The slow march to maturity continues

[elfs]

Yesterday, Hef announced who his Playmate of the Year was going to be. It's been all over Yahoo, one of the "top stories" of the day. I see that it's dropped off by now, although the Australian swimsuit model with the serious case of cameltoe is still there. She's Sara Jean Underwood, Miss July 2006. There's a publicity photo of her at Fleshbot, but the site is probably not safe for work.

My reaction to seeing her was "Eww, she's too young to be a playmate, and I feel icky just being asked to think about her that way." It's a good thing Hef's too old to have sex (by his own admission), or I'd feel even more icked than usual.

I've been having a similar reaction to a lot of manga recently. I've gotten to the point where if an anthology's opening story features scat, assault, underage characters, stupid characters, absurdly enormous breasts, or bad art, it immediately gets rejected.

You know what else I can't stand about manga? The total paucity of positive gay male characters. It's as if the gay male manga artists have to set themselves apart from the rest of the manga universe by drawing all of their characters as Tom O' Finland bodies with enough hair to be gorillas.

Unfortunately, all that just about leaves me with Ishoku Dougen, who under the nom de plum Saigado has published a ton of great stuff. The man doesn't do rape, loli, or guro, but he does do straight stuff, gay stuff, bondage stuff, all with a light touch and with all the characters enjoying themselves. My favorite is still Chris Maniax, which has two cute characters from the video game King of Fighters boinking like mad, much to the regret of the female character who was hoping to bed one or the other.

Okay, so maybe I'm not that mature yet.

Comments

cuteoverload.playboy.com

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Of course, the Fleshbot photo of Sara Jean Underwood is strongly coded with "little girl" signifiers. (A basket of kittens...! Pigtails...!) She is being presented as cute.

A different photographer would shoot her a different way, and you'd likely have different reactions to her.

Re: cuteoverload.playboy.com

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think that photo overdoes it. The paparaazi photos taken at the announcement party, however, which were the first pictures I'd seen of her, show her in a vampy yellow nightgown, and I still had the same reaction. "Does you mother know you're dressed like that?"

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

OMG she looks like a teenage Martha Stewart!
I guess it would make for some interesting crossover publications.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

She has a Myspace website. It reads as if someone my age tried to write a website that sounds like a 15 year old. She's a total space case. The "candid" photos make her look more like Paris Hilton.

I wonder if this is one of those things that would be true even in a much longer-lived society: would we continue to wish to live in the bubble of our own age group, or would it all smooth out in the end?

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

I meant Martha Stewart/Playboy crossover rather than teen-mag/Playboy crossover.
As for a longer-lived society--maybe we'd settle into non-age-based peer groups, sort of the way that intentional families form--is there really that much difference between being 200 and 225? I'd like to believe that we'd take longer perspectives on things.

[mrsonyxorb.livejournal.com]

hef is not too old to have sex. what he said is that nowadays he is having less sex and playing more board games or something. but he uses viagra to continue his orgies on wendsdays and fridays, so yeah she did fuck him sorry to say. its impossible to get PMOY unless you fuck hef

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

It's a bit the fake youth of the photo, and bick that her head looks a little large for the rest of her body (amd that might be the hairstyle).

There's something a little bit creepy about it, more than just the fitishisation of youth. (one site I know of uses "MILF" as the category for porn models in their early twenties, and 25+ gets classed as "mature".)

Partly, its another expression of the old meme of older men marrying younger women. At the core, the older men have accumulated more resources to raise a family. Except the world has changed from the pre-industriual village.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I've also recently heard that there are so many men and women trying to get in to the porn business that producers have their pick of models, and one of the criteria for being a porn actress is height: short actresses as preferred. I think that's more than a little creepy. It says to me that while makeup and diet can do a lot for the look, if you really want to make the woman seem so much younger than the man she has to be smaller and more child-like.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Tall actresses and short actors have always had problems in Hollywood.

Yep, it starts to sound creepy.

[bears-place.livejournal.com]

Well, I know a little of what you mean with manga and I don't know if you're interested but there is this as a resource

http://www.boysonboysonfilm.com/

I don't know if it'd be your speed but it's certainly decorative.

(apologies for just tossing a comment out there with you not knowing me but the entry caught my eye ^_^ )

[neocuriosity.livejournal.com]

Teeth too white, eyes too blue, she doesn't look normal, she looks like a caricature! (Photoshop, for sure.)

(ditto apologies)

The girl is too tan. Even next to the other PMOY and Hef-Ladies she's too tan. That farm of hers must have had tanning beds too.