And that's the way it is.

I just spent the last hour looking at burlesque dancers and fetish models.

I have this friend who, when he asks me what I'm doing, invariably gets answers like "I'm reading about polyamory" or "I'm searching the Kinsey Reports for the words 'rubber chicken.'" It's not that I'm an excessively prurient individual; I think he just has uncannily weird timing when he clicks my IM avatar to see what's up.

Today was no exception, and when he asked I fessed up and told him what I was doing. Fortunately, he's used to this by now and even suggested a few corset models for me to check out. I was pleased he and I had reached a point in our relationship where we could both look at semi-pornographic photos together in reasonable comfort. I really think that's what we should all be striving for, yes?

The reason I had these burlesque chicks on the brain started with Carmen Electra at lunch today. I eat with a group of teachers I secretly call the Wisteria Lane set, because they don't seem to like people who don't own that one Tiffany bracelet and they definitely don't like that I dare to eat an entire veggie wrap AND edamame while they pick at their Yoplait cups and talk over their stomachs growling. The ringleader of the Wisteria Lane set, a 30 year old mother and wife and and part-time aerobics instructor and first grade teacher (her four most important priorities in order, she says) has admitted she has five pounds to lose before her husband says she's the right size again. Apparently, in the course of the lardbusting initiative in their household, he's purchased a treadmill, a Gazelle, and a Bowflex for her to use IN FRONT OF HIM WHILE HE WATCHES. It's usually at this point I spit my Propel water onto my shirt and one of the Wisterias hands me a napkin with a slender, perfectly French manicured hand.

This afternoon the ringleader told me her husband had surprised her with the Carmen Electra Aerobic Striptease video so she could "shape up her paunch while he enjoyed". How sweet...he seems like the kind of guy who'd get her liposuction for their 10th anniversary as a present to both of them. Anyway, the discussion meandered around all things Carmen Electra and stripping until one of the two male members of our faculty walked in and we quickly started talking about school picture day on Friday.

When I got home from work, my curiousity about exactly how my colleague would be gyrating her paunch away was raised enough that I googled Carmen Electra and her eponymous video. From there, I discovered a bunch of links for the Pussycat Dolls, then for burlesque performers like Dita von Teese and Catherine D'lish, and then finally the grand dame of the burlesque world, Bettie Page. Someone told me the other day my new haircut made me look like Bettie Page, so I was thrilled to see that her hair was not overwhelmingly Prince Valiant-esque, as I feared mine was.

What I noticed, while looking at all these people, is how very much more appealing they were to my eyes than the porn starlets who were featured in the little ad columns on either side of their websites. There was something completely charming about the retro corsets, the great big cheerful smiles even while they vamped nearly naked for the camera, and they way everything about them seemed so clean cut and healthy and innocent despite the fact they were clearly sex models. When my eyes glanced over to the "traditional" porn models, I saw pouts and grimaces and dirty blonde hair and bodies shaped like those long flat pencil erasers we had in fourth grade topped by two big huge (sometimes off-kilter) Milk Duds in the front.

This entry is not going to be one of those "Why can't men just accept real women?" screeds. I think the world's every bit as tired of that argument as they are of capri pants and Paris Hilton. Biology is why men prefer hot women to average or unattractive ones, and that's never going to change. If scientists can travel to the deepest, darkest depths of the rainforest and get tribal elders to point to the silhouette of the 50's era Playboy bunny as their ideal body type, then there's clearly something bigger than advertising or MTV at work here. I'm all for the "Love the Skin You're In" message and I admire the hell out of Dove for their initiative to rectify body image issues in young girls, but at the same time, the 49% of the population who has "things and you knows" instead of "hoohahs" (I learned those terms during 4th grade bathroom break last week) is going to want to put their thing in the hoohah of a woman who looks like they're biologically fit for raising incredibly healthy children, and the hotties win in that regard.

So the idea that we've evolved to the hourglass figure as our ideal body shape makes sense. I think the world tends to strive for symmetry in pretty much everything unless you're my mother who recently declared decorating symmetry passe but spelled it "passay" in her email, so it's natural that men would want a body that flares out at the hips and cuts in at the waist to flare out again at the chest. That totally makes sense. What doesn't quite jibe with me is how we've managed to move beyond the hourglass body and now we've made a 40 billion dollar industry out of watching stick insects with boyish hips, no waists, and ginormous breasts grimace and pant for a grainy videocamera. It's all just so unbalanced and grotesque and not at all a natural boday shape. How did we lose the beauty in porn? Where did it go? Why I am lamenting the lack of aestheticism in the adult entertainment industry? What should I have for dinner? I'm just so troubled right now.

Being the intrepid wannabe Carrie Bradshaw that I am, I inquired with a couple male friends about their thoughts on porn today and why they'd much rather see a Jenna Jameson than a Dita von Teese on their computer. What it basically boiled down to is nudity. Men just aren't turned on by a hint of sex. They don't want women to imply they have breasts, they want them to prove they have them, preferably amidst scenery found in beaches or barns or jungles, because that's where women are most often struck with the urge to take off their shirts. Likewise, if a woman is going to pose with the whips and the chains and the chickens (holla back, Professor Badger!) my male friends reported they wanted to see interesting and shocking things done with, or to, those particular instruments of hedonism. They both enthusiastically agreed that they'd rather see the slightly more ample burlesque girls any time they were given a choice, but only if those girls stopped posing and decided to do real porn.

So I guess I'm somewhat relieved that all is still in order between the sexes. Women still eat yogurt cups and watch Dirty Dancing because it hints at sex without showing it, and billions and billions of men around the world will sit in the eerie blue glow of their computer and watch women who are 12-year old boys from the waist down and Coast Guard-approved flotation devices from the waist up contort their completely naked bodies in a variety of interesting and enlightening positions because that's just they way we like it.

It's kind of comforting and old-fashioned in a way. Like something out of Lake Wobegone, except with a lot more silicone.