Revolutionary Rants

A couple of weeks ago, in the ‘Sunday Times’ News Review section, the columnist (and occasional ‘Grumpy Old Woman’) India Knight wrote a very interesting article—Porn By Any Other Name, 08/05/2005—on modern men’s magazines and ’sex’ as represented by them.

The article was about Tesco’s decision to put ‘lad’s mags’ (the 1990s phenomenon of mags for men about sex, booze, fashion, cars, sport and breasts in general, which seemed to come out in force as a ‘reaction’ to women becoming more confident and entering ‘male’ spheres — and because of the awful ‘ladette’ culture of the time) on the top shelf. This would place them with the magazines and videos we would usually call more blatant pornography — the hardcore stuff. She made the interesting point that magazines such as ‘FHM’, ‘Nuts’ and ‘Zoo’ (Why ‘Zoo’?! Is it so called because it normally houses animals?!) are allowed to sport front cover pictures, and, indeed, articles inside, that would normally be relegated to the ‘top shelf’.

Now, I’ve read these mags (Chris used to occasionally get them, before he moved on to the much more hardcore ‘Custom PC’, and they were bathroom reading in my old student house!) and — in between the slightly altered-for-men-rather-than-women articles about STDs, cosmetics and how to get a partner who will love you for you — this is very true. ‘The Sun’ would never dare to go so far as to put — for example — two women, naked apart from heels, gripping on to one another’s breasts and grinning on the front page, would they?

Well, yes, actually, they would if they could get away with it… They’d just hide it on page 3!

Why is it now that it is OK, amusing, titillating and indeed, kitsch to pose young — usually blond, busty — women as sex-mad bi-bisexuals? You need only to look at the bizarre new “reality” programme which has just started on ITV, which boasts Rebecca Loos and Abi Titmuss as ‘contestants’ to see that women are supposed to be like this in modern Britain. Old-style relationships of two people in a unit of mutual support, ‘love’ and, if they so choose, faithfulness (Ms Loos herself is supposed to have recently ‘married’ her female partner and is this week on a ‘dating’ style sex show) is supposedly gone, we are all now meterosexual: we all diet, look after our nails and sleep with anything we can. None of us wants to ’settle down’, apparently.

And yet, most young women treat any other woman who has slept with anyone who is not a long-term partner — or something potentially long term — like they are the devil themselves! A strange double standard…

Not only do women today have to deal with the media culture which demands them to be thin, busty and always look immaculate, but also now we have to convince everyone they are both ‘pure’ and sexual. How is that possible?!

We live in a culture where women have to be all things (what was the old saying? A wife should be a ‘cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom’?!) and where men can hide away from their meterosexual ‘feminine side’ by treating porn as a cool, comfortable thing (which women also rejoice in, where strong, sexy women are in ‘control’ of their wonderful breast-bearing careers). And, as Ms Knight pointed out, porn is no longer the in the domain of the seedy sex shop, it is in W H Smiths at your railway station for £1.20!