HOW TO BEAD A ROGUE ELEPHANT The Musings Of A Jewelry Designer: Sex, Sensuality and Sexuality

It is very difficult to differentiate among sex, sensuality and sexuality. Are they the same? Does one precede the other? Do you have to have one in order to have another? Can you have one without either of the others? Are these experienced universally? Subjectively? Do we have to experience any one of them at all?

This becomes even more confusing when we add the idea of jewelry to the mix. Does jewelry make sex or sensuousness or sexuality more obvious, less obvious? An invitation? A warning? A restriction? An assistive guide for caressing? A symbolic assertion about beliefs? A signal about desire? A confidence booster for self-esteem and self-expression through sex? A gender marker?

We let jewelry touch our body, though not necessarily everywhere. Its placement on the body tells a story. We often use it to attract the gaze of others, but can as easily use it to restrict that gaze or redirect it or cause it to be forbidden entirely. Jewelry can be inviting to the touch, or disinviting. We can use jewelry to demand respect. We can use jewelry to demand consent.

Jewelry is something we desire for its look, its value, but most importantly, for how it serves our needs and desires. Jewelry, indeed, can express our desires publicly without our having to articulate them out loud to anyone. These desires can be very sexual and sensual. Or not. These desires can be directed at certain people with certain traits, and hidden from others.

Take the necklace. In one culture it can signal that the viewer must keep his gaze above the silhouette boundary line. In another culture, it affirms for the viewer, as if it were a pointer, that it was OK to touch the breast, even encouraging it. In still another culture, the colors of the necklace determine if the situation is sacred (that is, no sex now), or is profane (sex now). The design, composition and color choices within the necklace might demonstrate which characteristics of any viewer were desirable, or not. The necklace might indicate if the woman was married and unavailable, married and available, or unmarried and, yes, available. It might broadcast femininity or masculinity.

The jewelry designer is one of the few types of professionals, typically healers, that people allow to touch their bodies. The jewelry designer is allowed to measure the wrist or the neck. Allowed to position the…