Hardcore pornography vs Playboy, Penthouse, and Maxim

[elfs]

I wish I could find again. A few days ago I came across an essay that had an interesting thesis: softcore pornography is more detrimental to men's attitudes toward women than hardcore pornography.

Softcore porn, so the argument goes, presents women alone. They're dressed up and photoshopped and all that, but they're alone. They are not just objects: they're commodities. The idea is that softcorn porn presents women as something you could have or buy, if only you had the right resources-- usually money.

In contrast, hardcore porn usually presents women with other partners. The men might treat them as objects or might not. Porn frequently follows one or a few woman through a number of encounters, implying that she has some control over the sequence.

The conclusion was that softcore pornography presents a woman as a commodity: something you could buy. Hardcore pornography, in contrast, shows you something you could do if you already had someone with whom to do it.

I don't know that I buy the whole of the argument, but it does present something to think about. Omaha's counter-argument is that in softcore, all the man needs is money, but in hardcore, the guy needs that dick, and since most of us don't have that dick, we're never gonna get the girl.

Comments

I know it's nitpicky...

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

but the entire idea of "softcorn porn" is so hilarious that I just had to point it out!

[blackcoat.livejournal.com]

I think that you're looking for this article. (http://afemanistview.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-hardcore-is-better-than-softcore.html) Which I could have sworn was in your LJ, but was actualy in fallenpegasus's.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's it. Credit where credit is due: I searched my RSS repository and my browser's history, but didn't think to scan my friendslist.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

There might be language differences getting in the way, but I think it depends a lot, as well, on the cultural background to the porn. Maybe it's just that Japanese porn doesn't need to demonstrate some attitudes, rather than I can't read the words that reveal the blatant misogyny I see attched to American porn.

Anyway, I sometimes get a sense of something dark lurking in the softcore image, which isn't countered by a sense of achieving any sort of pleasure.

And when the woman is obviously enjoying something, there often seems to be a need to make her out to be somehow unworthy. You need to be Hef to get the centrefold, but the hardcore girls are cheap.

[ewhac.livejournal.com]

I had a strong reaction to the argument, but I find I'm unable to articulate it, other than to say, "bullshit."

To explain my reaction of "bullshit" would probably require an enormous discourse on What Floats My Boat, and is therefore probably not worth going in to. Suffice to say that my tastes in sexually explicit imagery are probably far off the curve. I tend to turn away from anything that looks "cheap" or "tawdry". Subjective terms, I know, but none others come to mind. I need to be able to empathize with or project a sense of romance into the image, or it just doesn't work for me. (And, just to muddy things further, I have yet to find a hardcore image that holds any appeal for me whatsoever.)

It would probably be a very interesting socio-psychological experiment (if it hasn't been done already) to show a battery of sexually explicit images to people, have them rate them on how well they like them, and see if any trends emerge.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

It does correlate well with the similarity between softcore porn and women's fashion magazines, the main difference being that in the softcore you can buy the girl in the picture if you have enough money while in the fashion mag you can be the girl if you have enough money. I think it may be different in different decades, though. The Playboy image is built around a money look, as opposed to, say, Bettie Page.