Review: Gina Frangello - Slut Lullabies

Slut Lullabies- Gina Frangello

Star Rating: 4/5

Readability: 3/5

Sex Appeal: 2/5

Ability to anger the elderly: 5/5

Slut Lullabies. That is the first mistake I make on the train ride home. Reading a book called Slut Lullabies. The word “Slut” placed prominently on the cover, on the throat of the cover photo of a woman under a scarf. The scarf is sheer, and the top of a pink nipple can be seen at the edge of the book, just popping out to say hello to the elderly woman across from me. She is not happy about seeing a nipple, because (and this is an assumption) she hasn’t seen her own nipples since they fell below her belly button many moons ago. Or perhaps she’s offended by the word “Slut.” She glares at me, and that’s when I make my second mistake. I don’t like old people, so I ask her, quite snipingly, what she is looking at.

“Your filthy pornography!” she hisses, grey hair leaving it’s carefully permed post to go rouge and prove her anger. “It’s filth! You should be ashamed!”

Old women have a habit of telling me that the things I’m reading are “filth.” Usually it’s because I am reading actual pornography on the train, ogling centerfolds and saving numbers for phone sex hotlines. And in those situations, I understand that cover stories like “Jenni Swift and Amber Foxx: Aussies Go Down Under” could make some people feel uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s the naked woman on the front. At some point I realize that the old woman is still talking at me.

“God’s wrath is boundless, and his vengeance will be known! Repent you pervert sinner! Repent!” Her face starts to turn red, the blue veins that snake across it are bulging and her eyes are trying desperately to escape from her head. She’s spitting with every word, and soon the rest of the train is staring at me like I have done something wrong. Let’s not forget that I was just reading a book with less than a half of a nipple under a scarf on the cover. The story that I am currently reading is pretty kosher too! It’s about… alright; it’s about women giving blow jobs. But that isn’t the point.

“Pervert” starts to echo around the train. Older women are the first and most brazen perpetrators, glaring while they say it. Then younger women, driven by their older counter parts, join in. The men start to look too. They seem to come from a different angle, though. The look they share is one of fleeting compassion, and then opportunistic joy. This then fades to faux anger and disgust, as they turn in their plastic seats to face their female counterparts. “That man is disgusting. Shame on him.” They seem to say. Inside, inside all of those men, they feel bad for selling me out. For not standing up for me. They could see the book, and even if they couldn’t, they understood that old women get too uppity about everything, and that if they judged anyone for looking at a porn rag, even if there was one, they would have to judge themselves harder, and first.

There is a difference between pornography and art. This debate has been had too many times, but still it’s a problem. Should nipples be part of cover art? Are sex scenes in movies gratuitous? Even down to the use of words with sexual connotations, we seem to have a problem talking about, looking at, or thinking about sex whilst in public. Gina Frangello doesn’t seem to have that problem, and it shows in Slut Lullabies. The collection of short stories covers sexual themes ranging from rape to passionless marriages to blow jobs in advertising. And all of it done in way that lets the reader know “it’s ok to talk about these things. You do it. Your friends do it. Your parents do/did it.” (not rape. But, you know, sex and stuff.) In ten stories, Gina Frangello takes you on a ride, leaving your breathless and feeling something inside you that you didn’t feel before.