The Girl Wants To: Women's Representation of Sex and the Body

Britta Santowski is a graduate student of English at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland.

This anthology, which presents the works of 39 Canadian and American
female artists who “were and are engaged in radical modes of
inscribing their sexuality” and includes lyrics, scripts, comics,
drawings, photographs, short stories, essays, and poetry, challenges not
only standard notions of female sexuality but also standard notions of
“text.”

The texts exhibit individual and often private expressions of
sexuality. Among the more extraordinary contributors are Gigi the Galaxy
Girl, who follows one woman’s pursuit for the ultimate masturbatory
household appliance; Xaviera Hollander, who dramatizes a ménage а
trois to reunite a couple; Barbara Wilson and Evelyn Lau, who explicitly
explore the pleasure and pain of S/M relationships; and Sandra Haar, who
effectively displays the impenetrable female body to her viewers. Others
offer atypical observations on prostitution, capitalism, and convention
(Ann Diamond and Kathy Acker); love and necrophilia (Barbara Gowdy); and
bondage and fantasy (Ellen Flanders). Roberta Gregory depicts the
hilarious gap between love’s aspirations and the all-too-often
embarrassing reality. Every piece imparts an inventive perspective on
woman’s sexuality and her body.

This marvelous collection, covering (or rather uncovering) a remarkable
range of sexual perspectives of women of all ages and sexual
orientations, successfully maps women’s bodies as an inexhaustible
sexual playing field. Indeed, each contributor plays what “the girl
wants to.”