Women's Secrets

Before Bali became a tourist destination, Balinese women's bodies were no big scret. For the sensual way of the day was to wrap oneself tightly in a sarong, leaving one's brea sts bare. This risque style of women's dress lured colonial-ere visitors to Bali . But in the1930sw, Balinese students on a moral mission, in the name of modernity, requested women to cover their brea sts from the pornographic focus of foreign cameras. Yet sexuality remained firmly anchored in Bali nese life, expressed in popular folktales, art, mythology, medicine, and mystical rites sometimes clothed in seductive symbolism and coy innuendo, and someetimes spoken of in terms as refreshing and realistic as they seem vulgar.

Bath Talk

Nowadays, amny western visitors assume just as many Balinese wis h them to that local women are shy, repressed creatures bound by traditional society.

Yet behind this proper façade, Blaine s e woman have their own ieas about sex. Just go one morning with women as they bathe in the river. As a woman washes her hair, her friends will tease her, asking, Did you till the fields last night? for a married women, a morning shampoo often means that she had sex the night before. Women will measure their beuty in frank terms, comparing the sizes of their brea sts, the curves of their hips, the thickness of their public hair, or the shapes or their waists and behinds attributes usually linked to a womenm's fecundity.

They will often end up talking about men's bodies, speculating about the size of their privates in a straightforward style that invites jokes, laughter, and blushing. Expect them to remark on how a man's appearance is no warrant of his abilities: One doesn't judge a winning cock by just its crow or its fine feathers. It's the wave of its ‘spur' in the fighting pit that determines its value.