Too Far?

M.A. asks, "I made a Facebook page for my cat. Have I gone too far?"

My initial reaction to this question was, "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," but then I had to give it a bit more thought. Because while I'm sure you may be actually offending your cat instead of honoring your cat (more on that in a minute), we, of course, have to consider what is "too far."

You're familiar with LOLcats, yes? How could you not be? I currently have this guy hanging on my cubicle wall at work because he just makes me giggle every time I look at him. With his little tongue sticking out. So cute. And I love LOLcats - I really do. But I am almost positive that there are some cats on there into whose mouths words were placed that do not belong there. For example, I created this one with my cat, based on his undying love of my yoga mat. But then two other people recaptioned it, one of them naming my cat "Millie." His name is not "Millie." And while the caption is kind of funny, I know (because we've chatted about it) that those were not the thoughts running through my cat's head at the time. And he was a little offended by the fact that someone thought his tan was fake.

The point I'm trying to make here is that unless your cat gets to update his/her own Facebook page, or has some sort of creative control over the content, you may find that you are actually completely mis-representing your cat to the rest of the cats on Facebook. And the rest of the humans, for that matter. So I'd just be careful what you put up there. If you post, "ate mouse today and LOL'd" as a status update and wake up with scratches all over your face, well, you'll really only have yourself to blame.

But then I read this article on Cracked.com (fantastic site, by the way, if you're into the whole random factoid kind of thing, which I totally am). Go ahead and take the minute or two to read the thing. Or just skip to the number one entry. Yeah. That, I think, would constitute going too far. As Janeane Garofalo said in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, "It's okay to love your pets, just don't love your pets." Or bang and eat them.

So in that context, no, I don't think creating a Facebook page for your cat it going too far. Just be careful what you post there or you might, you know, suddenly have a very unpleasant living situation at home.

Thank you, M.A. for your question! Keep 'em coming, guys! askmisskittyanything@gmail.com

Stubble

T.E. asks, "Dear Miss Kitty,

The current crop of male actors and country music stars all seem to be sporting a three or four day stubble. Yet they rock it. They ooze "hipster chic".

On the other hand, if I didn't shave for a few days I would simply appear homeless. Why?"

I have one word for you, T.E. - "stylists."

I don't know if you remember back in the '80s when piranha pants became popular, but it was a similar thing. The guys in Def Leppard were able to afford the $300 shredded jeans where some poor worker in a sweat shop spent hours making sure every rip and every tear was evenly spaced, perfectly shredded. There was (I almost hate to say it) a sort of art form involved in perfectly distressing a pair of jeans so you could look like a rock star who didn't care about your appearance. Of course, those of us who couldn't afford the $300 jeans thought, "Hey, I can do that myself with a pair of scissors!" Except mostly, we just ended up looking dumb. Because we didn't have the eye for symmetrical distressing! And we didn't know when to stop.

Same thing applies to scruff. See, all those scruffy movie stars have someone to tell them when the scruff is too long, when it's not as filled in on one side as the other, and when it is time to get rid of the stuff creeping up towards their eyeballs. And that person is called a stylist. The stylist not only tells the star what shade of brown leather jacket goes best with his fuzz, but she has all kinds of tools for shaping, sculpting, and filling in and problem areas. She will remind the star to shave his neck. She will stay on him about oral hygiene so that his teeth are perfect and blindingly white for maximum glistening through the bristles. In short, it is her job to make sure his stubble is perfectly trimmed and conditioned for maximum sexiness. Literally. That's what she gets paid for.

I'm guessing you, on the other hand, don't have a full-person's-annual-salary-and-health-benefits-worth of disposable income lying around with which to pay a stylist - most of us "normal" people don't. And that is okay. But it means that when you were trying to sculpt your stubble, you may have had the electric razor on "2" for one side of your face and "1" for the other. Or that scar on your chin from when you fell out of a tree when you were nine and had to get six stitches that just doesn't grow hair will shine through like a neon sign saying, "I'm too poor to have my own personal makeup artist fix this for me!" And you know what? That's okay. Because you are real. And real is sexy in its own right.

If you're really worried about it, though, ask around amongst your female friends to see if they dig the stubble look on you. If not, you might want to stick with a regular shaving routine until such time as you can afford a stylist.

Thank you, T.E. for your question! Keep 'em coming, guys! askmisskittyanything@gmail.com

Belly Dancing

H.B. asks, "Dear Miss Kitty,

So my new girlfriend takes these bellydance classes and they have a performance coming up that's called a 'hafla.' I've been to one before, and she kept asking me all of these questions about the other dancers: "Did you notice when the one woman shimmied so hard her boobs almost fell out? Did you notice the beading on the butts? The appliques? Aren't the fifteen year-old's hip drops amazing? What did you think of the chest work?" etc. How do I answer these questions in such a way that it sounds like I paid attention without making it sound like I paid TOO MUCH attention? And is it better for me to act like I'm being dragged to the event or do you think it's ok to show my enthusiasm for the dancing?

H. B."

Kudos on landing a chick who belly dances, dude. Well done.

I have to say, first of all, that chances are when your girlfriend asks you those kinds of questions, she's chatting about the show the same way anyone would after seeing any kind of show. Or she's fishing. One of the two. It can be hard to tell because women are sneaky.

But I can help you, with simple suggestions on how to answer such questions in a polite "I was watching the show" kind of way without venturing into "I had to take an extra ten minutes in the men's room at intermission" kind of a way.

For example, when she asks, "Did you notice when the one woman shimmied so hard her boobs almost fell out?" you can reply, "Thank goodness they didn't!" Just make sure to make it sound sincere - any sarcasm here could be the end of your relationship. As could expounding on the subject, thus turning yourself into the bumbling idiot in every romantic comedy movie ever made.

When she asks, "Did you notice the beading on the butts? The appliques?" simply reply, "No. I was listening to the music and didn't really notice." This will show you were paying attention to the show, but not oogling the other dancers.

When she asks, "Aren't the fifteen year-old's hip drops amazing?" it is okay to just let that question sink to the bottom of the conversation, never to be found again, not even by those guys who found the Titanic. There is no good answer to that question, so it's probably best to become violently ill, or have your mouth full to something that you can either spray at her when she asks (in an attempt to speak with your mouth full - if it looks like a spit-take, she'll get suspicious), or that you can "choke on" because you "swallowed wrong." In any case, a swift change of subject is the best response.

And finally, when she asks, "What did you think of the chest work?" tell her that hers was amazing and give her a quick kiss.

If you are dating a woman who belly dances, she gets it. She knows it is a type of performance and it is to be viewed as an art form, so she would probably appreciate it if you showed some sort of enthusiasm about going to see her show. Specifically, going to see her in her show. The other performers are blurs of color and jingles that just make her look that much better.

Got it?

Thank you, H.B. for your question! Keep 'em coming guys! askmisskittyanything@gmail.com

Tolerance

J.M. asks, "Dear Miss Kitty:
I believe that I'm intelligent enough to know that the deeply-ingrained nature of a large chunk of the US that is "against" LGBT rights, such as same-sex marriage and elimination of DADT, is that they are not actually "homophobic," per se, in that they
literally have a "fear of homosexuals," but rather that they simply have an aversion to homosexuals or the idea of same-sex activity.

I understand that there is a religious justification to be "against" homosexuals and/or same-sex activity, but many of the folks "against" LGBTs neither "fear" them, nor use religious justification for persecution.

So my question is, what other justifications are there for the social "othering" and persecution of LGBT Americans, does sexuality and sexual attraction have a moral standard outside of religion, and why is the resistance to LGBT acceptance so intense even in secular America?"

Hi, J.M.

First of all, I don't think there are any legitimate justifications for being "against" homosexuals and/or same-sex activity.

None.

I'm saying that right out at the front so everyone knows what kind of post this will be. If you disagree with me on that point, you may want to stop reading right now because I will offend you. But that is my opinion, one I hold very dear, and I am allowed to have that opinion as much as you are allowed to disagree with it.

Now, that being said, there are a lot of people out there who still feel kind of ooky when they see two men kiss (and for those of you who have no problem with it, those are three separate links, for which I will just say, "You're welcome"). Okay, they have a hang-up. That's their business.

I think the larger issue here is that America is, really, a very sexually repressed country. We like to think we are advanced, but we're not. I would go so far to say that it is only in the last few years that the idea of heterosexual sex with the woman on top became mainstream. Prior to that, it meant she was a crazy sex-fiend lunatic and that poor man she's with had better watch out because there's no telling what she'll do to him.

We are taught from a very young age to be ashamed of our bodies. Keep everything hidden. Don't touch anyone or let anyone touch you because it might lead to something bad. And certainly don't let anyone that you like know that you like them because that means opening yourself up to someone which means you will get hurt and oh dear god, we should never ever ever allow ourselves to get hurt!

But even when they try to be open about it and teach us about sex in school, it is done from a very sterile, clinical perspective. "When the man becomes aroused, he experiences increased blood flow to the penis, which then becomes hard." There is absolutely no discussion about what happens to make him become aroused. And all of those poor little boys running around wearing corduroy pants that just feel so good start to think they are crazy because their own pants turned them on. There is nobody to tell them that this is normal, and that it doesn't mean they are in love with corduroy pants and need to marry corduroy pants someday to have little half-human half-pants children, that it's all just a matter of their hormones going ape shit at the moment. And, of course, since he's too embarrassed to say anything, it becomes a shameful secret, which (oddly) then makes him get more turned on by his own pants and it becomes this vicious cycle wherein he asks all of his adult sexual partners to invest in corduroy undergarments. All because we were taught only the mechanics of heterosexual sex in school, but none of the other physical, spiritual, or emotional components of intimacy.

So we're weird about sex in general. It's how we are. I'm not saying that's good and I'm not saying that's bad. It is the state of our culture right now. Americans are weird about sex. We're fine with watching people blow one another up in movies and video games, but as soon as there is intimacy involved, that shit gets an NC-17 rating and your friends and colleagues look at you funny if you express any interest in seeing that film or playing that video game.

What makes this so hard for the LGBT community, then, is that for people who are not LGBT, that is a completely foreign kind of sex. Completely. A lot of them can't even figure out the mechanics of it. Yes, it is true that a lot of people out there are also unfamiliar with things like bondage, but they can at least try it on a smaller scale in the comfort of their own bedroom and they get to feel all naughty for using silk scarves in their basically missionary sex. It is close to the realm of the imaginable. For men who are sexually repressed, the idea of things going into or coming out of certain orifices is just not imaginable. Therefore anyone who likes that sort of thing must be really friggin' weird. And seeing as the man in question is really repressed in the first place, he's not too keen on being anywhere near anyone who is really friggin' weird. Which is probably better for us weirdos. He just happens to be really loud, too, which is annoying.

I think that that same sexually repressed man is also weirded out by people with fetishes, exhibitionists, any person whose sexual experience isn't exactly like his. He thinks he knows what sex is and what sex is supposed to be and anyone who does anything else is wrong. Because if there is the possibility that they are right in what they are doing, then he must be wrong and a deviant and all of that stuff, which just really doesn't fit in with his world view.

The thing is, people with fetishes and exhibitionists and the like aren't as vocal as the LGBT community. I'm not saying that if the LGBT community would just shut up that things would be fine - I am not advocating that AT ALL. If anything, I'm saying the exhibitionists should speak up more. Sex is a very personal thing. A VERY personal thing. I might even go so far as to say that people's sexual preferences are like snowflakes - no two people are turned on by exactly the same thing. And maybe if as a society, we were more aware of just how diverse everyone's tastes are, we'd be more accepting of all of them. And more accepting of ourselves.

I kind of have to thank the LGBT community for being the trailblazers here. It's not easy to be the first to say, "We like something that is different to what you like," so thank you for doing that. Hopefully someday we'll all be able to talk openly about sex and preferences and such without anyone getting hurt.

Thank you, J.M. for your question. Keep 'em coming, guys! askmisskittyanything@gmail.com