All posts tagged: fantasies

Breakups, fantasies and her most cutting lyrics: inside Taylor’s Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department | Taylor Swift

Breakups, fantasies and her most cutting lyrics: inside Taylor’s Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department | Taylor Swift

Published by skeptic

She’s rebuking the public for the first time Swift named an entire album after the concept of her reputation and has been engaging with public perceptions of her as far back as 2010’s Speak Now; songs such as Mean, Blank Space and the gothic half of Reputation lash out directly at critics. But she’s never openly condemned her listeners before her new album The Tortured Poets Department, in songs that constitute some of its most daring moments. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? feels like a deservedly bitter, barbed update of the cutesier and more cloying Anti-Hero that suggests Swift is the way she is because of the twisted culture she grew up in and had to contort herself to fit into: “You taught me, you caged me, and then you called me crazy,” she seethes, sounding quite high on the fearsome power commentators have ascribed to her. Most thrilling is But Daddy I Love Him, named after a line that astute listeners will recognise from The Little Mermaid as Ariel protests to King Triton …

7 Fascinating Things ‘Rule 34’ Explains About Your Sexuality | Dr. Marty Klein

7 Fascinating Things ‘Rule 34’ Explains About Your Sexuality | Dr. Marty Klein

Published by skeptic

Rule 34 summarizes everything about sexuality. According to the Urban Dictionary, Rule 34 is a “[g]enerally accepted internet rule that states that pornography or sexually related material exists for any conceivable subject.” RELATED: The Two Words That Answer (Almost) Every Sex Question Men Have For Women 7 Fascinating Things Rule 34 Explains About Human Sexuality 1. Rule 34 says that human sexual fantasy is limitless. It says that anything can be eroticized, can be arousing, can be life-affirming. It reminds us that any ideas we have about what’s normal sex are about us, not about sex. I’m always telling patients, “Don’t blame sex for your ideas about sex.” 2. Rule 34 reminds us exactly what pornography is: a library of human eroticism. Pornography is a celebration of how humans can stretch their erotic imagination — sometimes in ways that disturb you or me. Nevertheless, pornography celebrates the erotic imagination beyond specific content. Like the ability to imagine the future, and the knowledge that we’re going to die, the enormous range of pornography is uniquely human. 3. …

How (and Why) Our Sexual Fantasies Change as We Age

How (and Why) Our Sexual Fantasies Change as We Age

Published by skeptic

Source: Trovato / Unsplash Over the course of my career, I’ve studied the sexual fantasies of more than 10,000 people from all around the world. One of the most interesting things I’ve observed in my work thus far is that people at different decades of life seem to have remarkably different kinds of fantasies. For example, among the most consistent findings are that people in their 20s tend to have the kinkiest fantasies out of all age brackets. In addition, people in their 40s and 50s have the most fantasies about non-monogamy and multiple partners. So why do people seem to fantasize about different things at different points of their lives? There are likely to be multiple factors at play, given that sexual fantasies are a complex biopsychosocial phenomenon. However, my working hypothesis is that a great deal of this can be explained by age-related changes in personality. Put another way, our personalities evolve over the course of our lives, and our fantasies may co-evolve with them. Personality is Not Static Across the Lifespan While …

‘I get into trouble’: Gillian Anderson on being brave, her resting face and much anticipated book of sexual fantasies | Culture

‘I get into trouble’: Gillian Anderson on being brave, her resting face and much anticipated book of sexual fantasies | Culture

Published by skeptic

“I have a tendency to be cast as those types of women who have unbelievable brains,” says Gillian Anderson, running her hands through her glamour of blonde hair, “because my resting face is intellectual, as if I’m thinking about Proust or the world order. When in fact it’s usually, actually, dinner.” The next unbelievably brained woman Anderson will play is British journalist Emily Maitlis, in Scoop, a film about the process of securing her 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. This was the interview in which he discussed his friendship with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, his inability to sweat, and the Woking branch of Pizza Express, and, in 50 fast minutes, managed to do more damage to the royal family than five seasons of The Crown. This will not be the first time Anderson has played a “real person” on screen. After growing up in London and moving to Michigan at 11, she found community in the punk scene as a teenager, before lurching into wild fame in her 20s as Agent Scully in The …

In the age of dragon fantasies, FX’s “Shōgun” defines what it means to be an event series

In the age of dragon fantasies, FX’s “Shōgun” defines what it means to be an event series

Published by skeptic

By the conclusion of FX’s “Shōgun,” we won’t be talking about Cosmo Jarvis. He takes second billing to Hiroyuki Sanada, which is proper. It becomes apparent that Jarvis’ character, John Blackthorne, is designed to be overwhelmed by the forces surrounding him. From feudal Japan’s landscape and its politics, to the purposeful ferocity of Lord Toranaga and his vassals, to the etiquette intricacies he fails to grasp and the cost of his clumsy words, Blackthorne nearly drowns in all of it. In the end, Blackthorne comes to understand that he can only pray to be towed by Sanada’s Lord Toranaga, who generates a gravitational pull in a constellation of indelible characters and mighty performances. Foremost among them, aside from Sanada, is Anna Sawai as Mariko, a haunted noblewoman and Christian convert whom Toranaga assigns to Blackthorne as his interpreter and minder. Her face is a minimalist canvas through which all things translate plainly, making the rare appearance of a tear that much more piercing. Sawai plays the lead in the Apple TV+ series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” …

Erotic fantasies, a secret garden to be cultivated

Erotic fantasies, a secret garden to be cultivated

Published by skeptic

SEX ACCORDING TO MAÏA MAïA MAZAURETTE Are the French still interested in “imaginary representations expressing more or less conscious desires” – the Larousse dictionary definition of fantasy? Clearly, less and less. Over the past 20 years, Google searches for the word have fallen by a factor of four with an even more marked collapse in English-speaking countries (seven times fewer searches). According to the Sexreport 2023 by loveshop Amorélie, fantasy is not indispensable: Only a third of respondents mention it among their erotic stimulants. The primary vector of arousal remains physical contact (from cuddling to caressing erogenous zones), which leads us to the mischievous conclusion that, when it comes to boosting desire, the body always wins out over the brain. However, this relegation of fantasy raises a fascinating question: If several decades of erotic liberation should have made our imaginations flourish, why are we facing disinterest and perhaps even impoverishment? Could it be that we’ve become jaded? There is no denying that since the democratization of the internet, fantasies have become public. Under the cover …

how tourists indulge their influencer fantasies

how tourists indulge their influencer fantasies

Published by skeptic

A town in the US state of Vermont closed its roads to tourists in September 2023 after a social media tag sparked a swarm of visitors that overwhelmed the rural destination. Videos on TikTok were seen by thousands and the hashtag #sleepyhollowfarm went viral, prompting a tourist rush to the pretty New England town of Pomfret, where visitors tried to take photos of themselves against the countryside backdrop. The town, famous for its fall foliage, criticised this as problematic and “influencer tourism”, part of a travel trend where a social media phenomenon can spark an overwhelming and unexpected rise in visitor numbers. Traditionally, we think of tourists as travelling to gain new experiences. They look at sites, take photographs and collect souvenirs. However, this relationship between the tourist and touring is changing. Driven by 24-hour access to social media, some tourists now travel primarily to have an experience that looks good online. Around 75% of people in a recent American Express survey said they had been inspired to visit somewhere by social media. Some tourists …

Emerald Fennell’s Poisoned Fantasies – The Atlantic

Emerald Fennell’s Poisoned Fantasies – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

Before Barbie, the most subversively pink product to combust its way through Hollywood of late was Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, a pastel-hued rape-revenge thriller with a sting in its tail. Fennell loves to manipulate cinematic tropes into discomfiting shapes. Her debut feature, which starred Carey Mulligan as a med-school dropout on a mission to ensnare predatory men, layered jagged themes—trauma, violence, female rage—with beguiling, poppy visuals. Promising Young Woman, while alarming some critics, was widely praised as a fascinating excavation of rape culture. And yet, by winking in the film at well-known touchstones of the aughts, Fennell seemed to be doing something else too: digging into recent history until she found the rotten foundations underneath. The movie debuted at Sundance in January 2020. Over the course of about 18 months, Fennell went into lockdown with her baby, embarked on a vigorous press campaign conducted almost entirely over Zoom, became the first British woman to be nominated for a directing Oscar, got pregnant with her second child, and then won the Academy Award for Best …

“Priscilla” Recognizes the Irresistible Pull of Girlish Fantasies

“Priscilla” Recognizes the Irresistible Pull of Girlish Fantasies

Published by skeptic

In Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s sensitive, minor-key portrait of Elvis Presley’s ex-wife Priscilla Presley, there’s a fleeting shot of the King (played by Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi) performing onstage. His back is turned to the camera; as he opens his arms to the crowd before him, he lifts his signature cape and his body blocks out the lights. It’s an unusual perspective. In the many depictions of the icon, Elvis tends to be seen the way his fans saw him: in the spotlight, with his artistry on full display. But Priscilla—as rendered by Coppola and embodied by Cailee Spaeny—had a different point of view. He was a silhouette, a shadow, a man she could not see clearly. Melancholy young women searching for escape are one of Coppola’s favorite subjects, and Priscilla may be her most haunting endeavor thus far. The film, based on Priscilla’s memoir, Elvis and Me, tracks its subject for about a decade of her life, from the time she met her husband-to-be, when she was a 14-year-old ninth grader, to the moment she left …

The Republican Delusion Machine – The Atlantic

The Republican Delusion Machine – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

Last night was the night a lot of bills came due for Kevin McCarthy. The bill came due for pandering to his party’s extremes, for desperate deals and broken promises. Most of all, the bill came due for the House Republicans’ failure in the elections of 2022. Republicans have had a lot of bad elections since Donald Trump took over the party. They lost the popular vote for president in 2016, they lost the House in 2018, they lost the presidency in 2020, and they lost the Senate in 2021. The 2022 election cycle was supposed to break the Trump curse. It was supposed to be the year of the red wave that would sweep away Joe Biden’s woke mob in Congress. Instead, Republicans posted net losses of one seat in the U.S. Senate, two governorships, and four state legislative chambers. Amid all of the defeats, there was one piece of good news: They reclaimed the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. But that seeming victory proved deceptive. Democrats had lost the majority, but …