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Panda porn and the art of forcing an attraction

One day, me and my friends are having a lovely outing to a park. The sun is shining, it’s warm, children are laughing in the background, middle-class people throw balls for their dogs. It is perhaps one of the nicest days of the year so far.

I turn to my flat mate, contented smile on my face and say: “Do you know there’s porn for pandas?”

“...”

“It’s pretty amazing actually – not like the quality, though I sure they don’t skip out on production values, I mean, like why they use panda porn.”

“...”

“Apparently pandas aren’t all that different from us. When they’re choosing a mate they have to be physically and mentally attracted to the other panda. Only were we have a pool of about a billion people, they only have a couple of thousand potential panda fuck buddies around – which is super sad when you think about it.”

“...”

“That’s why they use the porn, to force an attraction – get them all horny and stuff. Kinda like I was after I split up with my last boyfriend and was so horny I was willing to sleep with anyone, do you remember that?”

“...”

“Well anyway, I just thought it was a pretty interesting concept. The whole forcing yourself to like someone thing. What do you think?”

“I think we should go home now.”

Once my friend had successfully ditched me, under the pretence she was just going to the shop for ice cream, I started to wonder more and more about our panda brethren. The Guardian reports, that despite the romantic tendencies of pandas for ‘soul mates’ and finding another panda they can ‘really connect with’, the breeders of one Chinese breeding centre have a near 100% success rate with getting pandas horny enough to settle for just about any old slut.

Close your legs you whores. Taken from telegraph.co.uk

And I suppose the reason I find this so interesting, is that, even without the pressure of keeping the human race going, do we not find ourselves, now and again, trying to force an attraction?

I remember a time when I was 16 and I was just coming out of my ‘baby sumo’ phase, as my mum traumatically referred to it. I had still yet to fully work out how to put make up on. My hair was frizzy 80% of the time, most of my clothes were from Primark and I had still yet to find a bra that fitted (4 years on and I’m still looking). But out of all of these concerns, one rose above the rest: When was I going to get a boyfriend? Would I ever get a boyfriend? And where the fuck was he?

At the time, two of my friends had boyfriends. To me it seemed like they were part of this exclusive club. Any teenage girl knows all about the ‘boyfriend club’ and how cool it seems from the outside. A club built on naive fantasy, where those on the outside, imagined it to be nothing but spontaneous gifts, meaningful conversations, sighing, and LOADS OF SNOGGING!

But the only problem with the boyfriend club was that you needed to first GET a boyfriend, which at 16 seemed like the impossible. Or at least for me it did.

Until Greg[2] came along.

As I mentioned, two of my friends had boyfriends. One of these friends was SUPER COOL and had an older boyfriend – WITH A MOTERCYCLE MOTHERFUCKER! This super cool boyfriend also had a friend, called Greg who too was older and also had a motorcycle. This meant in teenage girl world, he was, like, super cool, and like, a total dream boat.

Only... he would have been, if he was attractive. Which he wasn’t... he was also pretty thick, not really doing much with his life, and, looking back, probably pretty desperate, considering he wanted to go out with someone still doing her GCSEs.

But still, at the time, this man was my best shot. I HAD to be attracted to him. I thought, if coolness was like tesco club card points, I would have a £50 cashback voucher with this boy!

And so I tried many things to inspire attraction. Nothing pornographic like the pandas do, but you know, general looking – mostly looking in fact. I think I thought that if I just stared at him long enough, I could trick my brain into thinking he looked like Brad Pit.

Then I went out with my friend, her boyfriend, and Greg on a little motorcycle outing. Surely by feeling the wind on my face and looking FIT AS in leather would help inspire some feelings of lust?

Sadly, this failed to inspire anything other than a sore ass and a realization that bikes are stupid, because who, really, gives up the comfort of a car for death on wheels? Plus leathers for bikes aren’t sexy, they make you look fat and like a man. And I’m sure I had a builder’s bum all the way up the M1.

So what did I learn from this experience?

I suppose a moral message would be that, we are not pandas. We do not need to force ourselves into relationships, into an attraction because of some perceived threat of loneliness or ‘perks’ (such as endless snogging). There are 6.8 billion human beings on Earth, unlike pandas that only have 2000, so our chances of finding our ‘soul mate’ is a damn sight higher than those teddy bear fuckers.

Also, even though I didn’t end up with Greg, a friend of mine soon picked him up. And the level of smugness I felt from her getting my sloppy seconds, and mastering the art of forced-attraction, was definitely worth all the masturbation I had to suffer through for the rest of my life as a 16 year old.

---

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/dec/09/china.weekendmagazine

[2] Not his real name because I post this stuff on Facebook, though really, changing his name is probably pointless because most people on facebook will know who I’m referring to – but the gesture is there. 

“We moan when we don’t have a boyfriend and we moan when we do”

http://ladybitsandbobs.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/we-moan-when-we-dont-have-a-boyfriend-and-we-moan-when-we-do/

The Hazards of Gift Buying

It’s the second to last day of my holiday. I’m in a busy market place. So many stalls, so many sights and sounds – so many gift ideas. I can feel myself starting to sweat, and for once it isn’t because of the weather. Where do you start when buying your boyfriend a present? A spontaneous present no less.

You often hear men lament ‘woman are SOOO hard to buy for!’ Or the ever persistent question of ‘what do women want?’ To these pointless questions I laugh, LAUGH I TELL YOU! What do women want? Just take five minutes to look around her room and you’ll know. The only reason men pretend otherwise, is that when they remember their GF’s birthday on their way home from work, and only one dingy service station is open, they can burst through the door and present said woman with some windscreen wipers and calmly say: ‘Well honey, you know I don’t find it easy shopping for a woman. The blame obviously lies with you for having a vagina.’

If men only took a minute or two to step into their partners ‘space’, the part of the house they have marked, not with urine, but with bunting that says ‘A GIRL WAS HERE’, they would know what said woman would want. Two minutes in my room and a monkey could work out that giving me anything from IKEA with a floral pattern on, or a box set from HBO would make me a very happy bunny. I want people to know what I like. Come birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, I basically send a list to my loved ones demanding shit that I want.

Why?

Because I want a lot of stuff and I haven’t learned to shit money yet.

Assigning people BBC dramas really boosted my collection at Christmas

This is the difference between men and women. Women need a lot of stuff. We have to buy make up, clothes, nice underwear, several piles of shoes, smelly shower stuff, smelly lotion stuff. By the time all this stuff is bought in order to make us look acceptable, we don’t have money to spare for things like The Wire box set. A man on the other hand, literally has to buy some deodorant once a month and he’s done. Instead of foundation, he’s free to splurge on Mass Effect 3, instead of Palmers Coco Butter, he buys that Futurama poster he spotted last week. Consumerism opens its arms to men and says ‘whats mine is yours TAKE IT! RUN FREEEE, AS FREE AS THE WIND BLOWS!’ Meanwhile, women are chained to the Topshop website, putting at least 50 items into their wish list and counting down the days until their next birthday.

What this ultimately means, is that come your boyfriends birthday, when you demand to know what he wants (‘and no love, a love coupon doesn’t count’) he breezily replies: ‘Oh I dunno, I’ve basically got everything I want’. To a woman this is unimaginable. Isn’t there a DVD you want? (‘Bought three last week’) A CD you want to hear? (‘Ituned that shit yesterday’) How about some new shoes? (‘I already have two pairs, I don’t want to go mental’) How about... erm.... a.... love coupon? (‘Now we’re talking!’)

Unfortunately for me there wasn’t a love coupon stall in Malaga. And besides, only 6 months into the relationship, sex is still pretty much a given. Maybe in a few years  time, when my libido has calmed down, and sex becomes one of those rare treats, like Lord of the Rings boxset days, I’ll be able to get away with a cheeky throw around as present material. Until that time though, I’m stuck staring at flip flops. ‘How about these?’ My Mum suggests, holding up some leather sandals. ‘No, he’s too fussy with his flip flops.’

‘These sun glasses.’

‘He has some.’

‘A Frisbee, didn’t you say he likes Frisbee?’ (My boyfriend doesn’t like Frisbee, he loves Frisbee. He’s the vice captain of the Frisbee team. He has a custom Frisbee kit. When we make love I can in his eyes my breast blur into Frisbee circles.)

‘I don’t think I want to step into that territory.’

‘Well what else does this boy like?’

I think about this for a minute. What does he like that he doesn’t already have? And then a see it, glimmering in the distance like Jesus in a sequin cocktail dress, ‘ROCKS!’

Not just any rocks, fancy rocks. Rocks with bits of crystal in. Shiny rocks. My brain isso frazzled by stress and the Spanish sunshine, that I have started to believe my boyfriend is half Geologist and half magpie. ‘Give me the shiniest rock you have, gimme that one on the left, it’s pointy like an arrow – it’s a manly, shiny rock.’

I failed to take a picture of this manly rock, so here's the Microsoft Paint version. Look how MANLY it is!

When presented with said ‘manly’ rock at the airport I can tell he is overwhelmed with the gesture. ‘It’s a rock,’ he says.

‘Yes but it’s got those shiny bits there.’

‘Oh yeah... Looks like Fools Gold.’

‘AHA! My plan all along! I’m helping you flecks your geology muscles. If presented with a question on Fools gold in the exam you’ll be able to think back to my amazing present – in fact it’s more than a present, IT’S HELPING YOUR DEGREE! IT’S MAKING YOU A BETTER PERSON!’

‘Well it’s the most revision I’ve done all week to be honest, I bought Mass Effect while you were a way.’

Shit, I think to myself. I was going to buy him that for our anniversary.

Maybe a love coupon isn’t such a bad idea...