The Porn Myth.

Bruno sent me this article by Naomi Wolf on how porn may be changing sexuality. This is one of the rare cases where I can't go "fuck yeah sister" or "haha what a nut"; the article touches on real concerns before veering off into things I can't agree with.

Where Wolf touches a nerve is with the idea that porn (and sexy-ladies-as-decoration culture in general) is making humans look dumpy in comparison. I see pictures like this and this and think fuck, I'm a human being with muscles and fat and texture to my skin and hairs on my body, and even when I'm trying to be sexy I don't dress or pose like that--if you look at Gisele and then me I'm a complete troll. (This isn't just simple jealousy, because if you look at Gisele and then Gisele in the real world with no Photoshop and normal clothes, real Gisele might be no one's troll but she still pales in comparison.) Hyper-sexy images are the high-fructose corn syrup and monosodium glutamate of sex, and real food is bland beside them.

So I've got to admit I'm pretty enthused by the idea that in recent history
it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman... If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up.
Of course men still do have fun with normal women all the time, but you do get a sense, sometimes, that they're settling. That they're thinking "eh, spotty and chunky, but she'll do." Whether that sense is a creation of modern synth-porn, or an age-old insecurity since the tribe had two women and you were the scruffy one, I'm too young to say.

What Wolf is pushing is low standards for female sexiness, and that's an appealing idea, because unmeetable standards leave real-world women and men unhappy. I don't know how it could be achieved, though. You can't tell pornographers and advertisers to stop using women who look too good because they're making it hard for the rest of us. Making women look good is their business, and in the last couple decades they've gotten good at it. Maybe the only hope for civilization is that the trend continues until the ideal Photoshopped woman is an inch thick with three-foot breasts and normal women are so obviously different that they're no longer compared. It's like when dog breeds split into show lines and working lines.

But then Wolf goes too far. In trying to say that vaginal missionary should still be a big deal, she makes it sound like women who do other things are always giving in rather than exploring for themselves.
Now you have to offer—or flirtatiously suggest—the lesbian scene, the ejaculate-in-the-face scene.
You have to consider the possibility that I like threesomes and come on my face, not that I'm reluctantly "offering" them because all I really want is mish and everything else is a compromise.

And then the weird part.
I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.” ...And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Or so constrained. I have--or mostly had--Orthodox friends too, and the way they hide women away isn't sexy. I went to a Hasidic friend's Bar Mitzvah once and all the women in the congregation had to sit behind a screen, looking politely at a goddamn white sheet as the sounds of the service sort of drifted through. Being sexier in private (if that's even true) isn't worth that shit. It's humiliating. And when I'm asked to cover my hair, I don't think it's because my sexuality is special, it's because my sexuality needs hiding. My very identity--which is being treated as synonymous with my sexuality--needs hiding.

FUCK THAT.

Gisele and her cohorts and their Photoshoppers may be unfair competition, but ultimately I can't ask them to hide their light under a bushel. I'm sure as fuck not hiding mine.