Obviously, many of the thoughts and feelings described here are derived from my own CMNF experiences; and several of the characters are based on real people.
Maria Rescia is (so far) only an incidental character, but she is a composite of two impressive women I have met. The first is an Italian physicist I encountered at a colloquium. In her mid-forties, she is a breathtakingly sexy woman who wears miniskirts, low-cut blouses and stiletto heels – she doesn’t allow her very high standing in the academic community to compromise her intense femininity (or vice versa). The second is a fairly well-known journalist who achieved some local notoriety when she stripped naked on a very public rostrum while doing a story. She is a very forceful and tough-minded woman who has (for example) reported from war zones, which is why that stripping episode epitomizes what is to me the ideal CMNF situation.
Being very assertive myself (albeit not in their class), I can identify with those women.
Rachel and her view of life do exist, although not in the CMNF context. Martin and Michelle are also real (with different names, of course). I include the twins in the story because they personify the gender dimorphism that is taken to its limit in CMNF. They are very much alike in terms of physical appearance and personality; but as a male he dresses conservatively and is self-consciously masculine. I have never seen him on even the warmest days and most casual circumstances in anything other than long trousers. Whereas she dresses hyper-feminine in flouncy little dresses, micro-miniskirts, skimpy tank tops, ultra-sexy halter-necks and the like. Because they are so nearly identical, the dissimilarity due to gender difference alone is all the more dramatic. I have simply extended this into the CMNF realm.
I include the lesbian couple for two reasons. One is to indicate that my vision of CMNF does not have to be heterosexual in nature, that it can transcend gender identity and orientation.* The other reason is that I am intrigued by one half of a couple I know. She is a photographer who specializes in “deviant art”. She once did a photo shoot for a BDSM club featuring naked female submissives being subjected to all sorts of humiliating torments. She felt a weird ambivalence, being turned on by the girls but also feeling intense embarrassment because hers was the sex being degraded. Those particular circumstances were extreme, but nevertheless it must be strange walking in two worlds like that.
* I haven’t quite worked this out myself. It’s an issue that fascinates me. In my schooldays, despite being politically radical, I was ultra-feminine. However, my most activist friends were Jo, a fire-breathing feminist, and “out and proud” gays Paul and Sharon. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the girls’ uniform and dress code did not allow trousers; and since we had to wear skirts we decided no one was going to tell us how to wear them so we wore them very short, even in winter – typical schoolgirl logic.
My friends made an interesting contrast because Paul, the most formulaically “feminine” of the three (I’m not being denigrating here – I’m talking stereotypes) was nonetheless the one who wore the pants (and, having the only penis in our group, he had the exclusive privilege of covering his legs in cold, wet and windy weather). Jo disliked dresses and never wore them outside school, and yet her uniform hemline was so high she couldn’t sit down without flashing her knickers (okay, maybe that’s a slight, but only slight, exaggeration). She was very attractive, with perfect legs, and the boys, though intimidated by her, “perved” on her all the time. Meanwhile Sharon had the best of both worlds – she could enjoy the sight of her fellow females in our short skirts (she happily told me so, so I am not just playing to the stereotype) while indulging in the pleasure of wearing one herself.
This may indeed be the origin of my CMNF fantasy world (although it draws on several sources). The CMNF experience, from my side of the clothed-naked divide, is about femaleness per se, irrespective of gender issues...
Well, this post has become basically a “random walk” so I shall now cease and desist.
