Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

Archive for February, 2010

It’s been a while since I put any hot pics up so here’s a few quick photos for your viewing pleasure.

They’re all at For The Girls, of course.

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More fashion tomfoolery, this time from Madrid Fashion week where concept designer Isabel Matache has decided to add cloth penis and balls to his fashionable trousers.

They’re ridiculous, sure, but I kind of like them. Makes a statement, kind of like penis gourds in Papua New Guinea. You can image how the size issue would get in the way if these ever became de rigeur in business circles.

Thanks to Carnal Nation for this.

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The New Zealand Herald has an extensive profile of Filament creator Suraya Singh, who grew up in New Zealand but now lives in London. The article traces the origins of Suraya’s idea for an erotic magazine and her struggle to get it up and running last year.

There was also the belief that all women are the same. “We had one distributor who said he’d shown a copy to a woman in accounts,” says Singh.

“She didn’t like it, so he decided all women wouldn’t like it. Even if the story was the truth, the claim was ridiculous. That sort of thing got surreal at times.” Another was that most women aren’t visual and that those who are would rather look at other women than naked men. This belief is supported by New Zealand’s self-styled king of porn, Steve Crow.

In his view, marketing erotica to women is notoriously difficult and while he hasn’t yet seen Filament, he says it isn’t something he’d want to back or predict a future for.

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Vice blog has some fascinatingg interviews with four of the main stars of the new wave of authentic lesbian porn – Dylan Ryan, Syd Blakovich, Madison Young and Jiz Lee. These women dish the dirt on what it’s really like to be a porn star, share anecdotes about bodily fluid mishaps and also give their views of feminist porn. Worth reading.

Here’s some quotes from Jiz Lee:

So you’re sincerely turned on when you’re working.
Yes, and I wouldn’t do it any other way. Being turned on and having a good time filming is one of the [major] reasons I do what I do. I also do it consciously knowing that I represent queer homo hapa faggy soft-butch dykes…

Even down to aesthetics like hair–I have hair, and I like the way it looks. Every now and then I’ll shave it ’cause I want to play, not because that’s the way beauty has to be. I’d say “Fuck The Man” but lots of straight dudes dig my work and my hairy asshole. I have words for them: All my pubes are my feelers, and the hair around my asshole is my wizard. And it is very, very wise. Some folks say that “disco bush” is back in style. Mine is “disco gutter.”

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I’m a few days late with this but really want to blog about it. Sam Benjamin, ex porn director and author of Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer, has written an article for AlterNet entitled Why I Had To Stop Making Hardcore Porn. In it he describes how he spent 5 years making heterosexual gonzo porn for a living and how, eventually, he decided to stop because he found the whole experience too cruel.

I came to learn that within the context of the heterosexual L.A. industry, while my overt task at hand was to make sure that the girls got naked, my true responsibility as director was to make sure the girls got punished. Scenes that stuck out, and hence made more money, were those in which the female “targets” were verbally degraded and sometimes physically humiliated.

None of it was written in my contract, of course; it was more of a contextual thing. Like: Everyone’s doing it . . . thus, so shall we. My various superiors across the years saw the issue from a businessman’s perspective, reminding me quite openly of the need to keep up with our competition…

What surprised me most though, was the fact that I found within myself a happy willingness to be violent, a willingness to degrade. Though my bosses may have ordered me to organize and record the scenes of degradation, I followed their orders, and not without pleasure. Something cowardly within me, an internal space, suffused with a weak kind of anger, felt satisfied when I saw a woman “take her punishment.” I clung to the sense of temporary empowerment I found through the bullying. Lust-colored aggression and the satisfaction of making “good money” guided me through scene after scene.

Sam is talking about exactly the kind of porn I find offensive and have spoken out against regularly on this blog. I too have seen the slow creep towards “harder” porn online, “harder” meaning crueler and more degrading. I’ve long deplored the various “reality” sites that showed women laughed at and abused for having sex, sites that show women being slapped, made to vomit and cry during blowjobs, called whores and bitches and sluts… To me this type of porn has always been more about hate and revenge rather than actual sex and I despise it.

Sam then goes on to say that, after a break, he took up directing gay porn and found the attitude behind it to be far different:

Gay porn, in fact, was so goddamn simple that it approached a type of Zen beauty. I mean, this was guys taking on guys, in every shape and form imaginable, for the most part in good humor and absent-minded lust. They may have stuck to roles of “tops” and “bottoms,” but in the dressing room, we all seemed equals, on the same team.

Thankfully he uses the experience of gay porn to point out that not all pornography need be exploitative or cruel. He also mentions female-directed and alt porn as examples or more positive erotica. He then goes on to say:

At its worst, though, porn can represent with shocking clarity the inability of a modern society to empathize. We are living in an increasingly individualistic, over-privatized, fragmented society, and it’s not going to get any better any time soon. Perhaps the character of our generation will be judged in how we react to the images that run before us on our screens: do we wish for the objects of our desire to be punished, humiliated? Or treated with respect? The answer is in our collective consciousness. It is up to us.

While I think Sam’s juxtaposition of “us and them” is a bit too simplistic (exploitation happens in gay porn too), I’m glad he wrote the article. This is a conversation we really need to be having and questions need to be asked:

* Why have some genres of porn become so horrible?
* Who is driving it? The consumers or the producers?
* What is the motivation behind wanting to see/create this type of porn?
* What effect does it have on young men who may see porn as a type of sex education?
* How can we change things so that degrading gonzo porn is no longer so dominant?
* How do we make porn better?

In the fight against censorship I find myself standing up for all porn, even though I dislike so much of it. Unfortunately freedom of speech means I have to defend their position in order to maintain mine – even though what I do is so vastly different, ethically and philosophically. And yet defending freedom of speech doesn’t mean I can’t speak out and say there’s a problem here. Because there is and I’m glad someone like Sam Benjamin has acknowledged it. The trick now is to keep discussing this without the inevitable calls for it to be banned.

Once again, Annie Sprinkle’s quote applies: The solution to bad porn isn’t no porn, it’s better porn.

And that’s what I’ve been doing for ten years now. Carving out my own little dirty corner of the internet and creating a space for women that’s positive, respectful, intelligent and fun, one that embraces sexuality as an act of love and pleasure, not hatred. I want to make a difference to porn, to provide something that’s good and well made and beautiful. To depict sex as something worthy of honour and respect.

At this stage I’ll direct you to an excellent piece written by Charlie Glickman from Good Releasing called The Ethics Of Making Sex Positive Porn. It’s his response to Sam’s article and details his ideas about improving the porn landscape. It becomes a plug for Good Releasing but that’s OK because they’re a distribution and production company that IS trying to make a difference.

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The Star, a Canadian media site, features an article called What Women Are Starting To Want. Starting? Ahem.

Anyway, it features an interview with Mimi Balfour who last year made the softcore film Man of My Dreams. The film won a Feminist Porn Award and Mimi says she now has distribution for it through the Sinclair Institute. I’m still having trouble finding it on my usual sites, will keep looking.

“What’s been interesting for me is that it’s not for everybody,” says Linton, who attached her real name to Man Of My Dreams. “There are a lot of women out there who like the harder-core stuff, who like the gritty imagery. But I just really believe that women deserve to have choice. We can’t just present one type of sexy to the world’s women.”
….
“I’m aiming my product at moms in their 30s and 40s who are maybe curious about dipping their toes into the adult entertainment waters but who have been put off previously by some of the choices out there,” she says. “I’m providing them with a safe way in.”

The article also has some quotes from Candida Royalle and a brief overview of the research into what women find arousing.

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Women are watching more porn than ever. At least, that’s the conclusion if you read The Sun’s latest survey (and I will admit, The Sun must be taken far less seriously than other newspapers).

Around 76 per cent of women now admit* to using porn – a ten per cent rise on the two-thirds of girls who admitted to watching porn with their partners in a survey last year.

The most popular format is online porn, which is watched by 61 per cent of couples. Just one couple in 20 looks at magazines, while 18 per cent get their kicks watching porn DVDs on the telly.

The survey of 4,200 women also revealed four in five women like to dress up for their other halves and indulge in role play.

The most popular outfit is a French maid, used by 42 per cent, followed by nurses, chosen by a quarter of women.

The survey was actually by a site called Netmums which gives you an idea of the demographics. Apparently women have a lot less time and energy for sex at the moment but they’re putting more effort into it when they get the chance.

* I hate how newspaper use the word “admit” like porn use is a crime. It casts the whole thing into a negative light. Thankfully the article includes interviews with (and photos of) three typical porn-loving women. This is a really positive thing to include because it shows that women who like a bit of porn are just everyday, normal chicks who want to enjoy their sex lives using whatever tools are available to them.

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I think Ewan McGregor is gorgeous and he has long been a favourite actor of mine due to his eagerness to get his gear off in films. I think he should win an award for “Most Full Frontal Male Nude Scenes”.

Now he’s told Out magazine that he doesn’t mind kissing guys on set because it “gets his blood up.”

Talking about kissing Jonathan Rhys Meyers in ‘Velvet Goldmine’, Ewan told Out magazine: “I remember when I kissed Johnny. It was just a rush at the end of the day. It was just an electrical moment, because you look around and some of the British electrician guys – who are all mainly closeted homosexuals, I think – were sitting around going ‘F**k, no.’

But I like kissing boys on screen. As a straight guy, it’s quite an interesting proposition. Anything on a film set that takes you by surprise like that, that gets your blood up, is good.

“I’m always interested in playing different people, in different situations. It doesn’t matter to me whether someone is in love with a man or a woman. I find the idea of love and romance interesting. I’m a sucker for it. I like playing someone who’s falling in love because I like the sensation of it.”

If we get Ewan nude in some kind of gay romance film I think it will make millions. Just so long as the other guy isn’t Charlie from Long Way Round.

Previous post: Ewan McGregor: Our Nude Hero

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Meet the latest successful viral marketing campaign. It’s from Old Spice who have created a collection of odd yet very amusing commercials for their products. This one made me giggle… and then I had to re-watch it to try and spot the joins between each special effect (I couldn’t).

So one could analyse this commercial and critique what it has to say about being male, “lady smells” and the whole stereotypical notion of what women desire. But it feels like that’s taking it all too seriously. I suspect that the advertising company is taking a cheeky and ironic jab at notions of what makes a MAN (that’s MAN in capitals, of course). Essentially, it’s taking the piss out of other commercials that try to speak to macho notions of masculinity. Thus, this ad:

I think if you’re taking it seriously you probably need to get out and practice smiling a bit more.

In the end, these ads are funny, plain and simple. And that guy in the first ad is so sexy he doesn’t require any kind of diamonds (or artificial smells).

And I could even be tempted to buy this stuff and use it on myself. I want to smell like a MAN too. Now that’s a successful ad campaign.

Update 18th Feb: The commercial is up to 1.7 million views and I’ve found a video about how the ad was made. Unfortunately it’s 20 minutes long so here’s the quick version: the whole thing was done in one shot. The only computer graphics used were those with the tickets, diamonds and bottle rising up out of his hand. The shower was a set lifted by a huge crane and the boat was also a set. When he says “What’s in your hand?” he’s sitting down on a specially designed rig that moves him away from the boat and onto the horse. You can see the sky move in the background. They did have to digitally remove a few bits of that rig from under the horse’s neck.

Apparently the shoot took 3 days and this is the 53rd take. The actor’s name is Isiah Mustafa and apparently his phone has rung off the hook after this ad. He’s also on Twitter; his location is “on a horse”.

Update 19th Feb: The LA Times has an interview with the lovely Isiah here. Turns out he’s got a girlfriend.

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I’m about two months late with this post but I thought I should at least read the Twilight books and see the New Moon film before I made any comment. (Note: Spoilers follow).

For a while there, almost every Google alert I got for the phrase “porn for women” came from some columnist or blogger declaring the books and films to be thus. It’s an offhand way of dismissing the immense popularity of these teenage vampire books, similar to the way romance novels are marginalised. “Oh,” huff the critics, “it’s all just fluffy romantic nonsense. Porn for women.” (Because women don’t like real porn, of course. We’re too girly for that. Sex is icky, remember?)

I’d like to declare that the Twilight Saga is not porn for women. Mainly because it’s not porn. Duh.

Oh sure, the films certainly offer female viewers plenty of eye candy, especially New Moon which features a whole pack of buff young men running around without shirts on. “You’re kind of beautiful,” Bella tells Jacob, saying out loud what we’re all thinking. Meanwhile, Edward’s brooding, yellow-eyed paleness has its own distinctly emo appeal.

Yes, no doubt about it, the guys are gorgeous and it’s great that the female gaze is so evident in this movie. It’s absolutely a film made FOR female viewers, something that’s still quite rare.

But it’s not porn because there’s just not enough sex. Rather, it’s romance, plain and simple. The Twilight books stick firmly to the old-fashioned Mills and Boon script of love, marriage, then sex followed almost immediately by children.

I found myself having something of a love-hate relationship with the books as I read them, both guiltily enjoying the luxury of a good romantic novel while still feeling very frustrated about the sexual dynamics of the whole thing.

Almost everyone agrees that vampirism is a metaphor for sex and that’s part of the appeal. The first three Twilight novels seem to be an ode to abstinence which is perhaps not surprising that the author is a Mormon. Despite Bella’s determination to do the wild thing with Edward it doesn’t happen until the fourth book and even then, only when they’re safely married and on honeymoon.

And what’s worse… she fades the scene to black before anything happens! I must confess, I actually yelled at the book at that point. “No!” I said. “Where are the goddam juicy bits?! How could you do this to me, you bitch!”

Despite the coyness of Meyer’s writing, it’s apparent that “sex” for Edward and Bella can only mean penis-in-vagina intercourse; there’s no scope for any other kind of loveplay, despite the fact that the act is extremely dangerous for Bella. Haven’t vampires heard of mutual masturbation? And then the couple seem to get pregnant on their very first shag.

Porn for women? Pah! The whole thing just felt too white-picket-fence and conservative for me to find it intellectually appealing.

And yet… having expressed that frustration, I should now acknowledge two things. The first being that the book is for teenage girls and thus blow-by-blow descriptions of human-vampire sex may be a bit inappropriate and also decrease possible sales.

Secondly, part of the appeal of the Twilight series is the thrill of delaying the moment. As Dr Frank-n-Furter might have said, the books and movies make us shiver with anticip….ation. I ploughed my way through thousands of pages waiting for them to finally get it on and, if nothing else, it kept me motivated.

While I can’t support the idea of abstinence as a good thing simply because someone declares it to be “right”, Twilight at least makes it seem appealing for it’s own sake. There’s something to be said for the idea of delayed satisfaction, of holding back and letting the mouth water a little longer than necessary. And that, perhaps, is another reason why these books aren’t porn. Because porn is about self gratification and fantasy, something that often doesn’t include any kind of anticipation or delay.

So part of me rebels against the ideological grounding behind the book and at the same time I found myself enjoying the results.

See what I mean about love-hate?

Others have criticised the way Bella is so passive and self absorbed. They say the books promote the idea of giving everything up for a boy if your emotions dictate that you must. I don’t really have an issue with those things. It is, after all, a teenage love story and I remember feeling the same way when I was 16. Twilight is emotionally honest, even if it seems angst-filled or over-the-top to adults. And if nothing else, I see the books as a gateway to the literature upon which Meyer based her plot.

There’s one more thing that makes me want to wave the flag for these books and films, despite their many flaws. It’s the fact that Twilight unashamedly speaks to women. The author and the filmmakers know their audience and they’ve made an effort to cater to that audience without compromising. The result is a multi-million dollar franchise that has spawned a bunch of imitators and made Hollywood realise that the much derided “chick flick” might actually be worth pursuing.

It’s also created a spiteful anti-Twilight backlash that may simply be motivated by scorn for “girly nonsense.” Hence the derogatory use of the phrase “porn for women.” For an excellent critique of the way Twilight’s popularity has been marginalised in the mainstream media, read Sady Doyle’s excellent article Girls Just Want To Have Fangs.

Twilight is more than a teen dream. It’s a massive cultural force. Yet the very girliness that has made it such a success has resulted in its being marginalized and mocked. Of course, you won’t find many critics lining up to defend Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, either; mass-market success rarely coincides with literary acclaim. But male escapist fantasies — which, as anyone who has seen Die Hard or read those Tom Clancy novels can confirm, are not unilaterally sophisticated, complex, or forward-thinking — tend to be greeted with shrugs, not sneers. The Twilight backlash is vehement, and it is just as much about the fans as it is about the books. Specifically, it’s about the fact that those fans are young women.??

Doyle also points out that because Edward is not your stereotypically macho hero (he’s pale, beautiful, talks about his feelings, sparkles occasionally), he’s easily derided by men as being not manly enough. Never mind that women find him extremely attractive, the guys won’t have a bar of it. Bring on the muscles, they demand. This Edward bloke isn’t enough of a proper vampire! He’s just so… poofy!

I find Edward to be very appealing, if a little… stalky. He’s infintely superior to the boofy and obnoxious Jacob who I was ready to kill by the end of the third book (buffed abs or no).

So there it is, my delayed critique on the whole Twilight shebang. Not a literary masterpiece by any means but still a cultural phenomenon worth studying and, yes, occasionally praising.

The only question that remains is this: can Twilight ever be porn for women?

Well, I’m thinking the rights might be a little hard to acquire. But beyond that… it might be a project worth doing. Think of the possibilities: Gorgeous pale vampire guy, hot buffed werewolf guy, cute human girl… cue the MMF threesome.

I think most of us wouldn’t mind seeing that.

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This is a short film shown before Yves Saint Laurent’s 2009 fall fashion show for men.

It consists of only a full-frame shot of Michael Pitt’s face as he listens to an unseen woman talk to him erotically about clothes. “I lift up the T-shirt that peeks out from the sleeves and see underneath, you’re stark naked,” she rasps in French. “You dream of me rubbing your feet… I raise the veil from your leather belt and discover where your firm, flat stomach begins. Trousers which, though baggy, fall perfectly straight.”

Is it sexy? Well he’s certainly good looking and it feels like Jennifer Lyon Bell’s film Headshot or a Beautiful Agony video. The French voiceover sounds great although it may be seen as pretentious. I’m not sure I can read that much eroticism into clothing, I must admit, but if you like fashion, it may be a winner.

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Erotic film festival Cinekink New York is now into its seventh year and I’m very pleased to say that I have two films screening at the festival. That’s What I Like is showing at 11pm on Friday Feb 19th and my comedy short Paddling The Pink Canoe screens 1pm Saturday February 20th. It will be the US premiere of both films. TWIL will be screening with the premiere of Jennifer Lyon Bell’s new film Des Jours Plus Belles Que la Nuit.

The program includes a number of films I’d love to see just based on their titles. Whorrey Potter and the Sorcerer’s Balls, Great Humpkin, Flaming of the Shrew…

The other news is that For The Girls is a bronze sponsor of this year’s event. I’m pleased to get behind it and help get artistic and erotic films out to the public. Cinekink also did a cool thing by asking for sponsorship after the lineup of films had been announced. It meant that there was no conflict of interest involved which is why we’re not able to sponsor the Feminist Porn Awards this year.

Unfortunately I can’t make it to New York to be at the festival. I met festival co-ordinator Lisa Vandever in Berlin last year and she’s just fabulous. The cost of airfares combined with prior engagements mean I’m going to miss the fun. It’s really frustrating because I know it will be great.

So I can only suggest that my New York readers consider checking out the Cinekink site and going along to catch some great erotic movies.

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