erotic.Susie Bright is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including The Best American Erotica series, the first three editions of Herotica, Sexwise, and The Sexual State of the Union. She has written for Esquire, Playboy, Village Voice, New York Times Book Review, and is a regular columnist for the on-line magazine Salon. She lectures and performs at theaters and universities nationwide and currently lives in Northern California.

How do you really feel about sex?

"I want to cut through all the labels and politics, and reveal what I've learned about sex - what has been transformational for me as a lover, a parent, a daughter, and an artist. I want to argue that sexuality is the soul of the creative process, and that erotic expression of any kind is a personal revolution." -- from Full Exposure

Bestselling author and erotic pioneer Susie Bright boldly crosses our culture's most private boundary--our personal eroticism--and reveals the ways in which individual sexual expression has the power to inspire, challenge, and transform all aspects of our lives. Bright explores some of the most complex questions about sexuality today, including: how our emotional and sexual lives intertwine, how we can come clean about our true desire, and what sexual expression teaches us about our bodies. She offers an erotic manifesto of seventeen straightforward guidelines for gaining erotic freedom.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In previous books such as The Sexual State of the Union, Susie Bright has told us about the way things are, and while she continues that mission in Full Exposure, she also presents an inspiring vision of the way things could be. This is far more than a self-help book; it's a blueprint for cultural revolution, focused on the liberation of our erotic expression and, as she puts it, "the creativity it demands, the challenges of sexual candor, and the rewards of coming clean about desire." The personal is always political, goes the adage, but whether she's making readers smile with a reminiscence of her first orgasm (during a fantasy in which she imagined herself as Barbara "Agent 99" Feldon) or evoking our concern over a bomb threat at one of her college lectures, Bright reminds us that the personal is always personal as well. Along the way, she tears down the false barriers between porn and erotica, counsels parents on how to negotiate the line between sexual honesty with their children and mutual privacy, and shows us again and again that gender and desire are never as simplistic as moral and cultural watchdogs would have us believe. "Girls can be women with real sexual appetites," she writes. "Men can be love-bunnies and still have raging hard-ons." Bright also includes a 17-step "sexual manifesto" aimed at enabling readers to reclaim their erotic identities and express desire on their own terms. Very few people are writing about sexuality as honestly and as well as Susie Bright--if you care at all about the subject, you owe it to yourself to read Full Exposure. --Ron Hogan

From Publishers Weekly

A chronicler of U.S. sexual mores (The Sexual State of the Union) as well as one of the most prodigious anthologizers of American erotica (in both the Herotica and Best American Erotica series), Bright tackles the complicated question of "sexual creativity" and "the personal meaning of erotic expression." Moving beyond prescriptive diagrams and techniques in her approach to sexual liberation, she urges readers to recognize how the erotic surrounds us in art, music, cooking and writing, noting that "sexual creativity stems from making something of lifeAinstead of being made over." In 20 short chapters, she discusses such topics as how talking about sex makes it easier to tap into the erotic; the difference between pornography and erotica; how the sexual revolution of the 1960s failed; the sexual epiphanies that celibacy can bring; and the paradoxes of and necessity for sexual ethics. The most refreshing aspect of Bright's breezy, no-holds-barred style is the way she addresses sexual feelings and actions in plain English without embarrassment. In a happy union of form and content, her sexual openness sounds as all-American as a high-school pep rally, yet feels as seductively transgressive as Monica Lewinsky giving tips on political social advancement to a group of novices. But in the end, the constant, feel-good sex chat ends up avoiding or minimizing more complicated sexual and emotional issues and may seem repetitive to those familiar with her message. Agent, Jo Lynne Worley. 10-city author tour; 15-city radio campaign. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (August 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062515543
• ISBN-13: 978-0062515544
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm an author, editor, publisher, performer, sex and culture critic, teacher, seamstress, and pumpkinhead.

I live in Santa Cruz, CA.

My blog is: http://susiebright..com.

My weekly show on Audible:
"In Bed With Susie Bright": http://www.audible.com/susiebright

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Susie Bright lite, August 1, 2000

By 

David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression (Hardcover)

I like Susie Bright. She's cute, she's fun, she's fairly sharp, and her heart's in the right place.

It's hard to recall that once upon a time Bright was a sexual radical: Look, she's the lesbian co-founder of the in-your-face, pro-pornography sex magazine, "On Our Backs"! No, wait, she's bisexual! Say, isn't that her editing annual collections of erotica? Omigod, she's relating a sex fantasy about Dan Quayle! Today, with a steady male partner (in an open relationship) and a daughter about to enter her teens, Bright comes across almost matronly.

It takes an essay like the one in this book about a bomb threat called in before one of her lectures to remind her of what's at stake and inspire some thoughtful writing, and to remind us all that large portions of the country still find someone like Susie Bright a threat.

Unfortunately, with most of this book she's largely treading water. As other reviewers have noted, she seems to have said most of what she has to say. And at 163 pages, this volume comes in a little slim at the price. Newcomers to her may enjoy _Full Exposure_, but for harder, faster Susie, I'd go for _Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World_ or _The Sexual State of the Union_.

And after that, head for the even spicier pastures of Pat Califia's _Public Sex_.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Erotic Reality -- Telling it like it is., August 28, 1999

By 

J. M. Enzer "Black Rock Citizen" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression (Hardcover)

Susie Bright tells us what we know in our hearts to be true, about sex, truth, and living with both.

Full Exposure is Bright addressing so many of the questions we all struggle with, every day: What do I want, how do I know? How do I tell someone else? What if they don't like it? How do I get it? Am I attractive? Am I afraid? Am I Good? and on and on. She addresses these questions coming straight from reality -- expect no fluffy simple answers here, for example, here is Bright talking about talking with kids about sex:

---------start quote-----------

My daughter and I were watching TV the other day, and a scene came on where a boy tries to kiss a girl, and she protests, pushing him away. "They always do that," Aretha said. "Why does the girl always push the kisser away?" And I knew what the next question was, because she also sees how that same darn girl ends up kissing that same boy in the end. Now I had my whole little spiel lined up, and I was ready to go about how sexist most movies are, and how women are always played for virgin fools or whorish demons. But Aretha's question was so deep, deeper than my Hollywood critique. What do I want to tell her about being a woman, and about what women want from sex? I realize that I want her to know, right off the bat, that I'm still answering that question for myself.

-------------end quote---------

At the end of the book is a chapter offering a series of, well sort of "thought experiments". I can't wait to try out the ones I haven't done yet.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roll Your Own Sexual Revolution!, January 17, 2002

By 

Elderbear (Loma Linda, Aztlan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression (Paperback)

I found in Full Exposure a wonderful, sex-positive volume, melding philosophy, apologetics, and personal anecdotes. I enjoy Susie Bright's casting the burden of proof onto the naysayers, requiring that the repressed and the frightened justify their censorious dogma. And when they try, she shoots them down, like beer cans lined up on the back fence.

She does, after all, write about (a fantasy of) making love to Dan Quayle ... reading that was the most I'd ever appreciated the man--and this leads to one of her _dogmas_: "Assume everybody is sexual."

This is not a heavyweight philosophical deconstruction of the sexual attitudes of western society, but it is a nice guerilla attack on the sexual terrorism embedded in our culture. Susie encourages the readers to roll their own sexual manifestos, to question the manipulative & schizophrenic messages that we receive about sexuality, sensuality, and our bodies from the culture around us.

A wonderful book to read if you're engaged in sexual liberation, whether from a sex-hating religion or from the commercial cooption of sexuality that constantly bombards us. A great starting point for your own sexual revolution!

(If you'd like to discuss this review or book in more depth, please click on the "about me" link above & send me an email. Thanks!)