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Do women feel like they're competing with porn?I found this paragraph interesting: Wolf blamed students' sexual attitudes on the "post-pornographic world." "By the time students encounter sex, they have been exposed to so many images," Wolf said. "Women feel like they are competing with pornography." This is quite the blanket statement, and it made me wonder... do women feel that they have to compete with porn stars? I'm not sure. Does every woman feel threatened by ridiculous size F silicon tits, hairless pussies and Oscar-winning fake orgasms? Well, maybe yes and maybe no. I suspect there are plenty of women out there who most definitely don't want to look like that, and they understand that a lot of porn stars are just exaggerated Barbie dolls, pumped up to look like some porn producer's idea of an ideal women. They understand that it's just porn, and so much porn is idiotic and stupid. I suspect that women feel more threatened by the models in Cosmopolitan magazine than the average porn star - because "normal" women are supposed to look like supermodels, not porn stars. Naomi herself says that her self-identity was shaped by those kinds of magazines: She described her personal battle with anorexia as an adolescent. While looking through beauty magazines, "I realized you become a women by going on a diet," she said. Of course, that's not to say that all women are completely comfortable and unthreatened by porn's depiction of femininity. It may be becoming harder for women to accept their normal pubic hair because of the ubiquitousness of Brazilian waxes. Of course, Naomi was also talking about today's sexual behaviour being influenced by porn. I think this is a bit of a stretch. When I was at uni, way back in the early 90s, female students were just as happily, drunkenly promiscuous as today. And they did it knowing full well that they may regret it in the morning. I don't think porn encourages promiscuity, as such. There is just as much social pressure on women not to be "sluts" today as in the past. I admire Naomi Wolf, but I don't know what she's trying to do with this anti-porn stuff. She should know that there's an awful lot of women out there who remain avowedly non-feminist due to the movement's stance against porn. She has to stop making generalisations about it (and about what women think) and be more specific, I think. Posted: Saturday 19th February 2005, 1:12 AM Back to the Blog
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