Hot Cheese

Sixteen years ago, I found a Swiss Jungbauernkalender (Farmer's Pinup Calendar) hanging on the bathroom door where I was staying. I was eight years old at the time. The image of the calendar was that of a woman with beautifully long blond hair, supposedly cutting wood with a chainsaw, but wearing only bright red lingerie and nothing else. She had one leg propped up on a stump of wood and was posing suggestively towards the camera, and me.

The only thing that seemed right about the situation was that she was wearing protective eyewear. That was my first active confrontation with an image of a woman's body put in a crazy context for the pleasure of the male gaze. There was nowhere else to look while I peed.

Here is my reaction to the moment I became aware of the fact that if I were to achieve anything in life, the most important thing of them all was to be sexy. And sexy for men. Otherwise, what are you worth, really?