Penis. Penis! PENIS!That's how the game is played, right? Whoever can shout it the loudest without caving to embarrassment wins. Oh, but who needs a larynx when you have a cell phone? More to the point, when you have Brett Favre's cell phone. To Favre's credit, it's not as if the man invented naughty-picture messaging two years ago when he reportedly sent then 24-year-old Playboy model and Jets game-day hostess Jenn Sterger shots of his junk. He may have been the longest in the tooth to do this, but let us not forget the Cleveland Indians' aptly named Grady Sizemore or the Portland Trail Blazers' Greg Oden and his formidable anatomy, which he clearly rented from Equine 'n' Things. Fame aside, the question is—okay, so there are a lot of questions—but the first one is: How can men be so clueless? What, exactly, do they think is going to happen?
It's not like Annie Leibovitz is taking these photos. They're crude in every sense of the word. Men have a long history of being clumsy when they're attracted to women (see: cavemen + head-clubbing = foreplay), but distributing what looks like doctor's-office documentation of your dick takes things to a whole new level. It's the photographic equivalent of a sentiment expressed by Jason Segel's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. After being dumped, he finds himself in a desperate semi-fugue state, telling two strange women, "I find you both very sexually attractive. I think that having sex with either of you would be a great treat for me." Bold. Refreshingly honest. Endearing in its honesty. Also? A movie.
Kids in high school are less blunt. Actually, scratch (rub?) that one out: Kids in high school are exactly this blunt. But unlike the Favres of the world, at least they have the technological wisdom that accompanies the act. Young guys know it's pretty much a given that their phallus photos will go, well, viral. To be fair, young women aren't much better. I know one guy who was minding his own business at a keg party when a girl started hitting on him. In order to elicit a stronger romantic response, she took the flirting digital and told him to check his phone. When he did, he saw she had texted him naked photos of herself. Last generation's Dear Hustler is this generation's Dear Verizon.
"It kind of turned me off," he said, "but it's really common. And the pictures and videos always get out."
What I couldn't get over upon hearing this was the timing of it all. Did she scurry away to the bathroom in between rounds of beer pong? I know what'll get him! Quick, grab me a hand mirror and an iPhone.
"Oh, she had them in her phone already. A bunch of them."
The majority of grown women—as in those of us who can ask Hertz, not our parents, if we can borrow the car—are different. We know when to keep our core lady bits on lockdown. Perhaps it's the centuries of being told to "leave something to the imagination," a lesson that even the all-powerful Internet can't erode. Those of us who are inclined toward the perversely pixelated?
Most of us do it in the safety of a relationship. At minimum, we can guess where a guy is when he's receiving the photo; we've been to his house, and he's not, say, a cheerleader a couple of decades our junior who has spurned all our prior advances. Of course, it's easy for us to reveal everything from the waist up. It must be really difficult to pose a penis. A penis can't put its hand on its waist, stick its hip out, and turn. It can't cross its ankles in the air and suck on a lollipop or straddle a Vespa in leather pants.
A girlfriend once showed me the sexy pictures she sent her boyfriend. I noticed a guitar leaning nonchalantly against a wall in the background.
"What is that?"
"It's a guitar."
"Since when do you own a guitar?"
"I don't," she said. "My roommate does."
Typical girl, she had taken the time to compose the entire shot. It had
finesse. It also had low-grade psychosis. But if you put that aside,
there is something to
be learned from a woman like this. As a group, we don't respond so well to
sloppy. So what's a guy to do when the urge to strip and click takes over? Put
in a little effort.
I know one guy who did this well. We were dating for about eight months
when he really went for it. I was at a work event, and he sent me about ten
pictures in a row from my apartment in various states of comic lust. Him,
naked, sensually pushing down on a French press. Him, naked, bathing in a
bathtub of open books. As the pictures pinged in, each one a little zanier than
the next, I became addicted to them. I looked for excuses to stand by myself
and open them. Their comedy was key. Because women look at a guy for the sum of
his parts, not the parts themselves. It doesn't matter how much we enjoy
chicken: No one likes to handle it raw and uncooked.
In the final photo he wasn't doing anything special at all. Just
smiling. With that, he skillfully crossed the line from "this is the clown
in your bedroom right now" to "this is the clown with a vested
interest in a three-ring circus later." And I could see it on his face
because, frankly, I could see his
face. Gentlemen, you have to come at this thing less Brett Favre-style
and more Lance Armstrong-style: It's not about the penis. Lighten up.
Personal technology has given us the freedom of being able to do
whatever we want—and in the case of celebrities and athletes, whomever they
want. But it can also serve as a humiliation jetpack. So many new venues for
embarrassment! For someone like Favre—who, hi, is already Brett Favre—you
really have to have exhausted everything in your flirtation arsenal to send a
photo of your dick to someone who hasn't asked for it. (When you are a
professional athlete who pulls down, say, $13 million a year, how is it you
find yourself thinking, "I just wish I had something to offer the
ladies?") Boundaries need to be created. A 15-year-old kid on Facebook
knows how to manage his privacy settings. Even the girl at the keg party knew
what she was doing. The woman had a curated archive.
There's also something especially creepy about an older generation of
men hitting on younger women through text or picture message. No sooner have
these women finished teaching Mom and Dad to use the "bcc" function
on e-mail than they have to cope with this? And why be so presumptuous as to
assume the impulse to share is yours alone? I know how to press the SEND key,
too. Information sharing is like getting undressed with the shades open: If you
can see the neighbors, they can see you. Favre may not respect the object of
his desire enough to put his pants on, but he should at least respect that she
hails from a generation that texted their first words and Skyped their first
steps. Because in the great penis game of life, nobody wins.
Sloane
Crosley's latest book, How
Did You Get This Number, is out now.
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/201012/junk-mail-brett-favre-text-messages-sexting
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