About twenty years ago, an artist painted this picture of me. His name was Charles Sayer, and sadly he doesn’t show up in any Google searches, so my account of his art is based only on my own memories. He specialised in painting female cunts and arses, and he liked to feature genuine pubic hair in his works. That painting was done in exchange for me modelling and also supplying him with clippings of my pubes, to be used in any or all of his other artwork.
I’m very fond of the picture, though I must admit it doesn’t hang on my bedroom wall any more, as it’s included in the area of things I would rather not have a long discussion with my curious offspring about.
Artists using either their own or other people’s bodily fluids, or hair, or nail clippings, is not that unusual. Nor is it strange for any creative person producing something that relates to human bodies to start with their own body as a point of reference – I have a beautiful silver necklace in the form of a pussy, which was modelled on the designer’s own.
So I am, let’s say, both bemused and slightly put out that some people are throwing a big tantrum over the fact that a maker of dildos has stated that he modelled his original standard-sized, dick-shaped toy on his own dick. Firstly, who else’s dick should he have used? If you have a body part that’s within the usual parameters of shape and size, and you’re creating a picture or model of such a body part, why on earth would you use any body’s but your own? His alleged crime is apparently compounded by the fact he mentioned liking the idea that people get pleasure from a toy modelled on the proportions of his very own penis.
I mean, FUCKING COME ON. Those of us who produce sex toys, porn films and erotic books all start with the idea that we want to get people off. That’s the purpose of the work we are doing, and if we don’t take pleasure in it, we may well be in the wrong job. When I gave my pube clippings to Charles the artist, decades ago, I remember telling friends that I quite liked the idea of my DNA on some art gallery’s wall, part of a work that changed hands for big bags of money and got earnest, chin-stroking reviews everywhere (yes, all right, that never actually happened but…). People have every right to comment, in their blogs and on their social media, about things that bother them – just like I am doing here – but the level of witless, self-righteous arrogance in the attacks on this dildo company deserves all the derision you can throw at it.