The Pursuit of Sex

Contemplations on sexiness, sensuality & "feeling sexy for yourself" from a girl who's not getting any.

After two sets of cancelled drinks plans, I spent my Friday in.

I am always glad for an excuse to have a night at home, especially when there is tangible proof that I’ve actively tried to make it otherwise. So, guilt-free and with little but Paolo Nutini, a bottle of red wine, and myself for company, I had a steaming hot shower, moisturised, and wore only my dressing gown while essential oils sunk into my skin. Twirling around my apartment singing while I cooked, I was struck by a dizzying sense of sexiness. I didn’t necessarily think I looked sexy; it was more the way I felt.

Since hitting the last stages of puberty, sexiness has been a feeling I am well acquainted with. Listening to RnB in the shower in high school, striding out in the final repeat of hill sprints during cross country practice as sweat poured off me, wearing a matching lingerie set under my work clothes to my corporate job, sipping an espresso martini at a dimly lit bar in Nolita with one of my best friends; alone, in a crowd, or one-on-one, the range of environments in which I’ve felt sexy is practically limitless.

Recently, I’ve been turning these moments over in my mind, tasting them on my tongue. Is it not interesting that one physio-emotional state can be experienced in so many dissimilar contexts?

Etymologically, the word finds its root (and most of its letters) in ‘sex’. “Sexy” was first used in 1905 to mean ‘engrossed in sex’. The meaning of ‘sexually attractive’ developed by 1912 to describe things that were sexually suggestive or stimulating. A word is a vessel of meaning, and language is a gorgeous, fickle, fluid, thing. It naturally follows that as culture and society has revised its attitudes towards the adjective over time, from a technical term for gender to a descriptor of allure and appeal, the meaning it carries has broadened, too.

“Sexy things are fleeting. The chance encounter, the pregnant pause, the flirtatious touch, the generous laugh—these are the sexy, ephemeral moments of life. What’s sexy is always here and now.”

– Your Phone is Why You Don't Feel Sexy by

Catherine Shannon

If sex is the fulfilment of eros, carnal desire, surely sexiness is the entrapment and attraction mechanism by which to achieve it. My question, then, is: Does sexiness pre-requisite, or necessitate, the pursuit of sex, directly or indirectly?

In a modern context, I wonder what it is to feel sexy. When I engaged in my usual mid-writing research rabbit hole, during which I extensively read/listen/watch on the topic in question to pulse check the conversations being had, I found that most pieces examined sexiness through the lens of self-empowerment. Many argued that sexiness is about being “unapologetically you”, comfortable in your own skin, and so on. The popular sentiment is that sexiness comes from within and exists outside of external perception.

What about sensuality? Unlike sexuality or sexiness, sensuality is rooted in the word ‘sense’ as it relates to consciousness and feeling. Something about it feels softer, grounded in a richer source of pleasure. The heightened enjoyment of sensory experiences and the beauty and pleasure they convey.

r/AskWomen Reddit thread, “What does feeling "sexy" feel like?”

I tend to engage in extended periods of celibacy between bouts of interest in sexual or romantic partners; my record thus far was a year and a half. During this time, when I would get ready for a night out, hold prolonged eye contact with another, or laugh with my girlfriends over dinner, I would often feel sexy. Upon a deeper examination, I realise that just because I deliberately wasn’t having sex, it didn’t mean that I wasn’t subconsciously pursuing the attraction of it. I didn't want to be sexually attainable, but I did still want to feel admired and desired.

But is it truly possible— to feel sexy for yourself?

With her TikTok series topically named, ‘feeling sexier for yourself’, @GretaLouiseTome seems to think so. Her How-To saga contains advice spanning everything from taking nudes, to getting routine hair removal, from walking outside instead of taking the subway, to self-tanning, eating healthy, staying hydrated, having a matching manicure & pedicure, buying flowers for yourself, moisturising, wearing Victoria’s Secret push up bras, and lighting candles while you get ready, amongst a long list of other suggestions. Citing ‘the Marilyn Monroe Effect’ as her inspiration, Greta roots her definition of sexiness in the act of radiating attractive energy. The most viral video in this series racked up 9.7M views and her 41-part TikTok playlist has received over 44.6M views collectively.

I, too, owe many of Greta’s practices credit for contributing to my feeling sexy. But once again, I have to ask whether it is sexiness that these things accumulate to. How can one word construe so much? Many points in Greta’s list add up to looking and feeling put together, healthy, confident, and conventionally attractive.

I was at a wine bar in Bowery this week, gossiping with a girlfriend over two delicious bottles of red. Outside, it was blustery and snowy. Inside, we were obnoxious in our enjoyment. Soon, we became aware of the interest we had attracted from the pair sitting next to us. Sensing a cracked door, we wedged our way into their conversation, sans subtlety, to discuss the central theme of this exact piece you are currently reading. Market research! An honourable pursuit, no less! The woman, let’s call her Jenn, identified as straight, but occasionally slept with other women. The man, let’s call him Alex, was straight and, as was later rather capriciously revealed, married. We ended up hijacking their catch up for almost two hours and spoke exclusively and tirelessly about the nuances and depths in which sexuality, sexiness, and sex have played out in each of our experiences.

Jenn feels sexy occasionally, most often mid-workout. When she is sweating hard and lifting heavy. On feeling sexy in a deliberately sexual context, she admitted that she feels a lot less performative and much more organically sexy when being intimate with a woman.

Alex confessed that he rarely feels sexy; it is not a feeling he is particularly comfortable in or used to experiencing. Although, when he does feel sexy, it is almost always linked to achievement and feeling capable. Post-workout, post-sex. An interesting point of insistence, Alex said that he didn’t often feel sexy when he was actually having sex, which prompted me to ask whether he thought his sexiness was externally sourced. For example, would a women telling him she found him sexy make him feel so. He confessed that it would.

Perhaps this is the case for all of us, but I think it is especially so for men, who are rarely encouraged to feel sexy, either on their own, or even during the act of sex. There is endless pressure and conversation around the absolute necessity of female sexiness, and very very little around male sexiness.

For both Jenn and Alex, sexiness could be pinpointed to moments of physical exertion, confidence, and achievement. An interesting trifecta, not entirely apart from the coital act itself.

I also can’t help but squirm slightly when I consider the ever-present hand of the patriarchy and its pervasive way of shaping my thoughts, desires, and sense of self without my consent. In particular, Margaret Atwood’s words haunt me:

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

―Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

I wonder if I am truly feeling sexy for myself when I am freshly shaven, or when I am wearing lingerie to the office. Is my understanding of my own pleasure built on the foundations of an internalised male gaze?

Back to the initial question— does sexiness necessitate the pursuit of sex? If you are not having, seeking, or pursuing sex, is it truly sexiness that you are feeling?

I wonder if ‘sexy’ might simply be a heteronormative word we’ve become used to employing for a range of different emotions that, really, don’t orbit around men or the act of sex at all. But one word to describe a plethora of feelings entirely apart. Empowerment, capability, vanity, beauty, for example. Dancing around my kitchen freshly showered, I wager that a feeling of true comfort and bubbly bliss is what I’m feeling, more so than sexiness.

How much do we conflate in that word so that it is palatable to a patriarchal society? For many women, feeling sexy is acceptable because it implies the consent and involvement of men. Maybe we don’t really allow, or encourage, ourselves to have the vocabulary for anything else.

When I think about sex, and the sources of pleasure I derive from it, I recall the way it makes me feel and the way it allows me to make another feel. That delicate and delectable balance between power and desire. The beauty, joy, confidence, satisfaction, and connection it lends. Perhaps it is these underlying forces that sexiness boils down to.

Not every good thing a woman feels must be in the service of men or sex (or by extension, reproduction). Maybe we ought to strip the word back to its prior simplicity. Feeling sexy is a breathtaking thing, but it is not all there is.

“There have, of course, been times when I have felt almost unbearably sexy for no apparent or justifiable reason: retrieving the newspaper in pajamas and clogs, standing over the kitchen sink washing dishes, pondering the produce selection at Whole Foods. None of these occasions led to or had anything to do with an actual sex act.

In other words, let's get one thing very clear: The phenomenon I'm discussing has to do with sexiness, not horniness. There is a sizable, if nuanced, distinction. If this were the analogy portion of the SAT, we might say that sexiness is to horniness as epicureanism is to hunger. Whereas lust tends to limit its reach to particular people or stretches of time (and, like hunger, can presumably be sated via fairly standard channels), sexiness is a state of mind. It is inextricably linked to sex as a concept but wholly separate from fornication. Despite our preoccupation with the sexiness of women, sexiness applies to both genders. Despite the youth-centric tyranny of our times, it transcends age. As much about posture and voice intonation as it is about cleavage or skirt length or the dimensions of our posteriors, feeling sexy is, at its root, about owning ourselves. It's being at home in our own skins. No wonder it is so damn elusive.”

— Meghan Daum, “Secret to feeling sexy: It's all in the mind”

If there is to be any takeaway, I think it is that I want to seize more agency when connecting with what I’m actually feeling. It’s time to be more articulate about the sensations that are mine alone.

Maybe it is not that deep. Maybe it is.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

— Still I Rise, Maya Angelou

Happy Valentine’s Day, lovelies!! I hope you’re feeling sexy and illustrious and powerful and vain and capable and a thousand other glorious things xxxx