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Hipster Porn
In a Tapped post this morning, I made passing reference to "the scourge of hipster porn that's been plaguing the nation lately." The reference, of course, is to Suicide Girls.com, and I was only sort of joking. This seems to me to be a failure as both pornography and as hipness. More to the point, while there's nothing really wrong with people looking at porn, we should still encourage feelings of dirtiness and shame surrounding the subject.
July 27, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
The dirtiness and shame are half the fun!
Posted by: Realish | Jul 27, 2005 8:02:12 PM
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
Woody Allen
Posted by: rifffle | Jul 27, 2005 9:03:53 PM
I am the last person in the world to judge the success of hipness (though I am extremely skeptical of any endeavor directed by someone over the age of 13 that tries to convey edginess with the use of the word "suicide"), but I'm interested in what makes that site a failure as porn.
I agree that it doesn't seem like porn, and I'm trying to figure out why. Maybe because there are so few sexual acts being portrayed; maybe because the women seem so happy to be photographed. They look like pictures you had your friend or your boyfriend take. I don't know quite where the line between a naked picture and porn is, but I don't think any member of the former category is necessarily a member of the latter. Now on another section of the site, I see the girls have profiles and blogs. If the object has unscripted things to say and a forum to behave unpredictably, that makes it seem less like porn. The only thing that makes it seem a little porny is the high percentage of muff (all of it) that is either mostly or totally shaved.
But maybe it's just not trying to be porn. Maybe porn by definition has women/men who behave in fantasy roles. As soon as you give the players a chance for real self-expression, it's not porn anymore.
Posted by: Tia | Jul 27, 2005 9:14:29 PM
Man. I don't see it as a failure as porn. 1> Having seen a number of naked suicide girls at this point (I have an alternate supplier!), I can say they'd probably be just as attractive with their clothes on; that is, not at all. ("Say! I remember you! We met at the shooting gallery, didn't we?") 2> They're all naked and candid and crap. Therefore 3> this is just like a feature that used to appear in Hustler known as Beaver Shots, which contained polaroids of naked (and usually very hairy women) mailed in to Larry Flynt by their truck driving husbands. (Come to think of it, those ladies had a lot of tattoos as well.) So it is very very porny, old skool-style. It's not modern porny. The thing was, with Beaver Shots, you could never figure out whether the women were suffering under bad lighting, or just didn't bathe very much. (Traumatized by this at 12, I was driven away from the hirsute for life.)
SG nails this aesthetic ideal perfectly! So it's very porny, and also makes me feel dirty, in the sense I'd eed to watch for dirty needles while looking at it and I'd need to take a bath afterwards in case whatever they have is catching.
It's a failure as porn because you'd have to be out of your fucking mind (or strung out from here to Seattle) to actually pay money for it.
ash
['Did ya know Hef owns it now?']
Posted by: ash | Jul 27, 2005 11:31:59 PM
Bah. You're a prude. Go get a nipple ring.
Seriously, who cares? Porn follows tech, self publishing follows porn. Citizen democracy follows self publising. Think about it.
I did get my nipple pierced when I was 20, in San Francisco, when I used to live on Valencia. It wasn't peer pressure; more peer exploration. 10 Guage. I still have it. My, girlfriend likes it. What's to lose? (If you want to talk about it, we've been stable for 8 years and counting - we're planning on either buying or building a house as soon as the market hiccups in our target area, run our own business, don't plan on marriage, don't want kids, and yes, have various contracts, both with the business and between ourselves, in place for handling the eventualities. I think we're those straight, white liberal elitists that people bitch about. I can think of worse things to be. Excuse me while I go get my law degree on the back of exploited Texans... Never mind that I was southern white trash without running water, power, or phone growing up.)
Posted by: 32, so too old to care | Jul 28, 2005 1:10:58 AM
What's the point of encouraging feelings of dirtiness and shame? So people can be blackmailed?
Posted by: Joe Buck | Jul 28, 2005 2:20:48 AM
I'm generally not turned on by Suicide Girls, mostly because when I see a sensitive-tissue piercing I get to thinking about how painful it must've been, and that's a big turnoff.
But I can get the appeal of the site. I'm thinking, "wow, if I were sleeping with that lovely magenta-haired punk rock chick, I'd be soooo much cooler than I am now." And beating off to them is just the 2D version of sleeping with them, so you can groove on your make-believe coolness when you're done, even though you're just another loser looking at internet porn.
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Jul 28, 2005 5:27:43 AM
Hipster Porn Does Not Begin and End with Suicide Girls
The genre has a precedent in Larry Clark's infamous '70's book Tulsa. Although Clark's book is pretty gay, and not really porn.
Modern hipster porn really begins with R Kern and his seminal (heh, heh) book New York Girls. (Oddly enough, Kern foreshadowed the current 'barely legal' craze, and shot photos for early issues of Larry Flynt's magazine of that name.)
The genre's state of the art is represented by Eon McKai and his wonderfully titled Art School Sluts epic.
To a certain extent, hipster porn is code for a NYC backlash to LA styled porn. Hipster porn is urban instead of suburban.
And Suicide Girls is a pretty lame version of the genre.
Posted by: Petey | Jul 28, 2005 8:36:31 AM
From a mid-'90's review of Kern's New York Girls
"California girls are bouncy, blond and bronzed while New York Girls are - at least according to photographer Richard Kern - pale, perverted, and scary! Lots of leather, spiked heels, rope and piercings in these erotic, nightmarish visions that make Mapplethorpe look tame."
Posted by: Petey | Jul 28, 2005 8:50:14 AM
You're allowed to link to porn sites at Tapped? Then why haven't you been doing it more often?
Posted by: Ikram | Jul 28, 2005 9:31:52 AM
Is Matthew kidding? Or did he make the statement about dirtiness and shame in the sense Realish mentioned above?
Or is he just doing his best Hillary Clinton imitation? I mean, I don't get it - just yesterday he was all pissed off at Hillary for saying GTA was bad, and now he himself is saying that porn is dirty and shameful. Pick a side, boy!
Posted by: Al | Jul 28, 2005 10:26:59 AM
"You're allowed to link to porn sites at Tapped?"
I thought everyone was aware that Tapped was an LFP production.
Posted by: Petey | Jul 28, 2005 10:33:29 AM
"I mean, I don't get it - just yesterday he was all pissed off at Hillary for saying GTA was bad, and now he himself is saying that porn is dirty and shameful. Pick a side, boy!"
In any case where the reality-based answer differs from the electorally-wise answer, irony is the only possible retort.
Posted by: Petey | Jul 28, 2005 10:35:01 AM
I agree that SG stinks as porn and that it's kind of obvious as hipster culture goes, but it certainly seems to be a financial success.
Posted by: Aaron S. Veenstra | Jul 28, 2005 10:50:55 AM
For a better assessment of its failure or success as porn, this needs to be submitted to Mr. Sun's "Am I Porn or Not" Competition: http://mrsun.us/2005/07/am-i-porn-or-not.html
More important: Who do the commenters on this site who prefer to have sex with women find more attractive: the Suicide Girls or the Girls Gone Grabblin'? (http://www.catfishgrabblers.com/)
Posted by: flippantangel | Jul 28, 2005 7:51:34 PM
As context, first let me say that I share neither the negative second-wave feminist criticisms of porn nor the third-wave embrace of it. My opinion is more of a “Whatever – that’s just what guys do.” And, having spent four years in a predominantly male department in college, I have more knowledge of it than I ever expected or sought to acquire (along with comic books and science fiction).
That being said, I don’t see how Suicide Girls is a failure of porn. Perhaps it is because I am not the intended audience, but I definitely find the Suicide Girls preferable to those mutant silicone freaks you usually see. The tattoos and piercings can be a bit over the top but the 50’s pinup style shots are well done. I guess SG doesn’t bother me as much because they at least look like real girls instead of Frankenwomen. Implants just disturb me and the only other implant-free (or at least -reduced) mainstream site seems to be Girls Gone Wild, which is just tacky as hell. (And which, as someone who lived in New Orleans, I blame for permanently ruining Mardi Gras.) And I like that the women on SG at least appear to be smarter than a bag of rocks, which is an improvement over most porn. Then again, as I said, I’m not the intended audience so the fact that I find SG to be the least objectionable site I’ve seen could be why the men on this site view it as a failure.
Posted by: Becks | Jul 28, 2005 10:45:04 PM
And, while we're on the subject of TAPPED posts, I would think that a Jew would know that there is no need to turn to Mexico for your soda made with real sugar. Kosher Coke for Passover, baby! Just look for the yellow cap.
Posted by: Becks | Jul 28, 2005 10:53:55 PM
You're kidding, right? God, every guy I know loves that site. Of course, I tend to run with punk rock types who thinks tats and piercing are hot, and it's hard to find many pics of women who sport them in mainstream porn.
Posted by: Amanda | Jul 31, 2005 10:04:05 PM
"As context, first let me say that I share neither the negative second-wave feminist criticisms of porn nor the third-wave embrace of it. My opinion is more of a “Whatever – that’s just what guys do.”
Porn is to boys as vibrators are to girls.
"That being said, I don’t see how Suicide Girls is a failure of porn. Perhaps it is because I am not the intended audience, but I definitely find the Suicide Girls preferable to those mutant silicone freaks you usually see."
The girls are quite attractive, but the site lacks the luridness and dirtiness that is the essence of porn. Nudity does not equal porn.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 2, 2005 6:22:14 PM
You're kidding, right? If not, what rubbish. What we do not need is a Blue version of the sex-loathing Right. Please Matt, stick to what you know.
Posted by: Jeff Altemus | Aug 2, 2005 11:05:13 PM
If there is no Bukkake, there is no porn. Seriously, as a woman, porn to me is supposed to be a little more special than something I would happen onto if I went into the wrong door at the bar thinking it was a bathroom. And I personnally like L.A. style porn. The anal hate-fucking is so much better.
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What is reality?
My reality is absolutely not yours. All I know is that JFK Jr. was an absolutely brilliant writer, and CNN, which claims to monitor ALL the blogs, has ignored HIS legacy.
WHY?
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