Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

  What do you think about the statement by the unknown author of My Secret Life(pg.22), where he says that in order to justify his describing his sexual exploits,
"that his strangest practices were shared by thousands of men...the guiding principle...was the fact of recounting them all in detail..."

  He's obviously talking about men bragging about sexual conquests, as most men are prone to do.  Do you think that this is a form of confession in which the confessor actually holds the power as a storyteller over his audience, or another way that society has induced us to speak frankly on the subject?  I know that whenever a friend of mine tries to tell me of sexual encounters I picture Sam Malone @ the end of the bar telling his audience(Norm and Cliff) about some stewardess he had hooked up with the night before.

  If this is a form of confession, what is the guilt that the storyteller is trying to unburden themselves of?  What is the triad in this relationship?

  Also it is now commonplace to hear women doing the same bragging, while it seemed to be what women considered one of the more reprehensible acts perpetrated by men for the repression of female sexuality in the past.  In this age of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives the discourse on female sexual pleasure has seemed to grow immensly.  What changed in our culture to make it commonplace to hear frank open conversations about topics previosly thought to be taboo?  Is it just the abundant proliferation of information and entertainment via the television and internet, that now makes it nescessary for the writers of such infotainment to push the envelope and shock the viewer into talking about the subject, which in turn makes the subject matter less and less shocking? 

The the bookstore is a large single room consisting of seperate aisled sections.  These aisles contain items for purchase that the human "student"(person enrolled in an institute of education) could need to get through their day.  Some of these items are educational(books), some the implements of art or trade(various papers, pens, paints etc.), while others seem to be offered as comfort and support to weary minded students(candy, candy, candy) or proof that someone actually attends the learning institution itself(who really needs geoduck socks?).

As this space is so packed full of so many different objects, our observations were too many to list in this blog space.  Here are a few of the ones that I found the most interesting:

• Although the aisles were far enough apart to allow plenty of room for two people to pass without any contact, anytime the situation arose one or both parties would stand still long enough for the other to pass with the latter invariably muttering "s'cuse me"
• Among the candy located at the front of the store were some "Endangered Species" chocolate bars, with wrappers depicting varios animals.  Of these bars, the ones with the most widely renowned "super cute" animals on the wrapper were in shortest supply, while the more fierce or ferocious beasts were well stocked
• By the writing utencils were pads of paper for testing said utencils.  Some were covered in seemingly random scribbles, others with one word over and over(most notably the word pen as if the writer was in need of a reminder of what they were trying out), others predominately signatures.  One had the statement "this pen works", followed by the question "but does it really work well?" in a different hand.  Did this questioner think that the statement giver would at some point c