Since I spend all my days thinking & talking about sex, I usually like my leisure time to be focused on things like drinking and Tudor women in long dresses. Last night though, mostly because of my love of Parker Posey, Danny Devito & Liza Minnelli, I watched The OH in Ohio knowing not much more about it then it had an awesome cast & was about orgasm.
This film is about a women (Posey) who is married to a man (Paul Rudd) and has never had an orgasm or even masturbated. At first I thought it might be a watershed movie in it’s treatment of womens’ sexuality and sexual dysfunction, and it had some choice moments (my favorite part being Liza Minnelli as a flamboyant masturbation goddess/teacher encouraging her students to “Value the Vulva”) but quickly broke down and left me rocking on the couch and muttering “it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie”.
When the idea of a vibrator is brought up in counseling the husband has a fit and Posey is horrified (this I am sure is not that unusual, sad but probably more common then I’d like to believe). She eventually, out of frustration, goes to a sex shop alone to get one. The women behind the counter (Heather Graham), after offering to take her in the back and solve her problem (so unprofessional!) wraps up a crappy plain vibe that has no packaging in a piece of tissue paper! I know this strikes closer to my home then most people’s, but I was horrified that she didn’t test it, or have any packaging on it! It looked like it had been picked up off the floor. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone working on the movie had even been in a sex shop in the past five years? Or ever…
Ok, anyway…. she gets the vibe home and after some weed and drinks she takes it for a spin. And then does it again and again. It was awesome. I was thrilled to see that they were showing someone love her vibrator! Oh but wait…the husband walks in on her and then LEAVES HER! MOVES OUT! Ok, yes they seem to have a complicated relationship, but to make the last straw be Posey having her first orgasm with a vibe and not his cock was just so sad. And such a sad statement about the way we look at women’s sexuality. That he, throughout the movie, constantly blames his deteriorating mental health solely on her lack of orgasm is so depressing. When he confides in his buddy at work about the vibrator thing, the buddy is all for the idea… as long as you never leave her alone with the vibe. Aren’t we over the whole “vibrators can replace men” thing yet? Are men (or any partner of a woman) so insecure about their worth? If a $25 piece of plastic can replace you, you must really suck at talking, sharing, massaging, cuddling, cooking and any of the like 10000 things that people can do better than sex toys.
Ok, so after her vibrator marathon she wipes the vibe off with a baby wipes and then slathers what appears to be lube onto the vibe and then puts it back in her drawer. Why why why would you put lube on your toy and then toss it in a drawer? This is when I started rocking…
Jump to a few minutes later and Posey is back in the sex shop to get vibrating undies when Graham convinces her she is Vibro-addicted and give her a pamphlet about some 12-step recovery program. And I know it is a joke, but can we please get over the idea that women become addicted to their vibrators and must be stopped?!? My god the women went 36 years without an orgasm, let her have a her goddamn fun without making it a pathology.
It all goes downhill from there when she puts the vibe down the garbage disposal (so wrong on so many levels…) and decides that slutting around will solve all her problems and be better than safely masturbating. Which it doesn’t. Which you would expect because that is “bad girl” behavior and not to be rewarded.
She eventually falls for the troll-like but funny Devito and has awesome sex and lots of big orgasms, which is good and helped me to stop my muttering, but GOD they could have done SO much more with this movie. And when when when are we going to see a sex shop in a movie that actually feels like something akin to real life?!?!
ugh. I am so watching Lady Jane tonight…
xoxox
searah
(PS, if you have seen this movie you’ll notice that I never mentioned the whole part where Rudd is screwing his teenage high-school student. That made it like two horrible movies in one!)
