Simone's Buttocks Poem by gershon hepner

The photo of Simone has been touched up,
to lose some kilos, rolls of fat and years,
as if Jean-Paul were able still to cup
a hand around them. Existential fear
of being fat and ugly, growing old
prevent a photo that has been airbrushed
from telling stories no one wishes told
about themselves, when by old age they’re crushed,
although, of course, we do not mind at all
if subjects of such photos are our friends,
in whose decline we love to see the fall
of buttocks, breasts and other dividends.

Elaine Sciolino write about an exhibition at the National Library in Paris, “Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret, ” in the NYT, January 16,2008:
The lighting is bordello red, but the librarians insist that their X-rated exhibition is serious. “Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret, ” which opened at the National Library here last month, offers a peek at its secret archive of erotic art, putting on display more than 350 sexually explicit literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, film clips, even calling cards and cardboard pop-ups. Visitors to the library can listen to a modern-day recording of an 18th-century “dialogue” during sex (simultaneous orgasms included) and watch a six-minute excerpt from a grainy black-and-white silent pornography film made in 1921 (one man, two women, intriguing lingerie) . The handwritten manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s novel “Les Infortunes de la Vertu” (“The Misfortunes of Virtue”) is under glass here, as are 17th-century French engravings of “erotic postures”; English “flagellation novels” exported to France in the late 19th century; Japanese prints; Man Ray photographs; and a police report from 1900 that compiles the addresses of Paris’s houses of prostitution and what they charged. Sadism, masochism, bestiality, inflated genitalia and the most imaginative sexual fantasies and athletic poses are given their due. To avoid complaints that a publicly supported institution is corrupting the country’s youth, no one under 16 is admitted. “In an era where sexual images are a product for popular consumption, the library has decided to lift the veil on this world of imagination and fantasy, ” Bruno Racine, the library director, said in an interview. “The library is a very serious institution, and the project was done with gravity. But we also perhaps are different from what you think — and there is humor here too.”…
Even Simone de Beauvoir’s backside is not off limits from exposure and analysis these days. The decision by the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur two weeks ago to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of that feminist literary figure with a nude photo of her (taken from the back in 1952) has been sharply criticized and just as sharply defended. Florence Montreynaud, a historian and feminist author who runs an anti-sexism organization, protested the photo by offering the magazine’s director, Jean Daniel, a choice: apologize or bare his own bottom. She also said the magazine should publish the bare buttocks of Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s long-time partner.The fact that the cellulite on Beauvoir’s thighs and buttocks was airbrushed away added to the indignity. The media columnist for the newspaper Libération, Daniel Schneidermann, wrote: “The photo has even been retouched — the buttocks of Beauvoir — with makeup, to make them lose some kilos, some rolls of fat and to take off 10 years.”

1/16/08