Porn Fantasy
There are ’70s Penthouse covers on display in the women’s section of American Apparel on Broadway.
It’s presented as a pop-art exhibit, and so, the series of magazine covers is accompanied by a written statement that waxes nostalgic about the “natural” look of “70s and 80s” porn when “curves” and “body hair” and “blemishes” and “stretch marks” were hallmarks.
What a bunch of revisionist bull shit.
Yes, there was half a second in the early early early 70s when a “natural” look was in (meaning big bush—but certainly not blemishes). But ’70s sex symbols were air-brushed skinny blondes with manicured bushes and big tits, just like today. Yes, there’s something about the depressed ’70s that seems dirty and slutty and dark and “real,” but let’s stop pretending that the sex industry was celebrating normal bods. Idealized disco sexiness in the ’70s was exactly the same as sex industry sexiness today: skinny, blonde, busty, and airbrushed. The hairstyles and lip gloss were a little different, but that’s about it.
Certainly, porn circa 2006 stars shaved women and/or super-trimmed women, but the ’70s models were hardly Woodstock hippies. They were manicured and airbrushed. (70s porn films may have been more “real,” but that’s because the industry was much more underground, and so, there wasn’t as much money, and so, production values were low and fly-by-night.)
If American Apparel is talking about Hustler…Well, Hustler was more graphic (more spread legs), but it did not promote “natural” women. And, if American apparel is talking about Hustler, than they should be displaying Hustler, instead of Penthouse.
Even more absurd: American Apparel’s attempt to include the ’80s in its statement. The ’80s?? The ’80s?? There couldn’t be a more plastic, unnatural time than the stilted ’80s. The ’80s were leather, barbie doll new wave, big tits, and once again: skinny skinny skinny. The ’80s were not a time when “natural” anything was on the menu.
The AA in the U-district has (or had) the same porn on the walls the one time I went. I wish I would have known that before I brought my kids in there to do some gift shopping. Man, did I have some explaining to do...
But I hear you on the revisionism. Weird that they're saluting porn, isn't it? It's like they're saying, "Back in my day when porn was good..." I don't think under any circumstance porn can be pointed to as a POSITIVE image booster, ya know?