Scylla Rhiadra

https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/toronto-ranked-2nd-safest-city-in-the-world-for-2021-report-1.5589711 /me tries unsuccessfully not to look smug

Yes! But it's REALLY part of Burgundy!

Yes, but where would you rather live????

4. Duchy of Grand Fenwick 5. Pimlico (I was force fed British comedy as a child.)

Thanks, Cinn, this is a wonderful pic, and I loved your description. I am not a terrible "physical" person, beyond doing a lot of walking and bike riding, but I totally get the sense you convey of feeling as though you are living in your body -- the sort of hyperconscious awareness one gets from sore muscles and scrapes, and remembering that we are not just mental but also physical beings. I think that this is a super-hot pic because it reminds me of how I sometimes feel something like that myself.

While I appreciate that I'm merely the OP here, and don't have any real say over the direction the thread takes . . . can I request that we drop this line of discussion here, please? This is a picture thread, in the Art, Music, and Photography subforum. It is about sexy pictures, not about "sex" as such. Continued discussions of this sort belong in the Adult subforum, not here. I'd like to see this thread remain where it is, and not moved yet again or, worse still, closed because of topic drift. I hope that makes sense. Thanks!

There are some stories surrounding the Night Witches that reveal a similar dynamic at play. Apparently they were, for instance, given cast-off boots that were so large they had to stuff them with fabric to wear them. And there are hints they were, if not directly sabotaged by their own side, at least treated poorly. One of my favourite stories about them, not irrelevant to this thread, is about the time some got caught cutting up parachute silk from flare bombs to make panties, which the military has failed to supply.

This is a pic I did last night. It was partly in response to the "sexy uniforms" that have appeared here, but I actually wasn't going to post it in this thread. I think maybe it's worthwhile doing that anyway, though. This is a pic celebrating the "Night Witches" (die Nachthexen), which was the German nickname for the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment, an all-woman bomber unit formed in October of 1941, in response to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The unit flew slow and antiquated Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes (most of their equipment was cast-offs) but with deadly efficacy. It received its nickname from its adoption of the tactic of turning off their engines as they neared their target, gliding in near silence to drop their bombs: the Germans likened them to witches flying on brooms. Before the end of the war in 1945, they flew over 23,000 sorties; 23 of its pilots were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. These women were not dressed sexily, or even, really, in anything one might describe as at all attractive. But they were strong, fearless, competent women who also battled Nazis. And that makes them pretty damned sexy in my book.

TOTALLY this. Looking good, whether that means "elegant," "sexy," or just nicely put-together, empowers me because it makes me feel good about myself. It is me insisting upon who I am, and feeling stronger because I'm forcefully articulating something about myself, regardless of whether I'm wearing an LBD or jeans and a tee.

I don't think I could possibly express this better than Cinn did. Certainly sometimes, in some contexts, people dress to attract sexual partners, or for flirting or whatever. And if I'm going out, I'll sometimes (depending on where I'm going) spend time making sure that I look good -- but not with the intent of signalling sexual interest. I simply recognize that clothing is one of the ways that we signal who we are to people, aside from our sexuality: it's another form of communication. This naked ape thing only goes so far: we are not prisoners of evolutionary biology, however much it may affect us in various ways. To liken a human taking care over how she looks to a peacock or a wolf or whatever "displaying" with the intent of finding a mate overlooks millennia of cultural development and cultural and social evolution. We do lots of things that make zero sense in terms of evolutionary logic. And dressing for myself -- along with things like reading poetry and helping to caring for my ill father -- is one of those.

That is lovely!!!

I'll admit that I'm not really seeing much of a difference in the content of this thread, and the two "dress up for the opposite sex" threads. And certainly there are some equally "spicy" pics in the other vanity threads. I assume that one reason is that there were (predictably, perhaps) complaints about this one. Whatevs! I'm fine with it here, tbh.

Then why are you posting here? I'm really not sure how relevant this complaint is to this thread, but I'll point out that this is a question that has been answered many times here. There are a great many very good clothing creators -- Just Because and Neve off the top of my head, but also Tres Blah, Tetra, and Pixicat who do "modest" clothing, or garments that are fairly "everyday" in an RL sense. And there are others. Additionally, you can do what I sometimes do, and buy some BOM undergarments to deal with plunging necklines and such -- I use BOM tees from Baby Monkey, shirts from Zaara, and camisoles from a number of places. For things like short sweater dresses, I'll sometimes wear jeans under them. 95% of the time, I'm dressed very modestly in-world. It's very doable. A final point -- looking "spicy" needn't mean wearing revealing clothing. It's entirely possible to look sexy as hell wearing a turtleneck sweater.

I think that brings us back to the supposition that the only reason people dress to look "hot" or "sexy" is because they are trying to entice potential partners. There are, I know for a fact, a number of people posting here who are not interested at all in SL sex. I'm one of them. I have a folder full of lingerie that rarely if ever gets seen by anyone but me (although a few pieces may make it into pictures). I'm buying this stuff for me, and not because I want to engage in "adult activities." In fact, if I thought that was how it was being interpreted by others, I wouldn't wear it or take pics of it. I don't think I'd post in this thread myself were it in the adult subforum. I think this is a good place for it, myself.

This is interesting -- and maybe a bit encouraging. There are a couple of pics in this thread, that I personally think are gorgeous and in no way "over the top," that I thought it likely the mods would nuke. Instead, Quartz has moved the entire thread here, and those pics remain. It suggests maybe that there is an acceptance of something like "artistic merit," or context, as a criterion for judging the acceptability of certain kinds of pics. Or, of course, it may just be that this forum is much less popular and "out of the way," so the pics don't get as much exposure. Whatever the reason, I'm grateful that the pics seem all to have been allowed to stand. So, thank you @Quartz Mole and the forum mod team! (It is now, of course, our responsibility not to push the envelope too far, I guess. But I don't think that will be an issue for most of us.)

Unquestionably the world's dullest national anthem. Nice country. Shame about the music . . .

Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone objected on the grounds of . . . "decency"? . . . to this thread. I'm a bit surprised however that it was you. Why? What a very dull series of pics that would make. Our avatars, and our pictures of them, are about self-expression. Constraining them by forcing conformity to a rather old-fashioned sense of propriety kills individuality and creativity. Why not just insist that we all wear uniforms? I have seen no pics here that even approach what I would call "porn." But perhaps your understanding of that differs from mine. Which is, of course, sort of the point -- I see no reason why your squeamishness should determine how the rest of us define what we call "erotic" or "pornographic." The only real arbiter here is, of course, the LL mod team. And although there are maybe one or two pics that are a bit daring, virtually none of the pics here could not have been posted on the other pic threads without comment. And it would seem rather odd to close this thread when there are already two long-established ones that cater to showing off our sexual sides to members of the opposite sex. I have no idea what the particular motives of individuals posting here are. Neither do you. I'd rather like to avoid the whole "She's-dressing-like-that-to-attract-men" or "She-clearly-'wants-it'" thing, if you don't mind. Let's not put words in other people's mouths. Well, yes! I can be pretty wordy, right? That's mostly because I dislike simplistic statements that reduce complex issues to black-and-white ones. I've tried to be at least a little pithy, although I'm not sure why, as you say you won't be back. This seems to me a good policy for you to follow: if you find the contents of this thread disturbing or inappropriate, best to avoid it altogether.

I started this pic with this thread in mind, and it was somewhat different in conception than it ended up being -- which is fine, that's how it works sometimes. So, again, I don't know how "hot" or "spicy" it really is, except that it's about intimacy, which is, for me anyway, absolutely the hottest part of a relationship.

Ooooh! Aaaaah! (Nice pic! And very spicy!)

Duplicate posting.

Spain and Portugal produced two of the most brutal, literally genocidal empires. The Belgian Congo -- which in fairness, was the "personal possession" of the King of Belgium -- was so brutally run that there was an international outcry against it even 130 years ago. Italy, a latecomer, had a small but nasty little African empire: they conquered Ethiopia in part by using poison gas against indigenous troops. France continues to interfere in the affairs of their former African colonies, because they have "special interests" there. ETA: Oh, forgot Germany, who were involved in the late 19th-century rush to gobble up the African interior.

It's soooo important to accept and embrace different definitions of "spicy," "hot," and "sexy." Maddy, know that we accept and even celebrate your distinctiveness. *coughs*

Not only is she sexy, it's a wonderful picture!

Who said that? Not I, the inveterate chatterbox! Oooh and aaahh away to your heart's content!

Wow, Lil. Just . . . wow!