Raised on Disney’s Beauty and The Beast, I totally bought into the princess waiting patiently for the prince to arrive. Girls are taught from the beginning to be nice and patient with an abusive partner (or Parent etc. ) like the Beast and as long as you remain so, he’ll transform into a Prince. This was totally the pattern in my life.

Growing up seemed a drill for marriage. My parents harassed me to sit straight, cross your legs,  and to be hyper-vigent about what position my legs took when I sat. Sexuality was suppressed. But, ironically, my parents left me in harm’s way. When I was 5 my father’s drunk best friend molested me in the backseat of my father’s car, while my father and mother were in the front seat oblivious to where his best friends hands reached. I never told my dad until I was 30 yrs. old, and he walked away from me disgusted not by what happened but by what I confided. When I turned 9, my father eerily watched me in secret as I drew female body parts on a doll. He then snuck up behind me grabbed the doll tossing it and took me to my room where he took off his belt and beat me. I felt such shame begging for forgiveness over acknowledging my own sexuality. Soon after, also, when around 9, I was molested by a gang of neighborhood boys. Later, my parents kept screaming did he put his “thing” in you, over and over. I didn’t understand what “thing” meant but realized it was something more horrible the touching genitals. When I was 13 my father’s business partner, to whom my parents volunteered me as a babysitter, molested me before driving me home and giving me more money than I earned babysitting. When I confessed to my mother she said I was never to tell my dad or anyone else, or bring shame on the family. When this man, as well as my father’s best friend who had molested me, came to our house I had to pretend nothing had happened. Between 15-16 my father refused to allow me to date even though by 16, I was a senior in high school. To my dad, boys were threatening and he policed me and accused me falsely of secretly meeting boys but by then I lost interest in dating boy preferring my girlfriends. My parents sent messages to me constantly indicating female sexuality was threatening, needed to be hidden, not discussed, or suppressed otherwise it brought harm and shame. Wow, did my sexuality really stand a healthy chance?

My trajectory to becoming a woman arched between 1964 and 1972, and, by 1970 I embraced the cultural sexual revolution  meaning Sexual Liberation and freedom. Married by 18 my marriage failed largely because I wasn’t that into sex with my husband. Divorced by 20 someone drugged me with a date rape drug and raped me. A second and third marriage failed, including a marriage to a Christian Grey character (Fifty Shades of Grey), who abused, raped and stalked me. Overall, I survived all the Beasts, including my father, patiently waiting for the prince but he never arrived.

Now, in the 21st century Gender Equality ushers women to a new threshold pushing the boundaries of the old rules to a no rules status on a par with men. Anything goes for gender equality now means…you can show your bra or your panties, or go braless, wear no panties, wear a thong while rock climbing to a photo shoot [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2948865/Irina-Shayk-goes-topless-displays-pert-posterior-thong-bikini-racy-Sport-Illustrated-swimsuit-issue-shoot.html], pole dance in your bedroom, bondage in the marital bed, children imitating the scantily dress of porn stars…women seeking genital surgery to loo like porn stars…Inclusive of female gender equality arrives fifty shades of grey liberating sexual violence and danger, and promoting the depraved notion that women really enjoy rape, sodomy, bondage and being abused. Is consent to abuse truly sexual liberation? Leading female vocalists, reality stars and Hollywood personalities strip down and bottom up for pole dancing or to use their breast and bottoms as objects for selling products. Nothing is sacred about the female anatomy in western civilization. Feminine modesty lies hidden somewhere behind the Middle East Burqa. Porn and porn queens dominate mainstream pop culture with what once was discovered in hidden places now is available at the flip of a switch to you cable network.

But, how do these cultural evolutions impact our young girls and women today and their emerging sexual identities? For no matter the place in history, female sexuality in western culture i.e., the rape culture, is distorted, exploited and manipulated for commercial purposes. Sex and sexuality sell products, concepts and ideas.

In this article, the author contends those mixed signals about sexuality begin with Beauty and the Beast. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-maas/love-hurts-what-we-learn-from-beauty-and-the-beast-twilight-and-fifty-shades-of-grey_b_6672742.html?utm_hp_ref=women&ir=Women

We are more than our bodies.