October 22, 2003 @ 2:33 a.m.
Pretty as a defaced picture.

People have always seemed to think it's weird that I think hardcore porn is great, and yet softer-than-softcore stuff like swimsuit calenders and Maxim magazine annoys the shit out of me, and raises my ire in a way that hardcore porn very rarely does. And generally I agree that it seems incongruous. But I've always said, and I maintain this claim, that I'd rather someone I was seeing had a collection of hardcore rather than a bunch of FHMs. I can respect a guy (or girl) who's into his (or her) Max Hardcore, but I can't respect a guy (or girl) who goes for the cloying idiocy of Ralph.

But today I figured out why. And it's only taken me several years.

I guess I perceive the shot of the girl in the bikini looking all "seductive" to be more objectifying than the shot of the girl taking it from three guys at once. Hear me out on this one. Hardcore porn serves a purpose, and that purpose is to get the consumer off. The whole idea of looking at pictures of people fucking and sucking is that you'll want to masturbate, and maybe it's assisting you. But your average "glamour" shot, as they're coyly named, is not nearly so functional. Instead, it serves only as the ultimate testament to woman as object. You're meant to appreciate her, but you're not really meant to get off on her or think about her beyond the next page of days or tired copy written by hacks. She's a distraction, just like your Ikea catalogue. This relegation of women to the status of beautiful, blank, mindless objects is, in my opinion, far more offensive than your average hardcore porn could hope to be. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a cock-hungry fuckslut than a wall decoration.

I think this realisation has come about as a result of something I did today at Uni. Taking a break from writing an essay on fictocriticism, I wandered into one of the women's toilets in the Menzies building. Safely inside a cubicle, I noticed a huge ad on the back of the door, with a white silhouette of a naked female body and lots of copy. I read it, and discovered it was a recruitment ad from a company looking to make a swimsuit calendar featuring university students. I don't know if it was the sheer gleaming stupidity of the copy, the promises of grandeur they were making ("begin your modelling career!"...having worked in and observed the sex industry for a number of years I can tell you that the only modelling girls who start their careers with swimsuit calendars go on to do is of the "I have the phone number of a talented Brazillian waxing specialist" variety), or just the fact that this mindless, offensive and potentially exploitative bullshit was encroaching on my pissing time, but I snapped. Annoyed that I'd left my permanent textas at home, I got a pen out of my bag and started inserting my own comments into or alongside the copy (generally in the same vein as what I was saying above). Next to the naked silhouette girl's head I drew a speech bubble and wrote in large letters "HELLO. I AM A MINDLESS, FACELESS TOOL OF THE PATRIARCHY." My deed and various other activities completed, I made my hasty exit from the cubicle.

About half an hour or so later, owing to the combined effects of large quantities of water and coffee and owning a bladder the side of a pea, I was back in the bathroom. Since I'd been holed up at one of the study desks on that floor of the building, it was back to the scene of the previous half hour. Washing my hands at the sinks, I looked up to notice something that hadn't been there before. My picture. With all the copy (including my witty and scathing remarks, damn it) ripped off, leaving only Silhouette Girl and her new self-introduction. Plastered smack bang in the middle section of the mirror above the sinks.

I think I have a fan.

<<|>>