\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Scandinavians Speak Up about Sexy Photos of Women<\/b><\/p>\n
A little over a year ago, Cupido<\/em> magazine, my favorite erotic publication which happens to be Norwegian, surveyed its women readers to get their opinions on what they liked and didn\u2019t like about sexy photos of men.\u00a0 The results were revealing, and especially interesting because users of sexual material are so infrequently consulted about what they do and don\u2019t want to see in the materials they use.<\/p>\n Now Cupido<\/em> has done the same kind of in-house research with regard to the sexy photos of women they publish, asking their readers (both male and female, in Denmark as well as in Norway) to rate and comment on a collection of 25 pictures of women taken by an international assortment of photographers, including women and men from England, Denmark, the United States, France, and Italy.\u00a0 Readers were asked to respond in detail about what most turned them on about the various photographs in the collection.\u00a0 Rather choosing from a given list of qualities, readers were asked to “associate freely about whatever went through their minds.”<\/p>\n The results provide some interesting food for thought on how people view erotic photography, at least with regard to the visual erotic tastes of Scandinavians.\u00a0 Keep in mind that Cupido<\/em> publishes a wide variety of images, including photos of individual women, individual men, and couples and threesomes of all sexual persuasions.\u00a0 About half the photos are black and white, half in color.\u00a0 The quality of the reproductions is excellent.\u00a0 They love explicitly sexual photos, although Norwegian law prohibits publication of photos that show any kind of penetration (oral, anal, or vaginal) as well as photos that focus primarily on genitals.\u00a0 Cupido<\/em> also make a point of printing photos of people of all ages and body types and shying away from glamorous imagery, although younger, traditionally attractive people do have a way of predominating.<\/p>\n The “judgment of the respondents” — varying in age from 83 (!) to 14 (!!) — in the words of Cupido<\/em> editor\/publisher Terje Gammelsrud, is “clear and unambiguous” with regard to “the elements that need to be present for a photograph to turn them on.”<\/p>\n “The favorite female model of Cupido<\/em>\u2019s readers,” says Gammelsrud, “is a straightforward, ordinary girl acting naturally.\u00a0 She should be turned on, but her excitement must be believable.\u00a0 She must be able to enjoy showing herself off, and she should be pleased with herself, i.e.<\/em> be able to enjoy her own body.\u00a0 And the photograph?\u00a0 Well, it should excite as well as stir the viewer\u2019s imagination.”<\/p>\n What Cupido<\/em> readers like to see in the women who are being photographed is “shamelessness, joy, radiation, a pretty model, the fact that she actively participates in the action, the fact that she passively waits for further development, that she is exhibitionistic, that the photograph depicts love and mutuality, that the picture is explicitly sexual, that the model is innocent, that she masturbates, and that the situation in the photo is a recognizable one.”\u00a0 All in all, if you ask me, a pretty straightforwardly sexy, wholesome, even innocent, list of criteria.<\/p>\n Very few of the respondents, Gammelsrud notes, mention the age of the model as an important factor.\u00a0 Half of the respondents who commented on the age of the models wanted the women to be older; half wanted them to be younger.\u00a0 Gammelsrud does comment, however, that the photos in the collection that actually showed older women did tend to be less popular than the others.<\/p>\n “Among men as well as women,” he adds, “the number of people who prefer \u2018a little less clothes\u2019 is almost identical to the number of readers who would like to see \u2018a little more clothes.\u2019”\u00a0 Asked which parts of the body were most significant in making an erotic photograph effective, readers mentioned breasts, legs, asses and labia — but the body parts considered by far to be the most important of all were the face and eyes.<\/p>\n Gammelsrud goes on to note “with a certain sense of satisfaction” that “the male respondents are not turned off by the fact that there sometimes is a man in the photograph along with their dream-model.\u00a0 Some of course would like to keep her exclusively to themselves, but quite a few also would like to see more of him and feel disappointed when he is hiding behind her.”<\/p>\n Gammelsrud was also surprised and delighted to learn that there was “little difference between male and female readers\u2019 demands for a good erotic photograph,” with two exceptions.\u00a0 “The most important difference between the sexes that we are able to establish is that some men obviously are so hung-up on some specialty of taste that everything else seems to be unimportant.”\u00a0 Thus, for example, “men who are hung-up on dark, luxuriant public hair” care little about whether the model\u2019s expression is believable or not.\u00a0 “We have actually had answers indicating that the sex of the model is of less importance than whether the pubic hair is black and there is a lot of it!”<\/p>\n The second noticeable distinction between men\u2019s and women\u2019s tastes is that, of all the respondents who commented as to whether the photos were black and white or in color, all of the women preferred black and white photos while all the men wanted to see photos in color.”\u00a0 Go figure.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Sometimes a Sense of Humor Goes a Long Way<\/b><\/p>\n Lest we totally run the film Striptease<\/em> into the ground this week, I will defer most of my comments about the film to Greta Christina\u2019s review and Marcy Sheiner\u2019s commentary that follow.\u00a0 I essentially agree with both of them, except they seem to take this film seriously which I seriously have to question.\u00a0 I walked into the theater ready to do just that — ready to subject every detail of the film to my own version of sex work political theory, lust, and angst.\u00a0 Of course, I had Showgirls<\/em> in the back of my mind.\u00a0 I had also heard some of Demi Moore\u2019s press commentary about how this film was to be seen as a serious political statement about stripping as a valid and respect-worthy career choice for women.\u00a0 But the dialogue and caricatures (I hesitate to call them characters) were so uncompromisingly over the top (or under the bottom) that maybe a third of the way through the film I just had to give up that particular ghost.\u00a0 The film was just too silly for me to be able to maintain that mindset.<\/p>\n When I just gave up on the film on that level, though, the strangest thing happened.\u00a0 Instead of simply finding the film offensive (in its attitude toward strippers, strip club customers, blacks, and Jews — to take a few possibilities off the top of the list), or tedious (\u00e0 la Showgirls<\/em>), I started finding it uproariously funny.\u00a0 And, happily, that ongoing sense of absurd farce successfully lifted me over the films many fatal flaws into the unexpected experience of delightfully wacky, mindless, occasionally even insightful entertainment.<\/p>\n Once I started relating to the film as a kind of Saturday Night Live\/Monty Python sendoff on stripping, right-wing politics, and detective movies, I was free to appreciate its finer farcical moments, of which there are more than a few.\u00a0 My favorites include Demi Moore\u2019s crack, (“this is degrading to women and beavers”), the signed picture of Newt Gingrich sitting on sleazy Congressman David Dilbeck\u2019s table, and the brilliant little throw-away scene in which Eager Beaver club bouncer\/bruiser Shad distracts his two bad guy counterparts, enthralling them with tales of how it\u2019s his job to test the firmness of the tits of every stripper, including many who are soon to be famous as actresses, like Meryl Streep.\u00a0 Most inspired of all is the bit in which Congressman Dilbeck\u2019s exasperated aide, instructed to purloin an intensely intimate bit of Demi Moore\u2019s apparel for his smitten boss, returns with the lint from her laundromat dryer, which Dilbeck ecstatically turns into the ultimate in fetishes, both ridiculous and sublime.<\/p>\n I\u2019m told that Carl Hiaasen\u2019s novel, the basis of the script, is an unquestionable spoof from start to finish, in which case much of the film is true to its roots.\u00a0 The problem, apparently, is that Demi Moore didn\u2019t get the joke.\u00a0 One has to wonder why director Andrew Bergman didn\u2019t clue her in, unless he somehow thought that her off the wall sincerity would work as a counterfoil to the ongoing farce.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Maybe Bergman tried to bring Moore on board, but she wouldn\u2019t have any of it, wanting to exalt herself by being above such lowly humor.\u00a0 Too bad.\u00a0 Moore\u2019s steamy strip scenes (one of which additionally turns stripping on its head by having Moore work her sexual magic while dancing her way into her clothes) would have succeeded even if she had allowed herself to join the ranks of the unselfconsciously absurd, and the film could then have put together some kind of consistent direction, the lack of which ultimately tears it down.<\/p>\n The critics, by the way, are being much less self-righteously above it all than Moore, or than they might have been, which is a rather pleasant surprise.\u00a0 Maybe these choreographers of mainstream culture are finally growing up about the whole sex work thing, or at least the whole stripping thing.\u00a0 Gene Siskel does cluck on about how the film is just one step from “Demi Goes to the Gynecologist” (you know the line about how explicit cunt pictures are “so gynecological”), and goes out of his way to profess complete first-hand lack of experience with strip clubs.\u00a0 Brandon Judell, of America Online\u2019s Critic\u2019s Choice<\/em>, falls all over himself talking about how “embarrassing” it is to watch Demi Moore flash her breasts.\u00a0 “You feel humiliated for her,” he says, with “her legs spread and her bosoms pointing here and there.”\u00a0 Oh my!\u00a0 And the Chronicle<\/em>\u2019s Mick LaSalle (of all people) protests overmuch about the “long, dreary stretches, where you\u2019re forced to watch Demi Moore undressing.”\u00a0 Poor boy!<\/p>\n But for the most part the reviewers seem to have been able to keep the stripping in perspective as a sexy plot theme, no more, no less.\u00a0 Janet Maslin of The New York Times<\/em> is particularly good at appreciating Moore\u2019s “toned good looks and brisk energy” while also taking her to task for her “vigorous, determined approach to what is essentially a comic role.”<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n Tiptoeing into the Mainstream<\/b><\/p>\n I was pleased to see a couple of billboards for the Crazy Horse Theater scattered around the San Francisco landscape these last few days.\u00a0 “Reach out and touch someone,” the ads advocate, up there at building-top level, flying like a flag for all to see.\u00a0 It\u2019s a kind of coming of age, or a coming into the world of just plain normal reality, to have such public advertising for a lap dancing club up right there with the promotions for United Airlines, Honda, Coca-Cola, and Harrah\u2019s.\u00a0 One more river crossed by the sex entertainment hordes.<\/p>\n And, speaking of new levels of sex club legitimacy, did you notice that corporate stock for Rick\u2019s Cabaret, one of Houston\u2019s increasingly popular fancy-style “gentlemen\u2019s clubs” — those overpriced and generally overpretentious venues for metamorphosing the pleasure of watching strippers into some form of high corporate chic — has been being traded over the counter on the NASDAQ exchange just like any “normal” stock since last October?\u00a0 “There\u2019s no question,” Rick\u2019s president Robert L. Watters proclaimed proudly in The L.A. Times<\/em> after his company was approved by the exchange, “we\u2019re a legitimate part of mainstream corporate America.”<\/p>\n Now, to my mind, strip clubs becoming part and parcel of mainstream corporate America is something akin to gays and lesbians winning the right to drop bombs on helpless Iraqis just like all the Good Ol\u2019 Boys do — a dubious way to be taken seriously but, I suppose, significant nonetheless.\u00a0 We sexual outcasts reserve the right to be just as stupid, avaricious, inhuman, nasty, and incompetent as everyone else.\u00a0 Assimilation is as assimilation does, for better and for worse.\u00a0 Let the sex people add yet another new spice to the American melting stew, just as the Irish have, and the Jews, and the Vietnamese.\u00a0 Only don\u2019t forget to keep up some of the old neighborhoods and synagogues for the Orthodox.\u00a0 Otherwise the original culture is going to die out after a generation or two, sad to say.\u00a0 If we get too accepted, pretty soon talking dirty will be as unheard of as talking Yiddish, and having a hard-on in a sex theater (excuse me, a “gentlemen\u2019s club”) will be as uncouth as talking while your hands are waving all over the place.<\/p>\n We should be so lucky….<\/p>\n <\/p>\n July 27, 1996<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1996 David Steinberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n Scandinavians Speak Up about Sexy Photos of Women<\/p>\n A little over a year ago, Cupido magazine, my favorite erotic publication which happens to be Norwegian, surveyed its women readers to get their opinions on what they liked and didn\u2019t like about sexy photos of men. 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