Image: Artist Whitney Lee from Made With Sweet Love vacuuming her hook-rug porn.
Okay, maybe not the boobies part, but a girl can dream… Over at HuffPo, Rachel takes a look at the Chronicle Books “humor” book Porn for Women and pokes at finding nuggets of truth in any of it, along with making a few salient comments about what “porn for women” might actually be. She gets comments from sex bloggers, which rawks. She’s going to love my article about porn for women in the July issue of O Magazine (Oprah, yo!). Snip:
A new, 98 page book simply titled Porn for Women from Chronicle Books is causing a stir with its racy images . . . but not in the way you might think. Instead of full frontal nudity, the book mockingly features men (sometimes topless) doing household chores ranging from vacuuming to dusting to cleaning the stove, all with a smile on their faces. These hunky men say things like, “Well, I can’t offer you any solutions, but I am a good listener” and “Is that the baby? I’ll get her” and “Have another piece of cake. I don’t like you looking so thin.” All of women’s aggravations and insecurities are seemingly offered by perfect, successful men (complete with bios describing hobbies such as “Big Brother volunteer” and “giving massages.” Vanessa Valenti of the blog Feministing wrote, “it’s sad that we would need pictures and descriptions of ‘considerate men’ to jerk off to rather than expect it or have it from the men in our actual lives. Porn generally consists of sexual fantasy; making me dinner should be a standard, not something I fantasize about.” When I showed the book to one friend, she flipped through it, then practically smacked it onto the ground.
Link.
It’s regretful that this isn’t more of a parody book — that media is taking the suggested lameness seriously. This could do with a lot more irony. I remember a few years back when Chronicle Books (not the SF Chronicle, whom I write for) invited me to their downtown offices in an effort to court me to write for them; now I see a) how long it’s taking them to get with women and porn and culture, and b) how dated their ideas are. I’ll take the pizza delivery guy trope any day compared to another serving of “what women want” stereotypes, thanks — women’s fantasies are about fucking, not housecleaning, thank you very much.
I’ve got your porn for women right here. And here.
