Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 20

18 Po£ula^uItureReviCT witness to how "my little Force explodes," leaving "me charred and bare" (.Letters 2:414). We need to be reminded, however, that such powerful and intuitive titillation is, of course, the same feminine self-projection which compels the "Working Women of Playboy" to display their charms-not as the prostitution of their bodies but as the sincere quest for their culture's hypervisual fulfillment and New Commandment, "Undrape!" And thus the tears shed by the newly crowned Miss America, on the spotlighted and televised stage at Atlantic City, are at least in part and on some primary level the genuine response of a woman thrust suddenly before the nation as its highest eye-con in the American Religion of Vision—what Dickinson, above, gloried in, "Dressed to meet You—/See—in White!" In fact, for Dickinson, even American time itself must become an exhibitionist in order to harness the culturally generative voyeurism, the Puritanical "lust of the eyes": The Day undressed-Herself— Her Garter—was of Gold—Her Petticoat—of Purple plain— Her Dimities—as old Exactly—as the World— And yet the newest Star—(351-2). As offensive as it may seem, it is absolutely necessary to realize that the Penthouse Pet who spreads her legs for the two-page centerfold is, culturally, no more promiscuous or obscene than Dickinson's sensuous New England "flower," with "Depths of Ruby, undrained,/Hid, Lip, for Thee" (158), or her vaginal "(Zactus" which "splits her Beard/To show her Throat—/Thy Daisy—/Draped for thee!" (160). The dozens of beauty ntagazines and women's magazines surrounding grocery store check-out counters are thus absolutely accurate in their felt exhibitionist ideal; and until today's "feminists" come to terms with the naked reality that in "America the Beautiful" the woman's highest calling may well be her hypervisual influence in all its ramifications, the battles for "equal rights" and "equal pay" and even the right to abort the viably visual fetus will simply produce unnecessary gender confusion and cultural