Intellectual and Erotic Stimulation

Bright, Susie. Mommy's Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn & Cherry Pie. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2003.

I've been reading Susie Bright's blog for a while now, and I generally enjoy it very much. She is often interesting, clever, and insightful with a wonderful combination of useful information about the world of sexuality and culture and delightful tidbits from her personal world. In fact, I get enough pleasure out of Susie Bright's blog that I felt like maybe I should be supporting her in some way. I did donate an almost insignificant amount to her "change jar," but as a grad student not actually making enough to pay for my schoolbooks, I thought that the least I could do was buy a couple of her more recent books to offer me some delightful diversion from the history and theory that I should be reading.

At first I was dubious about Mommy's Little Girl; the last thing I wanted was my favorite liberal, nonmonogamous, radical sexpert doing was telling me all about how cute her daughter was or how great it was to have a nuclear family. Bleh. But Mommy's Little Girl is nothing like that. Susie Bright remains as fun and brilliant and insightful as ever, and this book contains some truly delightful tidbits. Her reflections on the 1940s pinups by Alberto Vargas were vibrant and wonderful, though dimmed by the fact that images she referenced could not (for money and copyright issues, I'm sure) be included in the book and were difficult to locate online. While the first section of the book does include several essays on different aspects of motherhood, Bright reveals herself to be the cool liberal mommy that one might imagine without preaching proper parenting in any way. A later section of the book includes an tiny little travelogue in the form of a book tour diary and Bright's succint description of her visit to each city was clear and insteresting and beautiful. I do have a question, however; in one of the final essays of the book, Bright mentions seeing 'her' brand of vibrator, condom, lube, etc. By 'her brand' she means the ones she has been recommending for years. While I'm well aware of her promotion of the Hitachi Magic Wand in terms of vibrators, why do I have no idea what she was talking about in terms of condoms and lube? Did I somehow miss these in earlier writings, or disregard them as irrelevant to my life in some strange way? If I go back and reread your older books will I find them, magical recommendations buried somewhere among your insights? Because of this reference, I feel like I need to know. What are Susie Bright's favorite condoms and lube?

One thing that suprised me greatly was the amount of reflection on Los Angeles in this book. Considering that Bright lives in Northern California and geography and travel aren't exactly the main subjects of the collection, her insights about my current home are both brilliant and tragic. She describes LA as an "illusion-factory incarnate" and notes the tyrrany of perfect femininity that is part of the local culture. But it was heartbreaking and true to read "There is no love here! Anyone can get laid, but no one can have a realtionship. Everything is ephemeral; passion doesn't last...When you live in a town that's based on the values of a stage, what do you expect? I don't know how to fall in love in LA anymore, either." I'd very much like to believe that the desolation and illusion are not all there is to LA, but I'm not so sure.

The magic of this book, despite the bits with Los Angeles (and New York certainly doesn't fare any better), is that it is joyful, hopeful, celebratory throughout. Even in Bright's reflections on the death of a good friend, her writing is life-affirming. Bright takes such obvious pleasure in friends, family, sex, and cherry pie that she communicates that joy and openness to her readers. This book made me want to dance, to scream, to make love; anything to appreciate the simple pleasures of the world that are so profound, yet so easily neglected. The book made me fall a little more in love, both with Susie Bright and with the world.