Zosia Bielski in the Globe and Mail explains.

Air Sex, which sees contestants take to the stage for a make-believe shag set to music, is coming to Canada.

On June 13 in Toronto and June 21 in Vancouver, hopefuls will pick their song and endeavour to wow judges with routines that peak in less than two minutes. Costumes, foreplay, climax and overall entertainment value will all be mercilessly judged.

There are only two rules: keep your clothes on, and fake the orgasm.

And it's not just in Canada! They have dates all over the United States where you can see people fake orgasms for your laughter and entertainment, and not even in a bad way.

Veteran air humper, host and judge Chris Trew said a typical evening's repertoire consists of "someone making a political statement," someone embarrassing a friend on her birthday, and someone "wearing the shirt of a rival college and having sex with an animal."

I'm guessing that last one is part of the Canadian experience?

Many of the performers have experience in improv, while others are true amateurs — at performing, if not at sex.

"I know speaking to people who don't perform for a living, it's a huge rush," said Mr. Trew. "They've never been on a stage, in front of people chanting their name."

And if nothing else, said Mr. League, "It's an amazing story that you can tell your friends. Plus you'll have an embarrassing video of yourself on YouTube the day after the show, free of charge."

I don't know that that's a selling point.

This Man Is Having Sex [Globe and Mail]

Related: Air Sex World Championships [Air Sex]

Earlier: Fuck All The Boys: Women, Air Guitar, Glory

Here they are confused by an elliptical machine. Taylor, who is 15, says: "My thing about going to the gym is that I leave my bracelets on, and I put on my makeup the way I would do it in real life, and I wear cute clothes, because if I don't feel good when I leave the house, then I'm not motivated to do it. I need to like how I look while I'm doing it." Healthy!

Here, a trainer shows Taylor and intern Julie Schott how to use a public toilet or something.


But! Does Taylor, better known as Little J, even really exercise? She tells Schott:

"Well, I used to dance. That's how I started out in fitness: I was in a dance company. When I moved to New York for the show, I stopped dancing and I hit a point where I was, like, I feel so lazy! So I started going to the gym a bit, and I like it. I don't exactly have a specific thing I'm doing yet, but I'm still trying to figure it out, working with a trainer and walking. My most routine workout would be just walking around New York. I try to walk more than I take trains or cabs, but it's hard in the cold."

She readily admits she has no idea what she's doing at the gym and the only gets exercise when she walks. Which is sometimes.

Fake fitness is so awesome!

Hey, what's that patch on Taylor's hip? Is the teen dream is on birth control? Trying to kick her cigarette habit?


Working Out with Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen (intro), Working Out with Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen (slideshow) [Teen Vogue]

Thus spake Heather:

America loves a whore. We're a nation of whores, after all — just try holding down a job in this great land of ours without compromising your values and shortchanging your best ideas. We grow up hearing "Be yourself!" and "Follow your dreams!" but the marketplace tramples all over such fanciful rainbows-and-unicorns notions of identity and self-respect with its big, dirty, hobnailed boots. Thus are plucky, original human beings transformed into polite, agreeable team players, anxious to waste a lifetime kowtowing to the lowest common denominator.

Once you sell a big part of your soul for a hot slice of the American dream (something about grassy lawns, enormous mortgages and life insurance policies you can't afford), you've set the stage for a lifetime of doing stupid, demeaning shit just to make your nut. When you recognize that your "success" in life has cemented you on a path of unending compromise, getting paid to get screwed up the ass by a stranger really doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.

Goddammit, I swear, I've never met the woman. But, I did head off to college in an overstuff minivan of stuff, eager to study German and English lit, which eventually turned into a German lit major, a Sociology major and a History minor and no clue what to do with my life to make actual money but, see, I liked what I was learning. And then suddenly it was senior year and my work-study job as an assistance systems administrator wasn't going to pay the bills or fulfill me intellectually or make me too much money in the real world, so I decided to go to grad school! For, um, international policy! I was going to do something in National Security!

Only, really, it was totally as vague as all that, and I turned down a good program at the University of Chicago because the weather was sunny in D.C.on the day I visited and I thought I'd get distracted on my path to a Very Serious Job by their sparkly intellectual classes in social policy and without realizing it, I'd already sold out. I went to Georgetown, instead, lured by reputation and trapped by the fact that no grad school will let you transfer your credits. I traded in a Foreign Policy concentration for a self-designed one in International Business and Public Policy after getting turned down for an increasingly large number of internships in national security and I always ended up taking ones for lobbying firms because they paid and I needed the money and I wasn't willing to sacrifice my creature comforts (fresh mozzarella and tomato salads) for Ramen noodles and I sold out that much more. I convinced myself that learning to be a people person was its own intellectual pursuit and honed my skills at parties and in meetings, learning to strike the right postures even if I always sucked at stroking the right egos. My twenties passed in a blur of unserious jobs and Serious Relationships and bills and bad roommate and eventually the mortgage and the 401Ks and assigning my sister as the beneficiary on my company life insurance policies because she needed the money as she pursued her actual dreams and I grew to hate my life. I was whoring my brain to the highest bidder — to pay for the things I thought I ought to have and ought to want and be the grown-up I'd always so desperately wanted to be — and my brain, well, she was getting loose and sloppy and uncaring.

So I quit. And now I sit at home in my pajamas and write crap on the Internet all day, so I guess I'm still whoring out my brain but at least I can do it in bare feet. Maybe I should get Showtime after all — maybe Diary could teach me to fake being happier about being a whore.

I Like To Watch [Salon]