On Thursday of this week the Karen Owen PowerPoint, titled "An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics" swept the internet -- detailing her four year boink-fest at Duke along with her top ten sexcapades. Now everyone from the Today Show to Bonnie Fuller are ripping this girl apart, but after having received the PowerPoint in my own inbox and reviewing the entire contents myself, I have to say that many of the details could be extracted from most of the post mortem girls' brunches I attend on Sunday mornings. Below is her well-thought out criteria and the Good, Bad & Most Ugly Excerpts:
The Good: "I could not walk the next day. Could. Not. Walk. In all the best ways, of course. Also, I sent my roommate the following sexile text: “don’t come backk brousght boy backk SEX!!!!!”. Whenever I went to the bathroom, I arrayed myself in a zebra-print snuggie. At one point, post-hookup, he was literally just running his hands up and down, all over me. When I asked, laughing, what he was doing, he replied, in a deep post-sex voice, “Shh…I’m just trying to explore this body…”The Bad: "He was terrible, did not even bother to kiss me more than a few seconds, and finished in about five minutes, after which he simply walked out of the room and did not return.Also, I accidentally left my favorite pair of earrings from South Africa. When I texted him this fact, he responded with “I will leave them outside of the building for you.”
The Ugly: "Valentine’s Day and laughing with him over Asians and breakups. For the first time ever, getting my period during the middle of a hookup and not noticing at all (oh alcohol, what a blessed curse you are). Bleeding all over his sheets. Dying of embarrassment."
How can we live in a culture that promotes TV shows like Sex and the City, Entourage and even The Jersey Shore where the cast is constantly DTF (down to f*ck) but not accept that a young woman can have sex and a sense of humor about it at the same time. Okay, maybe putting it into a Power Point was a bit much, but maybe she's just an over-achiever.
My final verdict: leave Karen Alone. The content in this PowerPoint just isn't a biggie....well except for Will McGee, Subject #9.
Very interesting. Sure, this may be fairly normal subject matter for girls to discuss, but the fact that it has been released with these young men's names is a shame.
ReplyDeleteYou see, I too suffer from the Irish curse. Well, I guess I'm not sure if if its the Irish or German, but I hate when ex hookups tell their friends! Let them find out on their own! Jeez!
Clearly I should pray that no one ever discovers my blog about the same things....
ReplyDeleteI think that there are several things that can be gleaned from this story, not the least of which is that the power of modern day technology can also simultaneously be its pitfall. From what I've read, this girl wasn't trying to make some declarative statement about the sexual role of women in contemporary society. She was a girl who let herself get passed around by a bunch of scuzzy self-entitled douche bags, and then wrote about it at length so that she could jokingly share the details of her sexual exploits with THREE of her closest friends (who in turn blasted it out to the world). But of course once something gets sent into the digital ethos you've lost control of it. It may go no further than a friends inbox, or it may become fodder for countless media outlets.
ReplyDeleteThis girl was a lacrosse groupie (probably because she couldn't snag any of the basketball players, and since the Duke football team is shit didn't bother with them) who is now mortified that her name has become synonymous with sluttyness. Is that emblematic of a double standard in our society? Of course it is, but its a double standard that in some ways is perpetuated by women. Why? Because they are much more accepting of a guy's sexual history. Guys will gladly have a fling with the local skank, but they don't want to date or marry her. I realize that's a harsh reality, but its a reality nonetheless. Women on the other hand almost seem to want a guy that has a vast wealth of sexual experience. Either because it means he knows what he's doing, or because its self-gratifying to tame a playboy that could easily be with any number of other women. Chris Rock said it best, "Guys never ask a girl how many people she's been with. Because no matter how many she says, it'll be too many for you!" Guys don't want to hear that their girlfriend has been someone else's whore. What Karen has essentially done is vividly etch her sexual history into the minds of future possible boyfriends. Women seem to interpret a guys willingness for sexual exploration as indicative of his comfort level with them. But the truth is that if he's getting THAT kinky its that he doesn't care enough about you to worry about offending you. You don't ask a girl you care about for a threesome, you ask the girl you don't mind getting rid of. So ladies beware: if he goes for your ass, that's a sign he's about to kick it out the door.
I've known guys like these lax players my whole life, having played on a high school team that produced multiple college all Americans (one at Duke coincidentally) and there are two absolute truths about most of them. One, they are selfish pricks when it comes to women. And second, the Irish curse is very real. Maybe that's why they're such douche bags... Thank God I am Italian!
Okay is this one of the Kooluris brothers? If not, anonymous, your irreverence reminds me of two of my close friends that are twin brothers.
ReplyDeleteIn any event you bring up a sad point. No matter how much guys love all things sex, the least sexy thing for them is thinking about a girls sexual history (unless it involves a sorority house).
No matter how many reports I read about how the privacy of these guys has been violated, I just don't feel that sorry for them looking at their smug faces in that PowerPoint deck. Just sayin'. BTW thanks for your thoughtful and entertaining commentary!
Hey Berryfine, we are both at risk!
ReplyDeleteAnd word to the first commenter: sorry to hear about your little dilemma, but I once heard a poignant quote that applies here "We can do no great things, only small things with great love"