[lbo-talk] 300 Pounds of Joy (Was Re: 4 July - Help me Think)

Andy F andy274 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 6 12:38:15 PDT 2007


On 7/6/07, Chuck <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:


> Are you talking about comparing porn magazines to women's magazines like
> Cosmo?

Roughly. FHM (did I uh spell that right?) and Maxim, too, but I think there are less obvious examples that don't occur to me right now. On the other side, Cosmo and fashion magazines are the obvious subjects, but there are also the more domestic ones too.


> Have you done this and what conclusions have you drawn?

Guys like boobs. _Nature_ has the paper in review as we speak.

Seriously, on the men's side you get curvy, the women's range between long-waisted to supermodel alien. The domestic magazines aren't quite so extreme, but you still don't get that paleolithic venus look.

You can play similar games with catalogs. The models in the outdoors catalogs are definitely tuned to appeal to me, like they're not afraid to sweat and get a little grubby. But what's also interesting is that sometimes they'll throw in somebody who I guess is supposed to be "plain", not ugly, but not somebody who you would expect to make it as a model.

Every now and then big box stores like Sears or Target will throw in somebody in a wheelchair. I wonder how hard they thought about that.

On a similar note, has anybody else seen the Suicide Girls? I saw a DVD of them and I confess I didn't really get the point. Like it was supposed to be this big "tear down beauty standards" thing, and they had a bunch of slimmer-than-average 20-somethings with tats and piercings. Very hipster, hee hee.

-- Andy



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