Spanking Models And Body Hair

Reader Marie posted the following question about spanking porn in a comment, but since it was unrelated to the post, I thought I’d pull it up and give it its own post. Fair warning, it reads like one of the standard stereotypical feminist slams on porn generally, with the word “spanking” inserted. So I don’t know if Marie is a spanking aficionado or a regular reader of this blog — it’s possible this was just a drive-by attempt at consciousness raising. Without further ado:

This isn’t in relation to your latest post: it’s a rather large question I’d love to see ad dressed by the spanking community at large. WHY is it that almost all spanking porn requires women to shave their pubic hair? As a teacher who addresses feminist issues, I’m thrown by the presence of an insidious culture of fake female body types that our young men are growing up with: fake body types are their normalized erotic texts. Why is this acceptable? Why are females in spanking porn always depicted without pubic hair? This is just one more example of the commodification of female bodies in a way so retrograde of our embracing our own erotic fantasies and engaging with the normalization of them.

We are creating a new generation of men raised on internet porn who cannot encounter women with the normal bodily accoutraments nature gave us because of the tastes of the current crop of producers of pornography. Why must we perpetuate the notion that genital hair is so unacceptable as to be invisible in spanking porn?

I’ll start by dismissing the absolutes.

Question: “Why are females in spanking porn always depicted without pubic hair?”

Answer: They are not always so depicted. In evidence, I offer three exhibits, one of which was still visible on the front page of Spanking Blog when Marie posted her comment:

Marie’s comment is a dense bundle of intermingled questions, assertions, and assumptions, and I’ve got problems with many of the assumptions and assertions in particular. So I’m going to respond, in my own opinionated fashion, point by point.

Question: “WHY is it that almost all spanking porn requires women to shave their pubic hair?”

Answer: There’s an agency assertion here that I dispute. Having dismissed the “always” claim, I don’t have a problem agreeing that shaved pubic areas are predominant in spanking porn. However, I find the phrase “spanking porn requires” to be a very strange one. So far as I am aware, there isn’t a spanking porn standards body. Nor is porn an active agent. Spanking porn is a product in a market, and as everyone knows, requirements in markets are consumer requirements. If there’s a requirement here, it’s in the nature of a market preference by spanking porn consumers.

Statement: “As a teacher who addresses feminist issues, I’m thrown by the presence of an insidious culture of fake female body types that our young men are growing up with: fake body types are their normalized erotic texts.”

My reactions:

  • Insidious culture? What’s “insidious” about it? Insidious means “Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner.” Shaved pussies are anything but subtle or stealthy, no?
  • How is a shaved pussy a “fake female body type”? With respect, Marie, who the hell are you to tell my girlfriend that she’s got a “fake female body type”? She shaves regularly and with extreme prejudice — her body hairs quail and tremble when they see her coming. She read your comment and recoiled in horror. Body hair? Her exact quote was “Ew, do not want! DO NOT WANT!” (She even plucks her eyebrows, which completely baffles me, but whatever – it’s her body, her hair, not my problem. From my perspective, shaving is just a girl thing, like the seven bottles of lotion without which it is apparently impossible for a woman to have clean skin.)
  • As for being “normalized erotic texts”, porn is fuel for the world of fantasy. In just the same way that a novel describes fictional situations, porn often describes and depicts women who are different in some way from the women, if any, actually available to the porn consumer. That’s part of what porn is for.

Question: “Why is this acceptable?”

Answer: Why not? The crusader for porn that’s more representational of female body types would surely bear the burden of establishing a problem with the use of fantastic images in porn. To me, that seems like a huge and insurmountable burden, given porn’s deliberate role as a fuel for fantasies.

Statement: “This is just one more example of the commodification of female bodies in a way so retrograde of our embracing our own erotic fantasies and engaging with the normalization of them.”

Reaction: This is too jargony for me to parse. I think I’d disagree with what’s being said if it were stated in plain English, though. It appears to have buried within it a laughable claim that some erotic fantasies are more appropriate than others. But I may be missing the point.

Statement: “We are creating a new generation of men raised on internet porn who cannot encounter women with the normal bodily accoutraments nature gave us because of the tastes of the current crop of producers of pornography.”

Reaction: Oh really? This strikes me as an unsupported claim plus a bit of false nature-worshiping plus another marginally-related bit of backwards economics.

  • First of all, it’s a giant logical leap from the probably true “consumers of porn are used to, and tend to enjoy, photographs without much body hair showing” to “such consumers cannot encounter women” who have body hair. That strikes me as unlikely; but, in any case, it would need to be established by more than bald assertion. {drumroll}
  • Second, I am detecting an unexamined exaltation of the natural. Humans are the monkeys who tinker. We change our environments, our diets, our physical landscapes, our pets, our crops, our sexual practices, and yes, our bodies, radically and massively, all the time, to suit ourselves. That’s natural, for us, because it’s our nature. Some of these changes have unfortunate secondary effects, but we have to engage those on their own merits and demerits. Just because “nature gave us” a thing is no reason to proscribe or critique the universal tendency to tinker with it.
  • Lastly, “because of the tastes of the current crop of producers of pornography” is breathtakingly backwards economics. Do we assume that people buy SUVs by the flatcar load “because of the tastes of” the automakers in Detroit and Japan? No, those automakers produce SUVs because of the tastes of the people who buy cars. People who disapprove of SUVs, like those who disapprove of shaved pussies, like to claim that the producers are cramming the product down our throats. But they make what people buy. Can they shape and influence consumer preferences? Sure. Or, at least, they can try. But all the actual power is at the point of spend.

Question: “Why must we perpetuate the notion that genital hair is so unacceptable as to be invisible in spanking porn?”

Answer: I don’t think that notion has been established.

OK, enough with the point by point. This isn’t, really, about spanking porn at all. This is a standard porn critique with the word “spanking” plugged in at a few key points. Now I’m going to share my own opinions on pubic hair in porn — porn generally, since I don’t see much difference between spanking porn and mainstream porn on this subject.

  • It’s true there isn’t a lot of pubic hair in visual porn. I think this is primarily a photographic / cinematographic issue with a side issue of porn economics. Porn is divided into soft core and hard core. Soft core doesn’t show genitals, and the models get paid less. You want to show genitals, you pay the models more. If you pay them more, you want to show what you paid for. Pubic hair is obscuring. Why would you pay to show something, and then leave it covered up? Answer: You wouldn’t, unless you were making fetish porn for people who specifically are aroused by the hair. Mainstream porn has lots of stuff aimed at body hair fetishists. Spanking porn tends not to, I suspect because targeting two fetishes at once is economically tricky.
  • The visible / covered issue with pubic hair may extend to the personal preferences of porn models, also. Some of the division between women who shave and women who don’t can be explained by how comfortable they are with concealing or not concealing their own genitals. Porn models are a self-selected group who are, obviously, more comfortable with exposure than folks who choose not to appear in porn. Perhaps, as a class, they are more likely to have shaved before seeking out work in porn? It would be interesting to hear from porn producers here. How many of your models are shaved when you start working with them, versus how many shaved at your request?
  • Shaving is a body modification choice. I shave my face because I don’t like all that stuff in front of my nose and around my mouth. I don’t shave my pubes because, frankly, it would be a hassle, I don’t feel a need, and nobody’s ever suggested they’d like it. Women make similar choices. Some shave, some don’t. Why? I’m sure it’s highly individual and highly personal. I don’t need to know. But I am an absolutist about individual choice. I know that early in the history of American feminism some women said “I’m not doing this for myself — I’m going to stop.” And they did, and that’s great. But then some of them said, in effect, “all women should stop shaving, none of them are doing it for themselves.” And that, in my view, was wrong. Complaints about shaved porn models have been a constant drumbeat from then to now. My mother used to say things like “real women aren’t shaved, only Barbie Dolls and porn stars are shaved.” That’s a hideously unjust attempt to constrain the real choices of real women, including — in this case — one I love. So, needless to say, I am against that sort of judgmental claptrap.

I’d be interested to hear the perspective of actual spanking models like Adele Haze, Niki Flynn, and Pandora Blake. Ladies?

See Also:

  1. Adele Haze commented on September 3rd, 2007:

    Well, I’ve never been explicitly asked to groom my body hair in any way. I wear my pubes however the mood strikes me. Right now it’s quite a fuzzy landing strip, but I’ve been shaved before. For a shoot I normally keep the pubic hair however I happen to be wearing it at the time.

    I can’t speak for the whole of the internet (obviously), but pubic hair grooming is, in my experience left to the personal choice of the models.

    I seem to remember that Amelia Jane Rutherford has a lovely landing strip.

    The idea of growing a full bush for the sake of a “generation of men” doesn’t sound like a very feminist idea to me, no more than shaving for the sake of men does.

  2. SpankBoss commented on September 3rd, 2007:

    Thanks Adele!

  3. Marie commented on September 3rd, 2007:

    Hello and my goodness! I certainly caught your attention, and some ire. I wonder if that’s not due to assumptions on both our parts. (I’m a great fan of your site and I certainly don’t expect you to give me any more attention on it – frankly I didn’t expect any response – but I would be interested in a personal response if you have the time: if you don’t, I certainly understand).

    First, a clarification: I’m a spanko since childhood, and now blissfully married to a man who blisters my backside routinely. He is my prince, my love, my soul mate.

    I am a 100% feminist. I don’t think that needs the reminder that wanting equal rights does not mean a hatred of men or sexuality.

    I am 100% pro pornography. The silly myth that women are less interested in sex than men is perpetuated by men who WANT women silent and submissive (hey, I’ve got NOTHING against willing submissiveness, but you know what I’m talking about).

    But I repeat, as a sometime high school and now college instructor who routinely deals with issues of sexuality and body image (and sorry about the jargon: I am a Ph.D. and sometimes it’s hard to ditch the discourse community standards) with young people in our culture, and who has looked at thousands of spanking images, I started thinking about how our cultural tastes that encourage 5 year old females to diet and makes healthy women submit to surgery in order to satisfy cultural tastes their bodies cannot match, it started to bug me that so many spanking images showed a shaved pussy. I have looked at these images for a long time, and it started irking me that this was one more physical representation that wasn’t realistic.

    If you want to shave, groovy. But I’ve talked with more young women than you can shake that proverbial stick at who starve themselves, shave, pluck, puke, dye, etc., not for themselves, but for the whim of the young boys who are fine with their beer bellies and flabby muscles but have an internet-educated taste for a certain type of uber- female body. The sickening double standard that requires females to undergo personally painful and even life threatening medical procedures to achieve a false sense of what is feminine beauty is so disappointing. I’m all for physical beauty. All for fantasy. All for gorgeous sexuality. But I do find the images of women in porn to routinely represent unrealistic body types.

    To my great satisfaction, spanking porn seems to embrace women of various body types, colors, etc., but (clearly you’ve seen more than me, but believe me, I’ve greedily gobbled up spanking pictures since I got online) the one thing that irks me is this cultural preference for a hairless pussy. And AGAIN, I’m saying this because young boys – for the first time in history – have access to so much porn – and they are being conditioned to expect a certain body type. Must this include a woman who shaves/waxes? If you want to, great, but what if you don’t’ want to? I’ve spoken with many young women who feel terrible about their bodies because their ‘beaus’ have rejected them because they haven’t waxed that part of their body. When pressed, these boys admit they haven’t been with girls yet, but have an expectation of Japanese porn-like hairlessness. (in case you’re wondering, I teach classes dealing with sexuality/pornography, and I usually have frosh/soph kids). I DO NOT ask these kids to talk about this with me – in fact I avoid it – but in ten years I’ve encountered these issues as it comes up in writing or in writing conferences. This is a genuine problem – I am on the frontlines of our young people and I see/hear/read about it, whether I like it or not.

    So, in closing, I am not anti-porn or anti-body grooming: I’m disturbed by what I see as a persistent image that is cultivating a taste that is more persuasive/insidious than ever, perpetuating a female body-standard that isn’t the way females are made by nature. I have nothing against shaved pussies. I object to the objectification of the female body that normalizes this look to the point that normal hair is seen as gross or abnormal. I know you’ve seen more than me, but I’m telling you, it’s pretty consistent that the spanking models I’ve seen don’t even have landing strips.

    I’ve loved and been turned on by your (and Bethie’s) blog for years. You two are the sort of people that helped a confused woman realize she was NOT crazy for craving this: I am more grateful to sites like yours than I can possibly say.

    Nevertheless, my profession obliges me (as does my heart) to critique persistent images of women that are not realistic, and BELIEVE ME, young men are so routinely exposed (and seek out) these images, it really does impact their notion of beauty, to the point that we are creating a generation of young men who cannot find a normal woman’s body in its natural state attractive and who insist that their girlfriends alter their bodies in yet one more way.

    Sorry my last post got you so immersed in the notion that I was some anti-porn feminist.

    Marie

  4. Jim commented on September 3rd, 2007:

    It has been my experience that women are thier own worse critics. Few women I know are completely happy with thier body type. I always try to point out to them that not every male will be turned on by a particular body type, breast size, height, hair color, hair length, etc…etc. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. I happen to find confident women extremely attractive, regardless of the amount of body hair they wish to wear. Marie seems to lack that type of confidence. Sad that she feels compeled to pollute the minds of other women with her own perverted idea of what she thinks the “perfect” female should be. Truth is, there is no perfect.

  5. SpankBoss commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Hi, Marie. Thanks for the kind words about the blog, and for your clarification of where you’re coming from. It does help.

    I’d like to assure you that there was no ire intended in my response, nor yet anything personal; indeed, with one exception I was careful to draft my response in general terms rather than addressing it particularly to you. That exception was my response to your negative characterization of the body presentation Bethie prefers. You called it fake, which still strikes me as unduly dismissive of the preferences of others, not to mention being none of your damned business. That tendency to be harshly judgmental about the preferences and choices of some women is the reason that I am (a) critical of feminism in general and (b) not willing to accept the label myself, despite my own heartfelt conviction that women, like men, should be 100% free to choose their own destinies, behaviors, and bodily presentations. If more feminists seemed more strongly committed to that goal, I’d be a lot happier with the movement and the label.

    I wonder whether you have the perspective to look back at your first posted paragraphs and see how utterly stereotypical they are. If you are not anti-porn, and I’m inclined to believe you, I feel obliged to point out that for whatever reason, you chose to present your points using the exact jargon, rhetorical approach, and apparent “tone” that anti-porn feminists use when condemning porn, making it hard to detect whatever differences you may have with them. Your subsequent response is much more nuanced, though there remains much with which I ardently disagree.

    One area of common ground we do have that may surprise you. With due acknowledgement that you have access to a much better class of anecdotal evidence than I do, I am willing and ready to accept your assertion that a rising proportion of young men anticipates female hairlessness and is “grossed out” by female body hair. How big a problem that may be, I am not sure; but that it’s the case, I stand ready to believe. I’ve seen plenty of evidence myself.

    However.

    Your first comments struck me as putting the arrows of causation exactly backwards, when you chose to blame porn producers. Your second set of sentiments seems more ready to accept a broader cultural standard of beauty as being to blame, but you still have what strikes me as a bizarrely indefensible fetish for body standards that are “realistic” or “made by nature”. Men and women alike have been grooming themselves away from the natural baseline for thousands of years. Yes, it’s cultural. Sometimes, it’s even life threatening, and not just for women — I’ve seen photos of men from tribal societies with full-body scarification that must surely have threatened infection in the getting. It’s one thing to reject a cultural expectation for yourself — that’s liberty in action. It’s another thing to condemn others for failing to reject it or (and this seems to be where you and I differ) condemn other others for having the expectation in the first place.

    So. If your argument is, as it seems to be, that body modification in “unnatural” ways is per se wrong and bad, or that a preference for “natural” standards of beauty is in any way superior, we must continue to disagree. I found your use of the phrase “a false sense of what is feminine beauty” particularly telling. That suggests that you have identified a “true sense” of beauty, or that your opinion on the matter is somehow “right” even where it diverges from the cultural beauty standards of the culture in which we both live. That, I find breathtaking, and not in a good way.

    However, I am much more interested in your stories of the young women who complain to you of the pressure they feel from young men to conform to the cultural standards that do diverge so much from what nature provides to the average woman. You are offended by the fact that the pressure is felt — the standard feminist response — while I am bothered instead by the fact that these young women seem to have no sense of their own sexual power. Young men are easily led by young women. Why are the ones you talk to so frantic to conform to the standard rather than confident of their ability to flourish socially and sexually with whatever body type they’ve got plus whatever presentation thereof they are comfortable making? That, to me, ought to be the true feminist issue, and it’s a question I find far more interesting.

    I am, in the end, an individualist. If these women feel pressure, we ought to focus on teaching them to reject what is unreasonable and conform only so far as they feel comfortable. Blaming young men — who, in the end, can get away with no more in the way of expectation than the women in their lives will tolerate — strikes me as rather odd. Blaming the porn these young men are viewing — the porn they choose to view, the porn they seem to like — seems like blaming the tool instead of the carpenter. It also feels to me like pointing the blame at a point several steps away from the only imaginable point of solution to the problem.

    Also, I’ve got an unrelated aside in response to a side comment of your own. You wrote “The silly myth that women are less interested in sex than men is perpetuated by men who WANT women silent and submissive.” I confess I don’t see how the myth would aid that end, but I do have an alternative source to propose. Sexual success is not evenly distributed among men. A great many men have very little of it, which is an oblique way of saying, some men get told “no” to an awful lot, even by women they expect to say “yes”, like, say, their wives. After enough of this, they conclude that women don’t have much interest in sex. They universalize their experience, utterly neglect to consider alternative explanations having to do with their own odious personal habits, and wrongly conclude that women don’t have much interest in sex generally (as opposed to “with them”). It’s a bad meme that thrives because it’s easy on male egos.

    Finally, I’d like to state that I’m highly skeptical of the broad claim that what women do in pursuit of beauty is always or even most often done “for” men or in response to pressure from them. Of course that does happen, but I’ve also witnessed an enormous amount of primping and preening that seems aimed at other women. Bethie does things with her hair and face and nails that I don’t notice, don’t care about, or in some cases (especially the nail treatments) actively dislike. She says she does it because the women in her circle expect it and are judgmental if she doesn’t do it, and she’s confident I’ll love her anyway even if she has plastic talons and I’m constantly threatening to have her declawed. (And she’s right, I will, though I do threaten.) That matches my own observations. Women, too, have artificial standards of beauty, and the cultural pressures they can bring to bear are at least as powerful as anything men bring to the game. Could it be that some of the young women who tell you they feel pressured by male expectations are, in fact, reacting to well-meaning pressure from their own female peers and their (perhaps inaccurate) accounts of male expectation?

  6. Bethie commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Ahem! I do not have “plastic talons,” dearest. Okay, so they’re not real, but I wouldn’t call them “talons” for crying out loud! Men! LOL

    Okay, before everyone starts thinking my friends are mean, shallow cats, I think Dan reads more into our activities than is there. Getting our nails done is often a group activity so it’s more about socialization than being judgemental. Even if we don’t go together, we notice and compliment each other on how pretty they are. The bottom line is, I like having my nails done. They’re prettier to me this way. :-)

    That’s the bottom line about all of this; I choose to groom the way I do as a personal preference. I shaved my privates long before I ever saw any kind of porn or met a guy who liked it that way. I *like* it that way and that’s all that really matters when it comes to my personal grooming.

    I honestly don’t get the prejudice toward shaving your pubes. What is that about? It’s not natural? Well, shaving my armpits and legs isn’t natural either but I do it and no one blinks an eye at that. I like the way my body feels and looks without that extra hair. I don’t do it for Dan and I sure don’t do it for anyone else, I do it for me. I enjoy having soft, smooth skin minus hair.

    When you get right down to it, the truth is that I don’t like my pubic hair! It’s just too unruly and coarse as far as I’m concerned and the less the better for me. Without the hair, it’s so much softer and prettier to me. I feel like pubic hair hides my most feminine of features and I don’t like that at all. I like having my pussy visible so it can be seen in all it’s glory. But that’s my personal choice.

    I don’t look down at women who don’t shave or pluck a single hair or think they’re amazingly awesome for being so natural. I just don’t care about their choices in grooming as it’s their body and their choice. It’s none of my business! And I’d appreciate it if they’d extend me the same courtesy.

    Btw, those girls who were rejected by some guy who was so superficial that shaved pubes was a deal breaker, someone tell them that they’re better off without that kind of jerk in their life, much less in their bed! Bleh. They deserve better than a man with those issues. For pity’s sake, quit putting the blame on the pornographers and help those girls get some self-confidence!

  7. Aaron commented on September 4th, 2007:

    “This is just one more example of the commodification of female bodies in a way so retrograde of our embracing our own erotic fantasies and engaging with the normalization of them.”

    I believe this statement is saying: “The example of shaved genitalia is another in pacakaging up the female form in a specific way, that sets back women to give up their fantasies in lieu of what is desired by the rest of the world”, which is, as you pointed out, a piece of the rhetoric used by anti porn folk.

    You’ve already addressed a lot of her points and I have to agree with you on your assertions. I spent nearly a year of my life with a feminist woman, but a feminist who really did believe in the equality of the sexes and didn’t really freak out when she saw some porn, she simply made me realize that she was better than any porn I could find, and she was very right.

    I enjoy shaved pussy, just not because porn tells me to. Much like you SpankBoss, the woman I love wouldn’t have it any other way. Since she turns me on by existing, her preference for shaving leaked over into my libido as well. Does it mean I turn away somone who isn’t? Of course not. Any man with a beating heart and a love for women who says otherwise is a liar.

    I love the site, been reading for a couple of years now. Keep up the amazing work.

  8. Leesa commented on September 4th, 2007:

    I’m one of the few out there who doesn’t shave my pubes. I do what my M. wants, but wow is it one of the most commented on subjects in my photos. When will you shave? Why don’t you shave? Let me shave you!

    It gets old, to be honest.

    Leesa

  9. SpankBoss commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Leesa, nice to hear from you! Since your second blog vanished and you started leaving passworded links as your only contact, it’s been a long time. :(

  10. sarah commented on September 4th, 2007:

    wow, what a can of worms you opened up Boss…

    I can simply say the reason I shave is because it pleases my man and it please me. Isn’t that enough? For me it is “pretty”. That one word describes it all. He loves it because it is soft, smooth, and open. I like it because it feels clean and feminine.

    I am not 100% feminist. I am a die hard submissive in and out of bed. My man is the boss in our home (we practice DD), but he has never dictated I do this, I just always have, and I am glad he loves it, because it would be hard to change at this point.

    While to each his own, I think you can read a lot more into this than there is. I do agree men today are getting way to used to seeing the perfect body and we human motal females not endowed with the perfect body that the porn stars have can not possible measure up and it is frustraing, but shaving is some many of us do just because we like it that way.

    I like feeling pretty. I like my bra and panties to match ( I never leave the house without them matching). I regularly go to the hair dresser, and manicurist, why? Because I like to feel pretty. I wear thigh highs instead of regular nylons, why? Because it makes me feel pretty!!! I wear make-up and attractive clothes, why? Because it makes me feel pretty. (I think I am going to break out in the West Side Story song soon lol)

    I am a 42 year old mature woman who enjoys feeling pretty, for myself and for my man…nothing wrong with that as far as I am concerned.

    sarah

  11. Niki Flynn commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Hi there. I’m a bit late replying to this (and a LOT jet-lagged), but you solicited my input, so here goes.

    Like Adele, I have never heard of any spanking company requiring any particular pubic grooming style. In fact, I often encounter the reverse in mainstream modelling – a lot of art nude photographers prefer girls who AREN’T shaved. (And while I would be willing to grow a temporary landing strip for the right photographer, I’m NOT willing to go the dense foliage route.

    I remember an argument on British Spanking Forum once about how “all spanking models were shaved so we looked like little girls” or some such rubbish. I shave because it’s comfortable and convenient and it’s my own personal choice. I like the way it looks and feels. Full stop. Sure, if my partner wanted something different, I’d consider it, but he doesn’t, so we’re both happy. Frankly, I think the “porn shorn” style is popular because – well, it gives us nowhere to hide. (We all know how unimaginative you guys are, after all – LOL)

    (That was a joke.)

    And incidentally, I’ve always rejected the term “feminist” because of the way it’s been appropriated by so many “porn is the theory; rape is the practice” types. So I don’t call myself a feminist, though technically I guess I am. I’m with Marie on the pro-porn, pro-independence stance and I hope this clears things up a bit.

    Off to bed now.

  12. SpankBoss commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Niki, thanks for your response! I do appreciate the chance to bring data points into an argument. ;-)

  13. Richard commented on September 4th, 2007:

    I shave because the women I want to love me don’t like beards. They don’t shave their pussys because that’s what I want. I am not put off, in the least by a naked snatch but I am put off by the incredible bias for it that I see online. I may be wrong but I do think it is being imposed by the producers and not by the market. Just as the producers seem to think that 44EEE breasts are considered the height of beauty by most men. Some men certainly enjoy silicon or saline implants of that size but I will bet a week’s salary that most don’t.

    Thanks to Marie and the Boss for an interesting discussion.

  14. Tom Lemon commented on September 4th, 2007:

    This discussion is unlikely to go very far, for the simple reason that the kind of Feminism represented in Marie’s comments is based on a wholly unrealistic, illogical, and contradictory set of dogmatic statements. It’s very much like a radical religious sect. With enough verbal twisting and squeezing, everything can be justified, everything can be explained, everything can be claimed. Anybody can be blamed for the world’s ills, or conversly, they can be made into a saint. It’s entirely dependant on the amount of time and trouble the writer is willing to go to, to twist their arguments around in pretzels.

    When confronted by this, it makes no sense to argue or refute. The only sane thing is to walk away. Go back to a real world in which commen sense, not dogma, is the driver, in which adults take responsibility for their actions, instead of trying to lay all the blame on “society” or some other group of people who they have decided are “the bad guy.”

    For example, it’s all the rage for people to complain about how girls “pluck, shave, and starve” themselves “because boys want it”. What a pile of BS. Girls pluck, shave, and starve themselves because their GIRLFRIENDS are doing it, and because Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are doing it. It has little to do with boys, or with men. It’s girls and women creating their own culture, suffering because of their own culture. This will stop when Feminists stop trying to shift the blame on men and start teaching girls and women to take a little responsibility for their own actions and their own female cultural norms.

    You women are creating this problem, Marie. You fix it.

    PS. I half expect this comment to be pulled by the moderator. It’s always acceptable for women to blame men in public, but seldom allowed for men to respond in kind. I’ll wait and see.

  15. SpankBoss commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Tom, I could wish you’d been more civil; if you aren’t next time, I will moderate your comment. Not for content, but because a basic politeness is appreciated here. Marie’s been civil, no reason we shouldn’t be. I think I’ve proven it’s possible to engage her arguments, rather than calling them “BS” and suggesting it’s pointless to argue. That’s a sort of veiled ad hominem that doesn’t really enhance your point.

  16. sam commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Heh…I haven’t even finished this post. BUT, I would like to make this comment in reference to the:
    Statement: “We are creating a new generation of men raised on internet porn who cannot encounter women with the normal bodily accoutraments nature gave us because of the tastes of the current crop of producers of pornography.”

    I LOVE PORN! I wish the male selection would be a little sexier, and sometimes the females are a little too thin for me…but a generation of men? That was the most sexist thing I’ve heard. I’m female. I love porn. Is it hard to understand?

    And pubic hair – I shave, personally. I think that for us spankees, it adds to the humiliation/exhibitionism involved. And it feels better shaved. Cleaner. And there’s something just so painful about accidentally pulling on pubic hair…

  17. Jim commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Gosh, and here I am, all growed up before the internet era, and yet all my youthfull fantisies invovlved shaved pubic hair and spanking. See how insidious it really is? It got me even before the internet.

  18. Jules commented on September 4th, 2007:

    I think it’s an oversimplification to say that women are creating their own problems,Tom. We are complicit, yes, just as anyone who lives in our society is, just as any oppressed class is complicit in their own oppression. It’s the way our society works: Make us, the oppressed class, partly responsible for our place in society and then make us feel guilty about it when we try to bring up the injustice in the system. Those of us who have done elementary reading on any kind of social theory have already passed that level of discussion. Give us something new to think about.

    I agree with Marie. I find the typical female form as portrayed by most mainstream and spanking fetish porn to be frustrating, not only because it’s unrealistic but because of how much trouble women who choose to look like that must put themselves through. I realize that sounds like complaining, and I don’t mean to complain. It’s just that who has the time to do stuff like that? I like to spend my free time reading or playing with my dog or surfing the net. I find it frustrating that my husband wants me to shave anywhere, and especially my pussy, because it is very uncomfortable for me to have to do. It takes time and daily maintainence, and I am impatient and don’t like to fuss with my appearance. I have sensititve skin and I don’t like the rashes I inevitably get… You never see those in porn, because guess what: It’s not sexy! And it creeps me out that when I looked at my naked pussy, I see the genitals of a prepubescent girl. I will do it occasionally to please him, just as he’ll do things to please me, but most of the time we’re both come-as-we-are (ha!).

    However. Anyone who is bothered by all of that really has to push it way to the back of the line, because that is the LEAST of concerns of a feminist who is into being spanked and dominated. A TON of stuff about this bothers me, but there’s nothing I can do about it short of becoming celibate. It really bothers me that I immediately get turned on when I think about being spanked, or about a pretty girl getting spanked. It bothers me that I think about it during otherwise spankless sex. It bothers me to acknowledge that I want to be the submissive one in bed. I have never identified as a lifestyle submissive, and he is definitely not a dom, but those are the roles we find ourselves falling into when we’re in the sack, and that’s the way we like it. It really bothers me on an intellectual level, as a well-educated free-thinking feminist who is 100% committed to the idea of equal rights for women and children. What can I do when my whole sex life is at odds with what I know is right?

    I guess I’m not really looking for answers, because I know there are none. I think that this is an interesting topic, one that I think of often, and I am happy to see part of it addressed here.

    Love the blog (although I am always squicked out by anything involving ropes, so I scroll by those pictures really fast!).

  19. SpankBoss commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Jules, I’m not going to let you get away with suggesting that you’re beyond the whole argument because you’ve read a little social theory. You can’t respond to individualist arguments against condemnations of porn by waving your hands and being dismissive. You’re arguing with someone (me) who doesn’t agree that you’re part of an oppressed class, because I disagree with the entire concept of “class” as a legitimate unit of social division, measurement, calculation, or consideration. We are discussing the behavior of large numbers of individuals, nothing more. It’s fine to disagree with me, or with Tom, on that point. But veiled ad hominem (“if you were better educated, you’d understand my sophisticated arguments, but as it is, you’re just being boring and tiresome”) is not acceptable here.

    Moving on, I confess to being puzzled at how you can talk about women who “choose to” do a thing but are frustrated that they “must put themselves through” it. Usually a choice involves weighing the costs and benefits and going with the option that balances them best. If the costs outweigh the benefits, why choose to do it in the first place? And if the benefits outweigh the costs, why be frustrated?

    Finally, you wrote: “And it creeps me out that when I looked at my naked pussy, I see the genitals of a prepubescent girl.” That kind of creeps me out as well. Are you speaking literally, and suggesting you don’t have the labial development that mature women have? If so, I’m sorry. But if you’re simply equating hairlessness with prepubescence, I think you’re creeping yourself out needlessly. That’s an association I think is common among women who don’t like to shave, but it’s really not a very accurate one. Grown up genitals don’t look like those of prepubescent girls, not even close! (I have older sisters and grew up in a house without much privacy, is how I know.)

  20. Richard commented on September 4th, 2007:

    Boss,

    1. All I can say is that if you disagree with the idea of “class” then there is no point in this discussion. You can chose to call it “large numbers of individuals” but that is a class…
    From Webster ” a number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits.”

    2. You really seem to be trying to misunderstand Jules. I doubt she is saying she has the genitalia of a 6 year old but since pubic hair is a secondary sex characteristic of adults the lack of it causes her to see “the genitals of a prepubescent girl.” Not really a stretch if that is where her kink goes, is it?

  21. SpankBoss commented on September 5th, 2007:

    Richard, no need to participate if you don’t see the point of participating, but I must disagree with you. The feminist theory folks are using the word “class” in a very specific technical sense, in support of a body of (my opinion, mostly bogus) political theory going back to Marx and even earlier. I do not think Jules was using the word in a strict Webster’s dictionary sense, especially given her own reference to the theory readings. There’s an ancient ideological war between the folks who lump humans into classes and want do their political arithmetic that way, and folks who insist that the only useful unit in politics and sociology is the individual. Whether it makes sense to talk about “oppressed classes” is very much an ongoing dispute, which Jules was trying to arm-wave out of existence, as is the fashion in the modern American classroom where individualist political theory gets extremely short shrift.

    Moving on to your #2, your “pubic hair is a secondary sex characteristic of adults” is true. However, the converse does not automatically follow. Jules seems to be saying something akin to “The lack of pubic hair identifies my genitals to me as those of a prepubescent girl” which has, buried within it, some sort of assertion that, for Jules, pubic hair is a necessary sex characteristic of adult women. That sounds to me like a variant of the argument upthread that shaved pussies are “unnatural” or “unrealistic” and therefore bad.

    One of my points is that human nature is to modify our appearance at individual whim. Jules seems to feel that she doesn’t look like an adult human unless she looks like an unmodified adult human. As her personal fetish or prejudice, that’s fine. Yet, she presented that preference as if it were an argument against modification, or a claim about what adult women “ought” to look like.

  22. Niki Flynn commented on September 5th, 2007:

    The “what an adult woman *ought* to look like” argument really bugs me too. If I see a picture of myself naked and shaved, I see an adult woman with a shaved pubic region, not a prepubescent girl, nor even a woman with prepubescent genitalia.

    And contrary to what people may think, spanking models don’t shave (or aren’t MADE to shave, coerced, enticed, required, etc.) to LOOK like prepubescent girls either. Most producers would run a mile from shaved girls if that was the collective implication. I’m not sure how much the general audience knows what goes on behind the scenes, but frankly, most companies are so paranoid about legal ramifications that they won’t even do ageplay scenarios or use any family-oriented words (ie, no daddy/daughter scenes, etc.).

    I started shaving my bikini line when I was a dancer. (Nothing less sexy than curls of pubic hair escaping from a tight thong!) And as I shaved the landing strip closer and closer, one day I just decided to shave it all off and I’ve never gone back. I love the smoothness and the way it looks and my six-year-old self is the LAST thing it reminds me of!

    Pubic hair goes through trends the same as head hair. Remember: once upon a time women didn’t shave their legs or underarms either. Is it easier to look for sinister motives in the men behind spanking movies than to accept that some of us are doing what we independently think looks and feels nicer? After all, there are plenty of women out there (spanko and vanilla) you DON’T see naked on the internet who are also shaved.

  23. Janice Smith commented on September 5th, 2007:

    I don’t know how to say this politely and not sounding rude but, please, try to understand that I am making a point not trying to offend. it seems as many of you commenting here misunderstand Marie or miss the point she is making. You are concerned with how she said certain things (this is important but maybe, sometimes, the point, the meaning is more important) and react to the tone or an interpretation of what she says but not really care about her point.

    Regardless of jargon (which Marie herself apologised for) I think she is pointing out the fact that spanking porn, despite being less narrow in its way of portraying, for example, body types, still contains, most often, shaved genitals. Furthermore I think she is trying to put this in context where mainstream media most often shows women with only a few body types. She points out that in her experience this is causing problems for young women, since they feel they need to live up to those ‘ideals’ (you see I put ‘ideals’ in quotation marks to point out that there is not an ideology behind it but it was a short way of saying that it functions as ideal for great many people).

    There is not, really, a point in telling Marie that young women should be more confident because all she is saying is that it is a problem (in her experience) and that she is disturbed that even spanking porn, which she obviously, enjoy, adhere to this way of portraying genitals.

  24. SpankBoss commented on September 5th, 2007:

    Janice, I care deeply about Marie’s point, and disagree with it fervently, as I think my postings show.

    It doesn’t look to me like you read the same comments. What you think she is saying does not match at all what I’m reading her saying.

  25. Tony commented on September 5th, 2007:

    I think we need to refine our understanding of `choice’.

    There is a weak sense of choice according to which almost everybody can choose whether to shave their pubic hair. Virtually nobody is forced (say at gunpoint!) to shave. Various people have invoked this sense of choice (`My man doesn’t force me to do it’). On this weak sense of choice, it is also a choice to shave leg hair and underarm hair (nobody stands over you threatening you to do it).

    But there is another sense of choice according to which women don’t have much choice about shaving their leg and underarm hair. Since they aren’t compelled to do so, they can choose not to shave their legs and underarms. But such a choice sends quite a powerful signal to men (`She’s a hairy feminist, I wouldn’t touch her with a pole’). Now, do we think that such men are shallow idiots or not? I think the answer is `Not’. Like it or not, unshaven legs sends a signal: `I’m only interested in men who accept my feminist choices/who can see beyond my leg hair to the real me’ or whatever. Some choices are pretty neutral (the choice between a red and a blue top). Whether you decide to wear a red or a blue top doesn’t say a lot about who you are. Both choices are very normal. But unshaven legs say a great deal about who you are. By not shaving ones legs, one is making a choice to go against the norm, saying something about who you are, and insisting that one wants a man who respects and understands that particular norm-violation. Since a lot of women don’t want to restrict their pool of available men based on this issue, they shave their legs. Do they have a choice to do so? Only in the thin nobody-puts-a-gun-to-their-heads sense. To choose not to shave your legs is to choose to be defined in a particular way. It pigeonholes you. If you don’t want to be pigeonholed, you have to shave your legs. Shaving your legs hardly says anything about who you are: you’re just a norm-following, normal girl. But you can only be normal by shaving your legs (whereas you are normal in either colour top). Shaving legs is not a choice like the choice between a red and a blue top.

    I think that part of the point that Marie originally made is that shaving pubes is increasingly becoming the norm, so that unshaven pubes look like a norm violation. From this point of view, women now have fewer choices: women don’t want to make a strong political statement with their fannies, so `choose’ to shave.

    Crucially, this is consistent with a number of points that people have made. It is consistent with the idea that (for example) the shaver feels prettier because she shaves. Of course she feels prettier (Marie can say): she is closer to the norm of womanhood! The idea that shaving pubic hair is just complying with the norm is also consistent with the idea that a woman has choice because nobody is forcing her to do it. Of course, I conceded that. It is also consistent with the idea that there is no agent forcing her to shave (class, porn producers, whoever). A norm doesn’t have to be set up by any agent.

    As far as I’m concerned the real question is this: does there exist a norm of womanhood such that the decision not to shave ones pubic hair pigeonholes women? Personally, I don’t think there is.

  26. SpankBoss commented on September 5th, 2007:

    Tony writes “I think we need to refine our understanding of ‘choice’.”

    This will sound hyperbolic, but I need to say it anyway. That’s the clarion call of totalitarianism. That’s a stunningly clear statement of the denial of personal responsibility that I’m arguing against.

    That “thin” “nobody puts a gun to their head” definition of choice is the foundation of liberty. Once you define it away, once you say “her choice is too constrained to be respected, we should preference a result for her that differs from her choice”, you become an apologist for the denial of her liberty. Because what you’re saying is “somebody else can make better choices for her than she can”.

    So, sorry, no. I’m painfully aware that there are folks in the feminist theory camp who would like to redefine “choice” in a way that lets them devalue the actual choices folks are making. But I am, to put it mildly, hostile to the idea.

    Now, having said that, I was impressed with the rest of your post, Tony, because I thought you set up the factual part of the debate in a nicely neutral way with talk of norms. Is a shaved pussy a powerful norm, such that failure to conform to it makes a statement about the modern woman? I don’t think it is, in large part because unlike more visible signals, a woman’s pubic hair preferences don’t get widely communicated.

    However, I suspect Marie and some of my other interlocutors would say that there is such a norm, that it’s a problem, and that the norm ought to be changed. If we conceded all of those points purely for the sake of argument, how to do it? Did we pornographers break the old norm, and if we did, could we put it back together? (I lump myself with the pornographers because I spend a lot of my time arranging, commenting upon, and selling their products — I’m a distributor if not a producer.)

    And my response to that is, I only wish we had that kind of social power. The porn biz is astoundingly market driven. What you see is what the consumer demands, as filtered through the lens of what the pornographers think they can get away with selling. In the pre-internet age of magazines, the producers had to guess what the consumer demanded; but now with blogs and email and feedback forms and all the web 2.0 community goodies, those guys are getting feedback in real time.

    So. If pornographers are selling it, that’s what porn consumers are wanting to buy. We’ve had two spanking models come here and say nobody makes them shave before a shoot, so there’s some evidence that the market preference isn’t very strong — if it were, the shaving would be mandatory. Sounds to me like nobody in the manufacturing / consumer loop actually cares very much, and so the shaved pussies in the porn is an artifact of the fact that the models are a normal part of the society that has the putative norm.

    Does it really make sense to “make” (urge, demand) pornographers to produce a product their market isn’t demanding and their models would have to go to extra trouble to produce? I just don’t see it. I don’t see what good it would do, even if there was an underlying problem, which I remain skeptical about.

    Don’t want to shave? Don’t shave. That is how fashions and styles and cultures change — through the collective weight of millions of individual decisions. Going after the pornographers is an abdication of personal responsibility. “I don’t want to shave, but I feel oppressed by society when I don’t shave, so I have to shave, only I hate it, somebody else needs to change what they are doing so that I’ll feel better about myself!”

    It’s a problem all right, but the solution doesn’t lie with the people who take the dirty pictures.

  27. Niki Flynn commented on September 5th, 2007:

    There is no “norm” of womanhood, manhood, childhood or a One True Way of being kinky either. I feel better shaving my legs because I like the smooth skin, not because it makes me feel like a “normal” woman or because I’m afraid men won’t want me if I don’t. I’m far too selfish to worry about keeping up with what’s fashionable or what men find attractive.

    The only pigeonholing I see is: That girl shaves. That one doesn’t. It might be a statement for some women, but most of us just do what’s comfortable.

  28. JR commented on September 5th, 2007:

    So, why isn’t anyone out there complaining about this new thing of MEN shaving their chests? Personally, I think chest hair is sexy, but I’ve read a couple or male movie stars who say they had to shave because it’s the “in” fashion. Ugh. On the other hand, maybe we’re ALL getting a little too plastic when we start being that concerned about body hair, one way or the other. I’m sure I could love a man just as much without it. Still, as Dan says, we ARE the species that likes to change things, and then change them around again. Gorillas are lovely people, and as smart as we are (maybe smarter) but they don’t wear earrings. Of course, they don’t get out to the mall much, either, so who knows? Anyway, there was certainly a time when women were coerced by societal standards into shaving, but today, I think it has a lot more to do with fashion and vanity than liberation…and for some of, laziness and sloth.

  29. Tony commented on September 5th, 2007:

    So, a clarification: I was suggesting that there are various ways we can understand the idea of `choice’. I don’t think we should “define away” my `thin’ notion of choice. I just thought that part of Marie’s point could be understood if we got clearer on other possible senses of `choice’. I don’t want to `redefine’ choice so as to make the thin sense unavailable. Perhaps I could put my point this way: relative to societal norms, it sometimes becomes quite hard to exercise that thin, fundamental-to-personal-liberty kind of choice (because, for example, exercising a choice not to shave legs gets read as a political statement, rather than a mere exercise of personal choice). I hope that clarification makes me sound less totalitarian!

    I agree with SpankBoss about the implications of my argument.

  30. sarah commented on September 5th, 2007:

    Thank you Niki, for clarifying the issue in a nutshell. From my point of view the real issue is about “choice” and “preference”, what an individual desires, not what is the “norm”, or healthy for society. I do not think scientific research can even be done to determine a “norm” for our social group. Face it, we spankos are not considered norm to begin with in society, just what exactly constitutes “norm” in our community anyway? I have been criticized time and time again because I am not feminist enough, and I have read time and time again that a feminist enjoys spanking because she is often not in touch with her need to be dominated by the male species…(that last one always makes me laugh, I like to be submissive as much for me as for my partner…I can truly be a dominate bitch whenever I get the bug, just ask my students…I am hell on wheels when needed).

    My personal experience within the spanking community is that shaved is preferred, but I am only one female who has had maybe 10 spanking partners in 20 years? That is nothing to base a valid conclusion. Sales of porn could be used, but many of us NEVER buy porn, so I am not sure that could be used either, other than to say people who view porn tend to like shaved genitals, even that may be a stretch to say because other options are not given. (movie with shaved pussy, or move without shaved pussy, is never an option I see on the net ;> )

    Many have told me they like shaved because of the feel and look and smell, however to be honest MANY have told me they like it because it brings the “little girl” out in me. I am not sure that constitutes pervert status in my chosen partners, just because you like bringing out the girl in a woman. I mean that is what spanking does for many women and to ignore that fact is to ignore the reason why many woman enjoy being dominated by a strong dominate man. “Daddy pleaseeee don’t spank me” is screamed at the top of many women’s lungs in the heat of passion…(yeah all you spankers know I speak the truth here…)

    Anyway I think it is valid to explore the concerns that viewing only the perfectly formed woman over and over again can and will effect a man in his relationship (or a women, depending on your personal preference), but I do not think it is valid to say it is because they want to see a little girl, or it is only to please the male population. because that is the norm..I just do not see it that way…I think the issue is more about personal choice of both partners…

  31. Richard commented on September 5th, 2007:

    Okay, let’s try it this way. It is an individual choice but in society there are ‘tipping points” and suddenly “everyone” is buying pet rocks or beanie babies or shaved pussy. SpankBoss you can call that toltalitarian if you like, or wimpy, or weak but it is a rather easily demonstrated fact and I do belive that was (at least part of) Marie’s point lo these many hours ago.

  32. SpankBoss commented on September 5th, 2007:

    Richard, I’m afraid you’ve completely lost me. It’s not cultural norms, or even fads, that are totalitarian, it’s telling people that their choices… aren’t. It’s fact that lots of women shave their pussies. It’s totalitarian to say they didn’t choose to do so, when they manifestly did.

  33. Hud commented on September 5th, 2007:

    I didn’t hear anything about men shaving. Doesn’t this give women an unrealistic view of what men really look like? I don’t know why women started shaving it all off, I don’t like it. Then again I don’t like women with large breasts. If she is a teacher I feel sorry for her students. She is not letting them think for themselves.

    Now if she want’s to go on a crusade against tatoo’s I am all for it.

  34. Natty commented on September 6th, 2007:

    Fascinating discussion!

    I’m a bit puzzled as to why there are so many comments assuming that Marie is “anti-shaving” as she states at least three times that she doesn’t care one way or the other. What she is disturbed about is the increasing normalization of it in porn — including spanking porn — to the point that young women feel pressured to conform to this norm, just as they do to conform to the norms of smooth legs, thin waists, and pert breasts.

    Now, Marie does not specifically spell out what should be done about this, and my sense is that what she is interested in — and I know I certainly am — is *awareness* that this occurring. That we need to think about how what we’re watching is shaping how we fantasize. But your point, Dan, that it more likely works the other way around — porn *reflects* our fantasies rather than shapes them — is also an equally valid one.

    However, the problem is that media, including porn, both shapes and reflects our views in very messy ways that are difficult to pinpoint. While spanking porn may show females with shorn pussies because models themselves like being smooth, if that becomes the dominate way women are presented (through no intention on the part of producers), young, inexperienced men begin to view that as the way women should look or else they are unattractive. And men are increasingly subject to similar pressure, as one person pointed out with chest hair, though in spanking porn — and in just about any other type of media — there is less homogeneity among male models.

    The answer is not for producers to censor their work, but I’m not necessarily sure what the answer is beyond creating awareness. Individual tastes definitely fuel what sort of porn is produced. And individuals also have to have the inner resource to be who they want to be whether some 19 year-old-twit loves them that way or not — as hard as that can be. As spankos we know what it’s like to be made to feel freakish and different in the media, so we should at least understand on some level what it’s like when someone is made to feel odd and kooky by other people, whether it’s by who she dates or what he sees in his porn.

  35. Matt commented on September 7th, 2007:

    Yes, Marie is not saying it is her preference or not, but that it is becoming a ‘norm’. But as others have suggested — is it really a norm? Of the last ten women I’ve played with over the past few years, *all but one* were shaved. Now, you might suggest that, the majority of these women being in the BDSM scene (privately, not as in in porn) might skew the stats. So does that suggest that then ‘BDSM scene’ as a whole has a norm for shaved pussies? I’m aware some here might or might not say that BDSM and spanking are separate issues, that is another topic. What about swingers? I bet there is a higher prevalence of shaved pussies there. What about pole dancers? I’d take a (wild, unsubstantiated) guess that *any* group of people whom indulge in higher than average sexual activity, or more public sexual activity probably have a higher number of shaved pussies.

    -Matt

  36. Amber commented on September 7th, 2007:

    It’s kinda funny to hear that the very idea of porn can be feminist. To me porn is seems like an anti-feminist idea to begin with – the objectification of a female body (spanking porn seems to be something else, somehow, but I won’t get into an argument here.)

    But I too always wondered how come nearly 100% of pussies on BDSM blogs that I have seen myself seem to be shaved and how most spanking models seem to be shaved as well. I figured it must be a BDSM cliche of sorts (but I am not sure about mainstream porn because I never look at it ever!).

    I do still wonder though why people shun their pubic and leg hear so much in the modern world. I don’t remove any at all per my long-time lover’s request and because honestly I always thought it was an extra chore to achieve the result that didn’t matter to me. Because I live in the community of people who are at least somewhat inspired by hippie ideals (or are hippies), I feel extremely comfortable and fit right in wearing a shorter skirt with legs that are not shaved. However, when I go to visit city relatives I know they are very shocked at the same.

  37. Spankboss commented on September 7th, 2007:

    Amber, I think the problem with feminist condemnations of porn is that it’s very very difficult to condemn “porn” without simultaneously attacking the women who choose to appear in porn and in some fashion denigrating their participation in the industry. Classic feminist theory treats these women as objectified victims, which gets ugly in a hurry when the objects in question stand up on their hind legs like people (gasp, the nerve!) and defend their livelihoods in loud, clear, determined feminist voices.

    In short, the “porn objectifies women” argument itself objectifies (or, at least, dehumanizes) the very women in question.

  38. Amber commented on September 7th, 2007:

    As long as they really want to do this (like our lovely spanking models here).

  39. SpankBoss commented on September 7th, 2007:

    The most infuriating feminist condemnations of porn are the ones that assume that the models not only don’t want to do it, but that it’s impossible for them to want to do it. And their self-reports of wanting to do it are dismissed as “false consciousness.”

    Nobody in this thread has gone that far, but reasoning like that is why I’m so quick to pull out words like “totalitarian”.

  40. Amber commented on September 8th, 2007:

    Well, I never said that (that women don’t want it), since I simply can’t assume that. It’s more that “is this a good thing that an anonymous (well, a lot of time) female (or male, for that matter) body is used to incite lust random men (and women), even if it seems like fun to the people who produce porn, actors and producers alike? Obviously, I take pleasure in some BDSM porn personally, yet to me its always an inner dilemma “is that a good thing?” Same with sex blogging, really.

  41. SpankBoss commented on September 8th, 2007:

    I know you didn’t say that, Amber, and I tried to acknowledge that. But you did sort of raise the spectre.

    I’m given a minor pain by the rhetorical structure of your question, though. “Is it a good thing that…” carries with it the substantial implication that the questioner thinks the answer is “no” — yet the questioner has not actually made the “no” assertion, and is thus immune to argument. If you think it’s a bad thing, how about some arguments to that effect? And if you don’t think it’s a bad thing, why ask that particular question?

    Me, I’m pro lust, and I don’t see how anonymity really matters plus or minus. Lots of room for disagreement there, but I guess I’ll wait until somebody actually does disagree, instead of just asking “Is this a good thing?” I’ve been saying its a good thing for as long as I’ve been blogging, which some days, feels like a very long time indeed.

  42. Amber commented on September 8th, 2007:

    Well, if you really would like to know how I feel about the matter, on the one hand I am told that this is not a good thing, for instance in church or by my own husband, on the other hand I see that lot of people including myself engage into producing, promoting, and consuming porn and feel like it’s not a bad thing. What’s wrong with or unusual about being divided on an issue? (I am sorry, I am not in my best shape to engage into polemics right now). I am sure I am not the only person who feels this way. If you, Dan, feel like you are fully fundamentally comfortable with it, then good for you!

  43. SpankBoss commented on September 8th, 2007:

    No polemics needed, I appreciate the clarification.

  44. Malcolm commented on July 1st, 2008:

    Agreed with Jules that women are an oppressed class, and agreed with Tom that Western women in this day are more oppressed by themselves and by each other than by anyone else. It seems obtuse to glibly dismiss the obvious connection between genital shaving and the desire to look child-like; there’s an obvious aspect of infantilization in spanking to begin with; that’s part of the whole kink. And it seems goofy to pretend that porn does not, in some way, objectify.

    Spanking porn is a vice, and that’s part of what makes it fun: it’s naughty and collides with the few values that postmodern society continues to cling to (or to pretends to cling to).

  45. Da Prof commented on July 18th, 2013:

    For what it’s worth, I had a roommate once who said that what he considered hottest in a sexual partner was if she had “a really generous bush.” I grant you there are probably plenty of want-’em-shaved-baby-girl-bare freaks too, but it does seem a tad simplistic to suggest that we are breeding this into our youth.

    Personally I think landing strips look silly — neither surf nor turf, so to speak, and just about as artificial a thing one can do with one’s naughty bits short of shaving half and leaving the other, like Demosthenes when he was in training to be an orator with all those pebbles in his mouth. But “natural” can be fetishized too, especially when combined with teleological fallacies (e.g. if procreation is “what it’s all about” how does one explain oral sex?)

    This said, I can understand Marie’s line of inquiry and to a great extent applaud it. Insofar as our world of polymorphous kink (hooray) is celebratory of true diversity, no problem; but if it’s simply the same old oppressive social structure in new garments, we might well question what true progress has been made.

    One thing is for gol-durn sure: more women are having orgasms than was so in my youth half a century ago. So as an evolving society we must be doing SOMEthing right.

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