Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.

South Beach, Miami, is ground zero for young sexy hot flesh.  The culture of South Beach practically dictates that if more than 30% of your body is covered by fabric, then it better be tight or sparkly, and short.  The streets of South Beach are not paved in gold, but in firm, glistening, surgically enhanced, blond-highlighted, undulating, mindbogglingly attractive body parts.

 

South Beach is not Brighton Beach.

 

 
  

South Beach rollerblader, left, and Brighton Beach bathing beauties, right

 

So, imagine my surprise a few years ago when I was walking down Ocean Avenue and a woman of a certain age (that age being upwards of 55), salt and pepper hair down her back, sheathed in a gold lamé halter top and gold lamé hot pants with four inch gold heels walked in front of me.  My mind was agog!  Was she insane?  Was she part of some bizarre cult in which older woman paraded around in gold lamé?  Was she the result of two bottles of champagne, three Cosmopolitans and only five pieces of sushi from the night before?

 

What she was . . . was a sensation.

 

Plump, petite and postmenopausal, Ms. Gold Lamé was a showstopper.

 

Men were turning to look at her and whistling.  Traffic was stopping as she crossed the street.  Both men and women were giving her frank and frankly suggestive appraisals.  At one point, an entire table of college boys stood up and applauded.

 

But she never stopped walking.  She simply laughed and kept moving along, strolling and causing hearts and other body parts to beat faster as she glided on by.

 

I was astonished.  This woman was the antithesis of everything South Beach stood for.  Older, heavier and shorter than the average glamazon, she could have been the mother or — Mein Gott forbid — the grandmother of most of the men and women who cheered her on.  As I passed a group of suited businessmen, who had risked whiplash to stare at Ms. Gold Lamé, I heard one of them say “Now, that woman is Sex.”

Recipe for a Sexual Goddess/Warrior

• 1 Woman of advanced years
• Several heaping portions of self confidence
• 1 Brilliant smile filled with joy and happiness
• 1 Hip-swinging, jaw-dropping, blood-rushing strut of a walk
• 1 Mind filled with the knowledge that, despite misinformation to the contrary, you are indeed the sexiest thing in the room

Mix together and bake in the hot Miami sun -- or the climate of your choice -- while walking and wreaking havoc. 

 

The way in which women are perceived and perceive themselves — as sexual and sensual beings — has as much to do with the culture in which they are living, as it does with their individual ideas of sexuality.  This chapter is a look at how our notion of sexuality is programmed by the media and by our cultural expectations . . . and always has been.

 

Since we live in a wide, wide world, full of delicious diversity, and since we plan to cover a lot of ground, you might want to buckle your seat belt before taking off.  Down your drink, stow your tray table, and sit back.  Let your Gramma Sutra show you how we got to where we are.

 

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