Pornography and photography

Pornography identifies expectations of female bodies, from looking at porn we are inclined to imagine a specific appearence we would associate with an attractive/sexual female body. E.g
no pubic hair
large boobs
big lips
long hair
and so on.


Like Liz wells has argued:

"Today, erotica also works through classifying it's subjects into recognisable types - in this way it makes different women appear sexually available to a presumed hetrosexual male viewer. And, just as the criminal photograph reduces the depicted person to a series of signifiers , so mainstream pornographic images offer women as available for sexual fantasy by attaching certain meanings to a narrow set of signifiers." (Wells, 2009: 177)

 Wells also discusses the representations of the body and how is is distinguished by different social classes.
"The long-established tendency to distingusish between 'good' sexual imagery ('erotica') and bad ('pornography') is related to distinctions of social class (with mass-market pornography associated with lower social classes). Furthermore the connections between sexual fetishism and commodity fetishism link modern sexual pleasures with the economic structure of capitalism. Feminist anti-pornography campaigners found allies in the New Right, blurring the distinction between a feminist political opposition to women's subordination and conservative disgust at the portrayal of aspects of the body that are normally kept hidden from the public view. To understand more about these alliances, we many need to look at how attitudes towards the body have developed in capitalist societies." (Wells, 2009: 187)





Book - Pornography - the production and consumption of inequality. (Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Ann Russo - 1998)

"Domination and submission are made sexual, sometimes in explicit representations of rape and violence against women, but always in the objectification and commodification of women and their sexuality." (Page 2)

"prostitutes are afforded either the status of the victim not survivor, but are defined fully as consenting participants that in an industry of sexual abuse and inequality... But because and exchange of money occurs, irrespective of wether the woman herself maintains control of, or benefits from the exchange, the client is give permission to use the woman in a manner that would not be tolerated in any other business or social arrangement (including marriage); and the womans acceptance of the money is construed in her willingness to engage in such commerce." (page 23)

"sex is degrading to women, but not to men; that men are raving beast; that sex is dangerous for women; that sexuality is male, not female; that women are victims, not sexual actors; that men inflict "it" on women: that penetration is submission: that hetrosexual sexuality, rather than the institution of hetrosexuality, is sexist." (page 32)

"Hugh Hefner is probably the only pornographer who has achieved mainstream celebrity status. Like the magazine itself Hugh Hefner was marketed as an up-scale, high quality commodity in order to reduce the sleaze factor normally associated with pornographers." (Page 57)

"There was an intriguing different between the sexual responses of women and men in the video's: Women were constantly orgasmic, while men typically showers little reaction to sex. This is especially ironic because the only person we could be sure was experiencing sexual pleasure was the man, as evidenced by his orgasm; whether or not the woman felt much pleasure was unclear. "
(Page 77)





Book - Mediated Sex (Brain McNair - 1996)

"Throughout the twentieth century, and indeed before it, artists have drawn on sexually explicit imagery to create particular effects, and to make statements about the nature of human sexuality and it's relationship to society. The work thus produced has often been erotic - sexually arousing -and obscene - the object of moral outrage and censorship - but not, it's makers have argued, pornographic. Many legal cases have centred around the interpretation of the se categories, and the extent to which an 'artist', as opposed to a pornographer, may be granted license to depict sexuality in explicit of obscene terms." (McNair, 1996: 138)