When up to her neck in losers, what is a girl to do? That’s the question in the new movie “Kissing Jessica Stein” (rated R), in which girl meets girl and tries to fall for girl.
Jessica, a 28-year-old single woman, is tired of wading through the gene pool of pathetic guys, so she decides to give women–well, one woman, a passionate art-gallery manager named Helen–a try.
We won’t give away the smart ending, but we (probably along with many women who have languished in Loserville) had to wonder, could something like this work?
Could a straight woman “switch teams,” as they’d say on “Seinfeld,” and choose to become physically attracted to another woman she likes a whole lot? In more general terms, can physical attraction develop if the other elements of a good relationship, such as trust, caring and humor, exist? Or does there have to be some kind of chemistry? We took the questions to a few of our experts.
Patti Britton of iVillage: “I don’t buy it. You don’t choose your sexual orientation. It is a part of your human nature, which you can heed or ignore. Usually if you ignore these aspects of your sexual desires, it presents conflict and even depression over the long term. . . .
“I suppose if you were stranded on a desert island for a couple of years with a member of the same sex, still had a healthy sexual appetite, and never before found an erotic interest in the same sex, well, you get the idea. … The fact is that this [movie plot] is an interesting twist on the typical woes of dating and the levels of disillusionment that can happen. I would bet that this female character had inside of her to begin with those bisexual feelings or interests long before she got burned by the woman/man dating scene.”
Dorrie Lane of Vulva University: “Almost 98 percent of the population has fantasies or attractions to people of the same sex. How much they allow those to be fulfilled or explored is basically a question of permission, of how much they will trust themselves and hold back any judgments. . . . If you have developed a good relationship on an emotional level with someone and there’s a lot that’s emotionally and intellectually stimulating, but there’s no physical attraction, that’s just normal, basic DNA stuff.”
Lane was then asked whether an initial lack of attraction could be changed:
“Anything is possible. The Kinsey Institute did some interesting studies years ago questioning what is sexual attraction, what is it based on, and the overriding thing affecting it was questions about how society will judge us or how we will judge ourselves. I know lots of straight women who are attracted to other women but won’t go there. They’re afraid of being labeled.”
Mark Schoen of Sinclair Intimacy Institute: “There are so many levels to those questions. . . . It’s not a yes-or-no, black-or-white answer. Certainly, when people first meet, chemistry is a big part of the mix, but people have different criteria for how important that is. Comparing people’s criteria is like comparing fingerprints: No two are alike. . . .
“Then there’s the whole area of sexual orientation. Why do some people only have sex with members of the same sex, some people only with members of the opposite sex, and other people fall somewhere in between? Part of it is biological, part is socialization.
“There was a time when professionals were saying socialization was more important in determining sexual orientation, but we’re not saying that anymore. Now we’re saying these things are fixed shortly after birth [but fall along a spectrum]. But people can experiment. Why do we have to label people?”
