"Yes, it should be lovely." said Rarity. She magically peeled the light yellow dress off Applejack and put it on a mannequin, then took off her big red-rimmed glasses. "Thank you so much for modeling for me, Applejack. I know you're very busy. But your soft orange coat and rich blond mane are ravishing, and just what I need for the Appleloosa market. You really ought to dress up more, darling."
"Shucks, Rares." said Applejack with a wide grin as she put her hat back on. "You know I'll do anything for a friend. 'Cept for wearin' one of those, I guess." she added, chuckling. She waved in the direction of some mannequins wearing fishnet stockings, translucent skirts, G-strings, and other sexualized garments.
"You're too good for exotic apparel, hmm?" said Rarity. "Well, for a long time, so was my boutique—but it's just too big a part of fashion these days to ignore. And I have to admit, I appreciate being able to sell such small garments for such, ahem, generous sums."
Applejack walked over to the mannequins and grimaced at them. "What's the point, anyway? If a mare wants to be sexy, can't she always pick her tail up?"
"That's not exactly courtship, darling." said Rarity. "Or seduction. There's a lot to be said for flirting and teasing—for not showing everything a lady has right away. Something that's at first withheld, and then gradually revealed, is more valued, and, in fact, more beautiful."
"Aw, hayseeds," said Applejack, "pony sex is so complicated. Farm animals have the right idea—ya just go ahead and rut. No fancy dinners or G-strings or nothin'; just copulatin' and then, cute li'l babies!"
Rarity cringed at this indelicate language. "Well, pony sexuality is about a lot more than just reproduction, you know. We have sex to show our love for each other, and for pleasure."
"Well, and who says animals don't?" said Applejack.
"You just said yourself—"
"That ain't the whole story of animals and sex, nohow. Y'know how bulls like to pass the time?" Rarity stared at Applejack blankly. "Jackin' off, just like a colt. And they're not the only ones. Fluttershy told me the other day that flyin' foxes suck each other off! Ain't that wild?"
"Well, I… yes, that's very strange." said Rarity. What was a flying fox, anyway? She couldn't remember. Some kind of squirrel?
"Makes sense, if you think about it. Sex is natural, right?"
"Yes, of course. That's just what we say to colts and fillies who are upset about puberty."
"So a'course nature's full of sex of all sorts. It's one of the simplest jobs animals have. No sense in complicatin' it with all this ceremony, and coverin' it with clothin'. We all got the same sort of wants, deep down. No amount of pony vanity can change that." Applejack snorted in contempt. "Call it love or pleasure or whatever you want, but it's the same thing."
"You always have an interesting perspective." said Rarity with a smile. "But I wouldn't trade a proper night out with a dashing stallion for the world."
Rarity's thoughts returned to that conversation many times over the next few days. That sex was natural was, she decided, a good thing to remember. Sex was something that brought creatures together, not just literally but also figuratively, in part because it was a common experience. Even if ponies (not to mention other animals, talking or otherwise), came in all shapes and sizes, and had a range of personalities to match, sexuality, and its common modes of expression, was something they all shared. Rarity remembered how in earlier, less enlightened times, masturbation had been regarded as an aberration, a sign of some unusual moral or mental weakness, if not a cause of those things. In reality, it had long been among the commonest pastimes, as it still was today. The fact that even dumb beasts like bulls masturbated could serve as a particular wake-up call to anypony who supposed that masturbation was the product of a strange, deranged mind.
One morning, Rarity had just opened for business when a stranger trotted in. He was a stocky, mustached pegasus with an ice-blue coat and a cutie mark of a thick red book on a lectern. "Rarity?" he said. "The village tailor?"
"Ah, yes, and welcome to the Carousel Boutique, Mister…"
"Dr. Small Sample. On the way to a conference in Rainbow Falls tomorrow, and all I have is a lot of heavy coats. Four years in Yakyakistan will do that. Can you fix me up with something proper for presenting myself?"
They chatted as Rarity took his measurements and gave him shirts and ties to try. Small Sample, she learned, was a professor of sociology at the University of Fillydelphia. He had just recently completed the first detailed study of the Ice Cliff Ponies, a rural people in Yakyakistan who had very little contact with Equestrians and civilization in general, partly due to their remote location and partly due to the longstanding frigid relations between Yakyakistan and Equestria.
"The cliffies are a fascinating bunch." Small Sample was saying. "Well-preserved, highly agglutinative language with almost no rules about word order; took me a year before I could so much as ask for tea politely. Very unusual rituals around unicorn magic. Amazing feats of agriculture for such a hostile region. And even some unusual sexual habits."
"'Unusual'?" said Rarity, obviously curious. "What do you mean?" The professor gave her a look as if he was trying to decide what words he could use in front of a country bumpkin like her without being kicked onto the street, and so she added hastily "Don't worry; I'm not so delicate. I have a shop under a rave club in Manehattan."
Small Sample laughed. "If you say so. Well, fact is, the cliffies' sex lives are odder for what they're missing than for what they've got. They're never homosexually active. And they don't have masturbation. Not because they're against it. They don't even know it exists. Celestia, I was trying to get some semen samples for a colleague back in Filly and I had to explain to a dozen grown stallions how to masturbate themselves. It's not rocket science. They're not stupid. I knew the language pretty well by the time I dared asking informants for semen samples. But they found the whole business confusing. And I still got samples contaminated with vaginal discharge. These uncontacted cultures always keep you guessing."
Rarity furrowed her brow. "A funny people, to be sure. There's a friend of mine who's a farmer, you know, and she was telling me how even bulls give themselves pleasure. It's mystifying that what so many ponies do, and animals besides, one tribe of ponies hasn't even heard of."
"Bulls, huh?" said Small Sample. "Hmm. Shouldn't be surprised. Well, culture's a powerful thing."
"How do you mean?"
"The first thing you learn in sociology is how culture shapes a pony. Some of us go in with naive ideas about everypony being the same, every language just a different vocabulary for another language, that kind of thing. But culture is huge. The sins of the one are the virtues of the other."
"Is that so?"
"Oh, yes. Look, you're a fashion expert. You know how mares are about their barrels. Everything's got to be thin. So very, very thin. Right?"
"Yes. Sometimes, tragically, to excess, as with those fillies starving themselves to fit into a smaller dress for their cute-ceañera."
"Exactly. Well, the cliffies have it just the other way. Every mare's got to be round as a bowling ball. That's how a wife's supposed to be. They think it's sexy. Some of them even eat meat products, for weight gain." Rarity's eyes widened. "You balk! So did I. That's culture for you."
"And why…"
"Oh, they don't know. They have explanations, but I trust those as far as I could throw the obese wives, and even Shining Armor would be hard pressed for that. Nopony really knows why they do things. That's the first thing you learn in psychology. It's tempting to think it's an adaption to the cold and the hunger, since a fat wife is likelier to survive a lean winter. But that's just my speculation, so far." After a pause, Small Sample added, "Culture's a powerful thing."
Once Small Sample had left, adorned with a crisp shirt and jacket and a bold orange necktie, and Rarity had gotten the sewing machine running, she found herself thinking once again about the idea that sex was natural. It was surely true in some sense. But she had made too much of it. Sexuality, like most aspects of life, was not just a given with which ponies were created, a natural law that they were compelled to obey like the laws of gravity. It was only expressed as it was filtered, warped, and fashioned by the outside world. Its complexities arose not just from some sort of pure primal impulses, but from the world—natural and pony-made alike—in which ponies lived.