Laurie and Debbie say:

Susie Bright has a brilliant long blog post about Britney Spears’ cunt. To appreciate either Susie’s post or our commentary, as Susie says, go look. (Link not safe for work.)

For those of you just tuning in, Britney “opened the door of her limo, then did the same with her legs, and let the cameras go nuts.” The public reaction (almost universally from men) has been extremely negative, and often vicious.

Susie waxes eloquent about Spears, celebrities, and cunts in the culture:

Without the slightest feminist or artistic design, Spears has changed the public perception of what a mother-of-two’s sexuality might be all about. Here she is, showing you her bare cunt, and a vulnerable cesarean scar that couldn’t be obscured by otherwise careful makeup.

When it comes to this anatomy, where the pleasure comes in–and the babies come out–our culture is in cardiac arrest. The fear and loathing crush any reality check.

My beef is this: the toxic taboo around women’s cunts, clits, and the whole furry circle is so over-the-top that it goes beyond celebrity scandal or pleas for modesty.

The picture itself is fascinating, because it has almost no celebrity flavor. Because you’re seeing Spears without her celebrity context–she could be any woman willing to flash for the crowd. Her pose is natural, not sexy, sexualized, or stylized. And we think that she looks better than in almost any other photograph of her that you’ll find.

We don’t have the stomach to cruise the bulletin boards, but according to Susie Bright,

If you do go to the forums where people are looking and commenting on BS’s photos, they are all men. Each one of them debates how disgusting her vagina is, and just how desperate you’d have to be to fuck her. The disdain and condemnation for her behavior is beyond anything I have ever seen on any subject. Bush never got it this bad, nor Clinton, for that matter.

In other words, these men are acting out their disgust for actual women, like their own girlfriends or wives, the women they have sex with as opposed to the women they fantasize about. Even if every real woman who has ever taken her clothes off in their presence has a Brazilian wax, you can bet your next $75 that she doesn’t have the time, money, and energy to keep it absolutely perfectly manicured.

So what makes these men so angry? The disconnect between “perfect” celebrities and “flawed” real women? Revulsion at the thought of women’s bodies? The cultural myth of the dangers of a woman’s cunt? The message that “down there” is “dirty”?

Of course it’s complicated, and at the same time, we think the underlying point is pretty simple. Men (and women) are indoctrinated from birth to hate and fear real bodies. Perhaps we hate women’s real bodies more than men’s real bodies, but what we’re taught to hate is reality. And reality, with its complexity, and its scars and blemishes, is what Spears is showing.

Reality is what we’ve got.

Britney Spears, cunt, vagina, nude, body image, feminism, Susie Bright, celebrity, Body Impolitic