Before oral sex made an appearance in romance novels in the 80s, this was about as much foreplay as a heroine could expect in a typical sex scene:
It was almost as if the heroine was a transistor radio, and the hero was trying to find a radio station in Tokyo on the AM channel.
It’s the Tierra del Fuego I always try to find.
I want to know who’s responsible for introducing the term “laving” to romance. And why is laving reserved for nipples only? I can never read this word without thinking that the author has stumbled into franglais. For the record, I’ve never seen this “word” used in any other kind of book, EVAR.
It’s the outstretched claws that worry me in this photo. Ow.
I want to know who’s responsible for introducing the term “laving†to romance. And why is laving reserved for nipples only?
I blame Herman Melville. He used the word “lave” all the time, which may be why modern writers think it was more popular in the past.
Although it’s a very old word, dating back in at least one form to before 1066.
Popsicles are laved. Boobies are not. The word ‘lave’ inspires all sorts of detrimental mental images into my book-reading, like drool….
lave…..hmm..isnt that a uber manly power tool??? oh wait, thats a Lathe..my bad…
I want to lathe your Husky with my Snap-on she moaned?
I did read a romance novel where either a confused author or lazy copy editor substituted “lathed” for “laved”. It sounded far too painful for me.
And for whatever it’s worth, I have no problem as an author or a reader with laved. It’s an alternative to “lick” and “tongue” (verb).
Somewhere I heard the rare minute or so of fingering prior to penetration that apparently serves to TURN THE HEROINE ON LEIK WHOA referred to as “checking the roast.”
Now both roast checking and radio tuning are forever going to make me laugh at just the wrong moment
oh, woe. 😉
My varification word is personal.
No, really: “personal38.” See? *g*
“checking the roast.â€
Ho boy, now I’m thinking of that “pussy or raw meat” test.
God help me.
Aiieee. I better buy a hand mirror on the way home.
fiveandfour, I think I’m now scarred for life.
See, I mentioned things that mortify me with teh funny here, and then they become *even more mortifiying*. And funny.
It’s some kind of fantastic return on mortification investment.
13 out of 15. I was fooled by the chicken and a pile of pink-looking steak. I guess I know my pussy, but not quite well enough.
I think I’m now scarred for life
::Dusts hands off:: My work here is done.
I gave my sons who are 18 and 20 the Raw Meat test and they passed with flying colors. What a relief.
When I read the word “laving” in a romance, I flash on my cat cleaning his ass.
Technically correct, unattractive word.
::Dusts hands off:: My work here is done.
It’s nice to have willing assistants in our constant quest to scar the eyeballs and minds of romance novel readers everywhere.
I think that I just died a little bit inside.
Link to this image: http://www.zipperfish.com/free/quizimages/pussy4.jpg
ACTUAL CODE:
Does this some how make me less of a gay man?
(I WAS raised with gynecologist for a mother, though.
Sorry for the double picture, I’m incompetent when it comes to using technology.
Heh, I got the same thing, LDH (even though I’m a girrrrl). I think knowing the difference between raw meat and a vagina isn’t that hard of a task, no matter what side you play for. 🙂
Well, I got 14 out of 15.
Some of that meat is cooked! They need to change the name of the game, it’s misleading.
Dammit! I can’t find out if I know the difference between raw meat and pussy because the page is blocked through my work computer!!! WAAAAA!!!!!
“Checking the roast” makes it sound like you gotta stab something with a sharp object, I prefer the “stuffing the turkey.”
Now everywhere I go I see “invisible breasts”. Like this:
Ticketmaster page
There’s the Pamela Anderson > Breasts > Grabbing
But look closer. That ain’t no breast grab, that be a snatch snatch. Maybe even a “shocker”.
So, the Raw Meat test is very funny. But does anyone else feel its level of woman-hate is pretty high?
Maybe I’m overreacting because yesterday I spent hours in a waiting room listening to hard rock radio. It was amazing how much (like 95%) of the DJs’ “humor” was about women.
Body parts. Body parts being gross (fish, meat, blood, not so fresh, women farting is worse than men farting). Body parts needing to look like a Barbie (no hair, no jiggle, no tan lines, no baby-tummy, no wrinkles, no vagaries of shape/size).
Bitchiness. Stupidity. Whining. Greed. Gold-digging. Consumerism. Bad driving. Bad money management. Can’t make up their own minds. Incompetent.
I hear that stuff on the radio all the time, and I joke about some of those things myself. But listening to it for several hours, and hearing the “ew, girls” tone of it all (and the angry tone of some of it), really made me stop and think.
Iffygenia: I’m not sure the Raw Meat or Pussy test tripped my misogyny radar as it did my homophobia radar, though the two, in my opinion, are related—a lot of the fear and loathing directed towards gay men seems to stem from a fear and loathing of effeminacy, or the appearance thereof. Homophobia also seems to be related to a fear of penetration; to be penetrated like a woman if you’re a man holds a lot of shame, it seems like.
I do agree that a lot of mainstream rock radio—especially shock jock programs—and some talk radio (e.g., Tom Leykis) are deeply misogynistic and display not just disdain for women, but a really deep-seated anger. Poisonous anger, even. I think these men are confused and feel emasculated by the significant increase of power women have experienced since the 90s, and this feeling of being threatened translates into those loaded jokes and observations.
What I find somewhat ironic is how the ideal woman as described by these DJs (no jiggle, massive breasts, shaved clean, dressed fashionably, impeccably dyed hair, no tan lines, etc.) is, in my observations and experience, somewhat more likely to be self-absorbed, and therefore come across as being greedy, stupid, bitchy, etc.—I mean, making it a top priority to keep yourself in porn-star shape and ensuring you’re caught up on the trends takes a lot of time, energy, money and dedication, which often translates to less time and energy for other mental pursuits. Not that some people don’t manage to do it, but they’re rare, I think. At any rate, there’s something of a vicious cycle going on here. They remind me of the boys I knew in college who’d whine about how women were high-maintenance bitches, and then shoot me the evil eye when I pointed out it was a sampling problem on their end, not a problem with the population per se.
Oh, also, something else I wanted to point out that I forgot to in my last post: The Raw Meat or Pussy test seems to me to poke fun at homophobia by being over-the-top homophobic, which is why it didn’t bother me even though it tripped my homophobia radar.
seems to me to poke fun at homophobia by being over-the-top homophobic, which is why it didn’t bother me even though it tripped my homophobia radar
Candy, that’s what I first thought: the over-the-top homophobia caught my attention initially. But a little later I thought about the actual images and the pussy=gross aspect, and the misogyny radar pinged.
Like I said, it was funny. Just interesting that I was so distracted by the obvious “take-home” homophobia message (beginning and end of the test) that it took me a while to reflect back on the feeling of “ew ick” I got from the images during the actual test-taking experience. That’s when I started to think the real take-home was “whether you’re homo or hetero doesn’t matter; pussy=icky”. Again, though, if I hadn’t been saturated in that terminology yesterday, I’d probably have shrugged it off as I did the rest.
That’s when I started to think the real take-home was “whether you’re homo or hetero doesn’t matter; pussy=icky”.
That’s a really interesting observation. I have to say that particular aspect didn’t occur to me, largely because I don’t think of raw meat meat as being icky; I look at raw meat, and I think “Mmmm, dinner,” or “Whoa, hey, that sure is a pile of raw meat.” (Can’t say the same thing when I look at genitalia of any sort, male or female; I’m not, after all, Armin Meiwes.) Isn’t it fascinating that my utter lack of squeamishness around meat and meat products translated to a certain obliviousness? But it also helped that they mostly used well-lit pictures of fresh meat—pictures that were food porn-esque, even—not just slabs of decomposing flesh.
I’m going to be shallow go back to the humor of the first few comments, rather than the deepness of Candy and Iffygenia’s comments:
My mother and I once read a romance where the hero was depicted as “rotating her breasts.” I thought that would go really nicely with the lathe idea. As my partner says, “Oh, the PhotoShop potential!”
the hero was depicted as “rotating her breasts.â€
Oh, excellent. I like a responsible hero. Every 6,000 miles. Safety first and all that.
That works, too, I guess, although I figured they rotated on the nipple axis, rather than switching them back and forth! God, the images! I need some brain bleach.