on being eminently beddable (my crush on marisa tomei)

Es­ti­mated reading time is 5 min­utes.

FOL­LOWING MY POST on being bul­lied for merely being be­lieved to be gay in high school with a nice bit of musing on at­trac­tive women seemed ap­pro­priate to reaf­firm my status as a het­ero­sexual of manly man. So, here I in­tro­duce the term Em­i­nently Bed­d­able (EB) and ex­plain its ori­gins and then very briefly dis­cuss a movie star who I be­lieve fits the de­scrip­tion perfectly.

Of course, this is ar­ticle has a PG-33 Rating so it will be tasteful as be­fits my youthful readers. 1

In 1979, the movie 10 made a full-time star out of Dudley Brooks and a tem­po­rary star out of Bo Derek. It was a some­what silly ro­mantic comedy typ­ical of writer/producer/director Blake Edwards.

 

The movie 10 kicked off the ob­nox­ious habit of men as­signing grades to women based on their looks and hotness.

 

Wikipedia sums up the plot this way: “It fol­lows a man who in middle age be­comes in­fat­u­ated with a young woman he has never met, leading to a comic chase and an en­counter in Mexico.”

Yup, that’s about it. An­drews was her usual glo­rious self, Moore was ex­cel­lent as the some­what con­fused man, and Bo Derek was there as the ob­ject of in­fat­u­a­tion. 10 was one of the year’s biggest box of­fice hits.

It also kicked off the ob­nox­ious habit of men as­signing grades to women—then based on their beauty, cur­rently based on their ‘hot­ness.’

 

10_Tomei_Vinny

Marisa in My Cousin Vinny (1992), where at­ti­tude was every­thing and she had all of it. In fact, when I first saw this movie I started thinking maybe I done did the wrong thing by leaving the East Coast for the West be­cause there just ain’t no girls on this coast like that! And she gave new meaning to the words, “I’m pos­i­tive . . .” Plus she won an Oscar for Best Ac­tress in a Sup­porting Role!

Rating women 1-10

I had to listen to guys who couldn’t have been helped by Hitch working over­time as­sign 6.5s and 8.2s to women who were thank­fully obliv­ious of their pres­ence, let alone their grading them.

It con­tinues: type “c” into Google and you will get more than 10,000,000 pos­sible sites touching on that topic. Rating women with a nu­meric scale has an ap­peal to a lot of me, a topic I ain’t about to deal with here. I will say that I thought it stupid then and stupid now.

I also thought it im­ma­ture then and still do now, al­though I am a little more for­giving in my dotage.

My own re­sponse in 1979 was to coin a phrase that ex­plained my take on the whole thing: em­i­nently beddable.

Merriam-Webster de­fines em­i­nently as “to a high de­gree.” The Free Dic­tio­nary de­fines it as “ex­tremely.”

I think that I do not need to de­fine bed­d­able . . .

While I am more com­fort­able saying that a description/definition of em­i­nently bed­d­able is nigh on im­pos­sible, that would be dis­ap­pointing to my readers!

 

10_Tomei_Want

Marisa as an emo­tion­ally frac­tured barista in What Women Want (2000) who fi­nally suc­cumbs to the charms of Mel Gibson and has the greatest sex of her life. “Amazing! Amazing! Ohhh! It was like, you were more in­side me than any­body. Ever!” And then has to be con­vinced that the per­fect lover is per­fectly gay (you have to see the movie).

She’s giving me excitations

So, for me, a woman is em­i­nently bed­d­able when her ap­pear­ance plus her per­sona plus her ‘vibes’ com­bine in a manner that it ap­pears to me that she would bring the same joie de vivre to the bed­room that I tried to do back in the good ol’ days when I had hair and teeth and a waist and plenty of you know what and that’s some­thing maybe I better keep to myself . . .

It’s kind of a com­bi­na­tion of heat and humor and zest ap­peal and overall it’s in­ef­fable but I knows it when I sees it and feels it and you should, too! 2

I pre­ferred this as it is to­tally subjective—just like the beauty or hand­some­ness of any woman or man de­pends on the sub­jec­tive re­sponse of the viewer (here, the grader) and what he or she finds at­trac­tive. 3

Plus, it avoids as­signing grades to women—something that seems that women find uni­ver­sally loath­some. (At least they did thirty years ago.)

Plus it is rather in­nocuous and yet sounds kinda sexy at the same time!

As I do not want this piece to de­gen­erate into any­thing that would of­fend any woman I find em­i­nently bed­d­able, I will just end the whole thing with just one se­lec­tion: Marisa Tomei. She has been a fa­vorite ac­tress of mine since she stole My Cousin Vinny from Joe Pesci more than twenty years.

 

"Wild Hogs" Marisa Tomei ©Touchstone Pictures. All rights reserved.

Marisa in Wild Hogs (2007) with Tim Allen, John Tra­volta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy, and bad boy Ray Li­otta. De­spite this talent, it was a d-u-m-b movie. De­spite being a dumb movie, it made Berni and me laugh sev­eral times—and laughter is po­tent med­i­cine for the soul.

And there’s that zest appeal

She is a fine ac­tress: so far, she has one Best Sup­porting Ac­tress Oscar (My Cousin Vinny, 1992) and has been nom­i­nated by both the Academy and the Golden Globe for her sup­porting roles in In The Bed­room (2001) and The Wrestler (2008).

She tends to bring a sultry sen­su­ality com­bined with what I al­ways in­ter­pret as a touch of irony to her roles—although it can just as easily be in­ter­preted as bla­tant and ca­sual sex­u­ality. Ei­ther way, it works for me as em­i­nent beddablity.

Plus she’s got zest appeal!

By choosing Tomei it al­lows me to tran­si­tion grace­fully into an­other post on a dumb movie we just saw graced with her glo­rious pres­ence and talent—both wasted in this movie but I will deal with that to­morrow when I ad­dress the Wild Hogs: Doug, Woody, Bobby, and Dudley . . .

 

10_Tomei_Academy

HEADER IMAGE: This candid photo sup­pos­edly cap­tures Marisa Tomei at the Academy Awards but the site where I found failed to men­tion which year, al­though it did note that ap­par­ently she is not wearing any make-up and looks ab­solutely glorious.

Of course.

 


FOOT­NOTES:

1   I can’t re­member the first time I heard the re­dun­dantly ridicu­lous term manly man but it was a long time ago. I just typed it into Google and found this great, all-encompassing entry: “A manly man is com­fort­able in his own skin, but doesn’t use skin care prod­ucts. Someone who drives a ve­hicle with muscle, but knows where to draw the line (you won’t need a ladder to get in). A man who loves women—but not all at the same time. Pro­tec­tive but not overly ag­gres­sive. Prefers big dogs over cats. Mas­cu­line sans machismo. Het­ero­sexual, pe­riod. Soap? Irish Spring, of course.” Funny and some of these points ac­tu­ally apply to me!

2   “I love the col­orful clothes she wears, and the way the sun­light plays upon her hair. I hear the sound of a gentle word, on the wind that lifts her per­fume through the air. I’m picking up good vi­bra­tions. She’s giving me ex­ci­ti­a­tions.” Thank you, Brian and Mike for per­fect lyrics to a per­fect song.

3   I am not denying ‘ob­jec­tive’ stan­dards of agreed upon beauty based on cul­ture and time; just dealing with sub­jec­tivity in this essay.

 

Leave a Comment