“…a construct, a man-made, literally a man-made construct which traps women into playing the role of emotional wet-nurse to their emotionally challenged, inferior male partners. The cosmic-titty archetype. The mother earth you can mine and drill and fuck over and over again for her resources, the mother that will always forgive.†– Davka
Davka writes about the cosmic titty archetype. Like Starhawk’s emotional ground, but grittier, with all of the sex and dirt and sacred dysfunction still intact. You know. We’re women, we have titties, we were born to nurture the entire human race. It’s our highest, most divine calling. All that bullshit, and the worst part is that there’s a small part of something true in it that’s been mutilated. It’s a toxic mimic of real priestessing, this cosmic tittying.
When I first started dancing I thought it was my divine purpose to love and comfort the whole world. I didn’t care about money; I was like Mother Theresa, the naked version. If you were lonely or sad I’d hug you and aw over you all night long, and I loved it. It gave me value. In this culture women who are needed are valued. Of course it can be dangerous to be needed, too. Especially by men who will do anything to get their needs met. And so I knew my value by how much I was needed and abused, and with every bit of love I could wring from myself into the always open mouth of a man I knew I was worth a little bit more.
Sometimes I watch a new stripper spend hours with a supposedly suicidal man for free. She comes away glowing with a renewed sense of worth while the man slinks away, only to come back the next week and find another newbie to lay it all on, again and again. I see all these newbies stretched out into the future, arms outstretched and cosmic titty primed for this user customer. All of them glowing at the ends of a million nights and secretive with the importance of his secrets. I wonder how it happened to her, to all of us.
There are moments where things become clear, and I remember two cosmic titty clarity moments in my childhood. In the first moment, I was eight. I was comforting my baby sitter, a thirty something year old man, who was crying because the world didn’t appreciate him. I was telling him about how special he was and how the right person would love him so much, all those things that women are supposed to say to men when they have these crisis of impotence. He looked up at me, blinking through his tears, and he said, “God, Tara. You’re going to make someone such a good wife someday.†For a second I wondered if this was what I had to look forward to, and then I started to feel very proud. I was a good person, and I would be a good wife someday. A good cosmic titty.
In the second moment I was ten. I was at the laundromat with my father when he started telling me that his new girlfriend was going to leave him if he didn’t give me and my sister back to our mother. He couldn’t figure out what to do. What if she was his soul mate? What if she wasn’t? He wanted my advice. Not as his daughter, not as the girl about to be given away. No, he wanted my advice as a woman, as a cosmic titty, as the one always in the background murmuring aw, it’ll be okay, do whats right for you and it’ll be perfect, whatever you do will be right because you have a penis. It was very clear to me at the time: I could respond as the daughter, but I was supposed to respond as the cosmic titty. So I did.
Do all women have these experiences? I know plenty who have, and I’m sure there are plenty who haven’t. But even if there is nothing so direct the cosmic titty version of self worth is firmly implanted in most women in this culture.
Ironically to some, the strip club provides a structure that often arbitrarily enforces healthy boundaries while systemically placing a high value on women’s energy (ie, the cosmic titty). There are cosmic titty suckers, of course, men who “just†want to talk without compensating you for your time. Or worse, guilt trippers who accuse you of just being in it for the money or not really caring. You know what? I am in it for the money, and I don’t have to really care, but even if I did really care I would not have to lavish my energy on manipulative assholes for free.
The strip club teaches that cosmic tittage, rather than being the birthright of all men and the duty of all women, is a significant exchange of energy that we should be compensated for. To survive, which means to make more than McDonalds money as a stripper, you must move past these cosmic titty suckers. Once past them, you find yourself in the realm of regular customers. You chat for a song or two for free, just to establish your value (although the longer you dance the less chatting it takes), and then they pay you. In a lap dance club they fork over a twenty after every song, but lap dancing, while a beautiful thing, does not allow for full cosmic tittage. Full cosmic tittage happens in clubs with champagne rooms, where, after paying for an hour and being led to a cozy “private†room, men get to snuggle, spill their souls, get comforted, adored, and get their ego stroked, all by a beautiful half naked woman sitting in their lap. A girl can just channel the cosmic titty the whole time without needing to worry about any future commitment or manipulation, because at the end of the hour, the champagne host will show up and he will either pay for another hour of your time or he will leave.
Cosmic tittying that is valued at five hundred dollars an hour or twenty dollars a song and is so removed from the usual manipulation and abuse of the patriarchy becomes a doorway to an older, more essential form of cosmic tittage. The strip club, with it’s black lights and neon spandex, brings us back to the time of priestesses and wise medicine women. The seeker approaches the stage, dollar in hand, sits at our feet and waits for us to do our strypnotic dance and divest him of his dollar. He pays twenty dollars to sit beneath us while we writhe around in sometimes real, sometimes contrived, ecstasy. For a few hundred it gets more intimate, we become his personal priestess. This is sacred work: reveling in our selves, listening, cuddling, encouraging, transmuting pain.
At the end of the night I count my cash, kick off the eight inch Lucite heels, and slip into my trusty Birkenstocks. My energy, my power, and my sex is all my own as I walk out the door, stripper bag thrown over my shoulder. In my hand, because they don’t fit in my bag, are those big old Lucite heels on which I first learned to navigate the big world of insatiable, entitled cosmic titty suckers.
For more on the cosmic titty, see what Davka posts today.
I love this post more than any others I’ve read so far.
I spent 3 nights stripping once in SF about 6 years ago (the week before I escaped up to AK to mush dogs for the season instead. My stripping career of 3 day was a joke. I couldn’t be the cosmic titty to anyone that didn’t actually know that they needed it. As you say, some clients can boost your self esteem and others can take it away. I agree that over time you can start to tell the difference with your instincts in what type of client they can be. I have no patience for the ones that are energy suckers, but then again I can be more picky because I am in a stationary home and not on the road like you are. If you are ever in CA, I expect you to know that you have a place to stay in the Haight Ashbury. I can even tell you where to park your van so you and Bro don’t get bothered. I sure bet he would like my sweet George, a Great Dane/Black Lab SPCA rescue this past year that makes me so happy!!!
Take Care and keep writing as I love reading!
Warmly, Tess
This reminds me of the book The Dance of the Dissadent Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd. Have you read it? Fantastic book of the author, a former Evangelical Christian writer, coming to the Divine Feminine. She ponders on the Many Breasted Mother, or the all nuturing goddess. She likens the Many Breasted Mother to a dog sucking far too many puppies. It may wear on her, it may be too much for her body to handle, but dammit, she is going to nuture anything that comes to her looking for nuturing. Even if what they want is someone to load with their baggage.
and that about sums it up.
Hey Tara, thanks for another great post. It explains very well a lot of what I’ve been thinking for a long time. Interestingly enough, I’m not a natural cosmic titty giver, but I actually am one, because many, many people want some of that titty, all the time and when I have a good feeling about someone or they are my friends, I will give. Do you know what I mean? Kinda hard to explain… What’s funny too is that I find women also need some cosmic titty. At least all of my girlfriends do! 🙂
In response to your question about me thinking your site looks a little “out of whack”: I use Firefox as a browser. Before you had those problems you told us about, the site would appear sleek, pretty and the space the text filled was quite broad. Now it’s all squished in the middle and the sidebars on either side are also more squished and pushing towards the middle. Additionally, the links to your posts, on the left hand side, used to be greyish and now they appear in a nasty, underlined blue in a font bigger than they were.
I just saw the shitstorm of comments that appeared here on yesterday’s post and I just wanted to say: you’re a great blogger and nolite bastardes carborandorum (from “The Handmaid’s Tale” – don’t let the bastards get you down). I found it especially funny that Dodger kept saying you “weren’t the real thing” anymore, when all you’ve done is be upfront about your life and how you earn a living. And there’s nothing despicable about it, on the contrary, I admire you for the way you lead your life and I’m grateful you blog about it. Every day, no less!
And one last thing and then I’m really going 😀 : “if you work with your body, your social or sexual or mental energy, or just your self, I think you’re a whore” – I’M A WHORE! I work with my social and mental energy all the time and sometimes some sexual energy too (it can go a long way) or my body (I wouldn’t have gotten that guy to let me keep his exact words in the interview if I hadn’t given him some metaphorical cosmic titty and stroked his arm twice during our second meeting). So I’m a whore, more power to us!
Kisses from Switzerland!
All prostitutes ever so enlightened and empowered. Yeah, right. They’re just tits. Some better than others, but just tits.
~your intellectually, monetarily, and emotionally superior male counterpart.
Can I just say: look who is still reading Tara’s blog! Looks like you didn’t lose a reader after all, huh beautiful?
And Dodger, honey, you really didn’t get it, did you?
I’m starting to think that Tara should really delete your heinous comments, you sexist, mysogynist dinosaur (what movie is that from, gals? :D). Nobody will miss you and your negative energy. Press the button Tara!
Maybe it’s just my upbringing, but I feel very negatively about the stereotype you’re presenting… not that I don’t agree that many men fit it. I feel negatively about the *men* who pour themselves out onto strangers, who are so emotionally weak that they need affirmation from a half-naked woman to get through their day. I appreciate half-naked women as much as anyone, but I can handle my own shit, and I tend to find myself being the one who acts as an emotional anchor for others. Guess what I’m saying is, what you’re presenting happens, but it’s not universal, and men can be cosmic titties too. Oh, and I’ve never commented before, so a quick ‘love your blog!’ too. 😀
I really like that post. Now I can change my story, I didn’t spend the 90’s drunk in tittybars, I was one of the faithful in the church of the cosmic titty.
Is being a vessel of the cosmic titty to be considered good, bad or indifferent? Sounds horrifying to me, but on the other hand the author sounds almost wistful about it. I guess… I guess it’s just a reality that there are suckers out there with some money, so someone’s gonna be the titty?
wow, so beautifully written and so true.
sounds to me like that dodger bloke hates the fact he has to pay for it.
i know exactly what youre saying. but for me, it takes too much from me to fill these guys up with what they need. i feel drained and empty afterwards and thats why i cant dance anymore. i cant keep giving of myself all the time for not enough compensation. strip clubs in London dont work the same as America unfortunately.
I really, really, really loved this post, and I wish I could have it for my very own. 🙂 Wonderful.
tara, allow me to express doubts over the probability that just everybody has something worthwhile to teach.
meaning the dinosaur, obviously.
Thank you for this post. My mother was a cosmic titty sucker (or emotional leech, as I like to call it). It got so tiring and draining for me. I felt like she was my daughter sometimes instead of the other way around. I constantly had to reassure her that she was a good person, nobody hated her, blah blah blah. My friend’s mother-in-law acts the same way.
I feel sorry for these people, but I don’t know what to do to help them. If you keep giving and giving they will just drain you dry and move on to the next person (complaining all the while about how you failed them and betrayed them). I think we should ask ourselves how can we heal these people? How can we help them put themselves back together so that they don’t have to hurt others to get their needs met? Any ideas?
You, My Friend Are Amazing.
And you have the ever present cosmic timing.
And great titties. 😎
Wow! Like 51-50 I loved this post.
You were a very mature 8 year old.
Archetypes!! Interesting that you should mention it. I have read books by Caroline Myss discribing many of them. I liked your reference to stripping as being related to the priestess’ of old. 🙂
If this society that we live in wasn’t so damn repressed, we would discover the Wiccan ways of life. If you are interested, you can google Caroline Myss for her website. It’s pretty interesting.
Tara, take care of yourself and blessings on your journey in life.
Wow, I understand what you’re saying completely. I’ve always been the “cosmic titty” in my big circle of nerd male friends. I’m the girl they come to for advice on why they can’t get dates, why they’re lonely, where they’re going, why why why. I like it, it does make me feel good. Of course I don’t get paid for it.. 😆 But sometimes I wonder if I did, would it make any difference to me? Maybe it would. I’m not sure.
I can’t help but fret after reading both Your and Davka’s posts. Quite easily I can tell you that my mother is a Cosmic Titty sucker and that I’ve been her Cosmic Titty for many years before my self-preservationist estrangement . Now I’m wondering if I’ve taken hold of the teat… or is it simply that I’m lost now that I don’t her sucking my Cosmic Tit? 😕
Thanks to both You and Davka for another enlightening post, for spreading awareness and opening minds. You’ve definitely given me so many interesting things to think about since stumbling upon your blog. 🙂
Sending my love,
Wren
“Of course it can be dangerous to be needed, too. Especially by men who will do anything to get their needs met.”
Of course, because men rarely say or are assumed to think “I didn’t care about money.” You’re right, the strip club serves as an equalizer in that regard, and the best (or, at any rate, best compensated) strippers keep that enforced. Instead of being a turn-off, it reinforces the value proposition. Everyone knows you get what you pay for.
Great post.
What 51-50 says.
I think that has to be one of the most awesome analogies I’ve ever read.
Also, what octogalore said. I think if the practice were monetarily evaluated for its actual value — in or out of the club — a LOT of men wouldn’t be able to afford it.
Which is , IMHO, why a LOT of women are aggressively discouraged from thinking about money. Because when we do, men realize, we see that the whole patriarchy thing is NOT a good deal for us and that we’re SERIOUSLY GETTING RIPPED OFF.
As a result, I think the more incapable a man feels to reciprocate proportionately for the dancing, the talking, the housewifing, the sex, the nurturing ad infinitum — because he KNOWS he’s got an income deficiency, or a personality deficiency, or both, or worse in addition — the angrier he gets. Sometimes to the point of rape or murder.
Damn… if someone had only told me this when I was, like, fourteen …
May you have an Oscar someday like Diablo Cody, if that is what you would like. 🙂
P.S. Anna, it was M “taking the piss”, as they say, out of 007 in Goldeneye. I have learned from this post why when Bond says “point taken” after she tells him that, instead of ranting “who do you think you are” at her like a little boy-man deprived of his Cosmic Tittying, I swooned.
(Course, it helped that Bond looked so much like Pierce Brosnan …)
Loved it.
An extraordinary post. Your writing is powerful.
I dunno. You frame it in earth-mother terms, but weak women perform the same kind of emotional vampirism on men. Call it “The Cosmic Daddy”. The damsel-in-distress trip. I have been victimized by it, a lot, especially when I was young and before I learned how to protect myself from it. Women who want to cry on my shoulder, endlessly, and suck the life-energy out of me, of course dangling sex or intimacy or love in front of me as some kind of carrot to keep me coming back, but never actually giving anything up except more demands for emotional maintenance.
It’s just bad news all around. Glad you’ve found a way to profit from your Cosmic Titty, and to keep from being victimized by those who want to take more than they give. But I don’t find it to be gender-specific. It’s a human problem, not specifically a male or female one.
This was truly brilliant.
I’m sorry, but this is just sexist and illogical.
Yes, women do this for men. Men also do this for women. Women do this for women, and men for men. It’s not the patriarchichal power exchange you are making it out to be.
It’s just being there for someone when they need someone to talk to. Which I’m sure you would agree is a normal, basic, decent human being thing to do for another person, in all other gender combinations (m for f, f for f, m for m). But as soon as its f for m, it’s some awakening of your inner mother and the child-like need of the man for nurturing which only a woman can provide, and all this other BS.
We all do it. I’m there for my female friends, and male friends alike. And I don’t judge them for needing some support from time to time, or think less of them. I don’t think differently of them in any way at all. They just need someone to talk to, and if they want that to be me, then hey, cool, I had the opportunity to help someone that day. Stop trying to put this gender power dynamic on absolutely every aspect of human interaction. You only see it that way because you’re watching through sexist eyes.
Honestly, what would really give me a giggle would be your reaction to a post expressing your attitude towards the opposite gender combo. Man is emotionally there for a woman, because of course they are so weak and always need men to protect them and tell them everything will be ok. Doesn’t sound so cool, does it? Maybe a bit sexist, a bit patriarchichal?
It isn’t cool that your customers have tried to get free time from you (although I suppose it’s to be expected). But this whole perspective is sexist and illogical, as it focuses solely on one gender combination and falls apart with any other combination. Unless of course you would say that anyone, regardless of gender, can ‘channel the cosmic titty’ for anyone else when that person needed someone to talk to. But I think I’ll just keep the traditional terminology of just being there for someone, friend or stranger.