SI & Holy Cow.

digloria at mindspring.com digloria at mindspring.com
Wed Mar 24 12:21:24 PST 1999


oh and greg, i was referring to the way cigarettes are positioned in adverts, not how people might really hold them


>Kelley Digloria:

just kelley. i'm thinking of changing it some obscure not meant to be spoken symbol.


>GN: Actually the main point that I had, which seems to
>have been missed, is that this is output from a
>"mainstream publication." That is to say there is a
>kind of soft=>hard porn continuum which in my day
>started with playboy, proceeded through Hustler, and
>then went out further into the speciality porn rags
>with increasing degrees of kinkiness and
>specialization.

greg you aren't that old are you? i gathered you were in your mid-thirties. i just don't understand how any of this could have escaped your attention. as i said elsewhere, the pics in vogue and cosmo are regularly just as titillating as what you found in SI. the spreads for fashion of feature group sex, s&m, fetish. heck, i used to work with a guy in a restaurant who found those mags just fine for his mastubatory fantasies--and that was 15 yrs ago!

you typed originally:


>3. The titillating fact that a woman wearing a bikini
>with partial show-through of the nipple is really *not
>much different* than a nude woman with a heavily
>painted nipple.

this is news to you? have you never noticed nipples in adverts and television?


> But it seems
>to be turning into a philippic against men who "enjoy"
>this stuff which was neither my point nor of much
>interest. I continue to think it's an unusual degree
>of eroticization to be pumping into the "mainstream."

you don't watch teevee that much do you? neither do i, but what little i watch i sure notice it. again, i couldn't possibly have imagined that you were really surprised by any of this because the objectification of women's bodies--and increasingly men's--is all over the place in the most mainstream of publications. so, i read you as 'holy cow and wow' to the titillating fun of finding it in SI


> And I'm commenting on it precisely
>because it is a pop-cultural develop[ment of note.

and you haven't heard of the SI swimsuit edition videos you can order or that come free with a subscription. these have been around for awhile now.

Previous SIs have carried the very same photo spreads. It's become as American as Apple Pie to look forward to the issue. There are SI calandars, SI posters for dorm rooms, etc.


> It's pretty typical of pomo femme type approaches
>that this discussion turns into taking umbrage against
>anyone on the list who raised the topic, as if it were
>an insult to women on the list.

hmmm. I objected to the way in which it was spoken of--what appeared to be a childish discussion of the difficulties of covering up men's whangers which, in and of itself, reveals just how common sense it seems that whangers are hard to cover up but not breasts.

as you wrote:


>5. How would you paint a male stud's whanger, like
>whatshisname, Fazio, or something like that, to make it
>look like it was in a swimsuit? And would you strive
>to disguise it in the "at attention" or "at ease"
>mode? Or is it plainly the case that a whanger needs a
>hangar and should not be painted?

this sounds pretty childish to me and quite beside the point. did you ask whether the artist painted the nipple at ease or at attention?

i had no problem that you raised the topic. furthermore, my analysis of the adverts conjoined with the photos was a way of saying "here, no let's really do an analysis of what's going on here. the objectification of bodies is nothing new, but exactly how are they objectified and sold and what other ideological messages are being promulgated." but just pointing out that there was a lot of scantily clad, nearly nude women in SI, mainstream or not, just isn't new or worth commenting on in and of itself. and worrying about whether women can now go topless at the beach (like men) and whether fucking a woman painted like a flag would be something a man could get arrested for. why the hell isn't the guy painted in that little scenario? why were they wearing paint at all. why did you write that other than to make a joke out of it all.

anyway, sn-word, sn-word, kelley

"And all you can do is more heavy revolvers."



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list