Today is Capital Pride in Washington, DC. The Gay Pride Parade is today – I have always loved the parade. People can totally be themselves with out a need for body image. Each year there are people in the parade that let go of the gender constructs that bind us so vehemently. There are people that walk in the parade with very healthy body images of themselves. They can express their true selves. I am not talking about the almost naked weenie bikini wearing muscle bound boys (they can be hot - I’m not dissing them). I’m talking about those that fully shed their body image and be their true selves. To me that is true sexuality. I celebrate them.

Sexuality

“They’re young they’re idyllic, they gleam with innocent sexuality.” - Alex Ross (about the Legion) *

The Talok VIII Shadow Champion, Tasmia Mallor is the 30th Century’s Legion of Superheroes, Shadow Lass. All Talokians practice a religion based on ancestry worship and Tasmia in the ancestral inheritor of the Shadow Champion powers. She controls darkness and able to cast deep dark total black shadows. She can construct solid shadows and is a master of Talokian Martial Arts. Like all Talokians she has blue skin. But one thing Tasmia has above her shadow powers is a beautiful body image.

What is sexuality? Is it the gender you were assigned and is it the connections you make through gender? Is it sexual activity? There are volumes of books written about sexuality. Sexuality is connection. The connection to ones’ self and to others. Healthy sexuality comes with a lack of body-image. There is a sense of freedom. When people can be themselves without the mental constructs of “masculinity or femininity” that describe what a we should look like then that is true sexuality. When do we feel most connected to someone we love? When we can shed all body-image, all doubt, all negativity and breakdown all barriers and be comfortable in our genders. At that moment a simple touch can be like a spiritual connection.

Shadow Lass
First Appearance: Adventure comics vol. 1 #365 (February 1968) DC Comics

Creators: Jim Shooter (writer) and Curt Swan (artist)

*”MYTHOLOGY, the DC Comics Art of Alex Ross” Kidd & Spear, 2003 DC Comics, Pantheon Books