Quote From: misfitgirl“What we're talking about is more sexually explicit content; definitely, that's happened,” Bryant Paul says. “But that's not just a function of more pornography. It's largely a function of the expansion of the media industry. We are just inundated with media messages, so what message makers have to do is come up with messages that are likely to get attention. The thing that is likely to get attention is sex. . . .
“You've seen this throughout history. Every time a new medium comes around, there's an explosion of sexual content. It happened with books, it happened with movies, it happened with the VCR. And now the Internet allows it to happen.”
But the Internet is far from the only venue that does a thriving risque business. From the newsstands peek not just the usual randy suspects (Playboy, Hustler) but also general-interest “lad mags” such as Maxim, whose covers feature actresses and models in soft-core poses, surrounded by leering headline copy. Even august Harvard University and its neighbor across the Charles River, Boston University, have recently become home to student-run sex magazines. Video games such as “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” were found to contain sexually explicit scenes, and an audience-building buzz surrounded nonporn movies such as “The Brown Bunny” and “9 Songs” when it was learned that their actors had real, not simulated, on-screen sex. Howard Stern brought his own obsession with porn to a daily radio audience of millions, and HBO's “Sex and the City” accustomed TV viewers to racy sexual adventures.
The career of heiress Paris Hilton has prospered, not faltered, since a publicity whirlwind involving sex tapes, and actor Colin Farrell is embroiled in a lawsuit against a former girlfriend who allegedly is seeking to publicly distribute a sex video they made together. Such tapes, amateur porn of a sort, have so thoroughly permeated public consciousness that late-night TV host David Letterman recently did a hilarious “Top Ten Signs You're in a Bad Sex Video” (No. 6: “Plumber shows up to fix your leaky faucet ... and then leaves.”). When porn actress Jenna Jameson was on tour to promote her best-selling 2004 memoir, “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star,” Pamela Paul notes, “12-and 13-year-old girls went up to her and told her she was their role model.” Brazilian bikini waxes – a staple of contemporary porn – have grown increasingly popular.
But it is perhaps the world of popular music where the lines between entertainment and soft-core porn seem to have been most thoroughly blurred. It is now routine for female performers to cater to male fantasies with sex-drenched songs and videos. In “Pornified,” Paul points out that hip-hop and rock stars such as Eminem, Kid Rock, Metallica and Bon Jovi have featured porn actors in their music videos. “Trying to keep up, Britney Spears, Lil' Kim, and Christina Aguilera emulate porn star moves in their videos and live concerts,” Paul writes.
In the view of Cynthia Eller, author of “Am I a Woman? A Skeptic's Guide to Gender,” Madonna was “a pivotal figure” in this transformation of popular entertainment into something that often resembles soft-core porn. “I remember at the time being confused by this idea that acting like a porn star, acting out porn fantasies, was somehow empowering for women,” Eller says.
She speculates that the current climate is partly “a backlash to feminism, a way of protecting male egos, and men insisting on retaining a power structure sexually if they can't retain it in areas of employment and parenting and so forth. It's a way to hang on to a male-dominated paradigm.”
Eller also contends that the “conservative right, in its eagerness to keep sexuality forbidden, is really just stoking the fire of an appetite for porn, for naughtiness, for the whole lust for sexual transgression.” She maintains that if conservative forces were to “give up their repressive game where sex is concerned,” the mainstream manifestations of porn will lose their appeal to a lot of people.
WELL I WANTED TO ADD THAT I DOUBT PORN WOULD LOSE ITS APPEAL.
The last time my other sister came around with their 3 grand kids......my brother in law was flipping channels and apparently got stuck when he found the commercial where a woman is dancing with sweat rolling off her body.....the words were something about her "glissening" as she got "hotter and hotter".....the commercial was for body spray for men. The entire commercial is this woman thrusting her hips with close ups of her breasts and stomach as sweat rolls off her.....
His granddaughter, my great neice.....who is 2 1/2 then stands up for "grand-pa" and starts to perform a similar dance lifting her shirt to match the woman on TV....the makes this attempt to thrust her hips while flipping up her hair and laughing for grandpa.....
Did I say anything.....sure I did.....I said, "how wonderful Papa....you've got yourself a live one now don't you....how nice that she's got this to aspire to be like.....and you laughing at her and clapping sure makes her realize what approval is all about"!!!!!!!!!!!!
He didn't have much to say....but was a little "pink in the cheeks".....I don't think even HE realized how this crap can stick with a child. And that, Folks, is exactly what we have to look forward to for the next generation...................what is up for the next 10 years??????????
Luv~
