Internet Porn

In the gay marriage thread, holmes said:

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But sexual content does not, and will not, EVER objectively hurt kids.

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You're absolutely certain that there isn't one chance in a million that a pubescent boy getting hold of the sort of porn that's available easily and for free on the internet will not be negatively affected in any way, no matter how much porn he looks at and for how many hours a day? You have no doubt whatever that this boy will still grow up to have healthy attitudes about women, or that if he doesn't the reasons will have nothing whatsoever to do with porn?If there's a convincing study that shows this I'd like to see it. Otherwise I doubt I'm going to change my mind on the subject.And for the record I wouldn't support outlawing anything, but if somebody can come up with a reasonable way of regulating access to internet porn, I'd probably support it.The problem is the international nature of the net. I don't see how internet porn can be regulated unless every nation on earth agreed to the terms. That goes for the spam and pop-ups you mentioned, too.So that leaves us with two questions:1. Can kids be adversely affected by internet porn? I think the answer is yes.2. Is there any reasonable way to effectively regulate internet porn? I think the answer is no.

I'd say that if he has negative attitudes about sex, women, or women's sexuality, they're more likely to come from his peers, or his father figures. It's possible that porn could set the situation for that sort of kibitzing - "hey, check out the Playboys in my dad's attic", "yeah, I heard that women have teeth down there" - but I don't think much of it is going to come from porn.If porn has negative effects it's probably going to be when you die of embarrasment when your dad comes to talk to you about your Vicky's Secret catalogue stash, or worse - when you find out about your dad's tastes in porn. (Dad, why oh why couldn't you learn to clean out the cache and history, as I did?)In my own experience, it was porn that corrected much of my misinformation about women and their bodies. I guess I started looking at internet porn at about 16 or so (back when you had to use Mosaic, and before the img tag could display an inline JPEG... actually, this was before the local university had implemented PPP, so I had to dial in with a terminal, use Lynx, and download images sight unseen at 9600 baud.)This has been Crash's "Ye Old-Tyme Internet" Hour, brought to you by Global Village modems.

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1. Can kids be adversely affected by internet porn? I think the answer is yes.

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The answer is resoundingly, if not 100% definitively NO!You want a study? Go out there and look for them. There have been many studies done and the effect seen in every single one is zero, zilch, nada.The closest any study has come to finding any possible causative link between porn and behavior is increased apathy (perhaps just in attitude) towards victimization of women.... but there's a caveat! That is when the "porn" under discussion is hardcore violent porn, and researchers believe the desensitization comes from the violence and NOT the sex.As far as your questions regarding "no matter how much porn", I would point out that someone who views porn to the exclusion of all else during the day has problems BEFORE and OUTSIDE of exposure to porn. Porn does not gradually build into a stage of doing nothing but that for a normal person. If so, I would never be on this board.And as far as your question about "healthy attitudes about women", I am a bit curious how you would go about measuring this as an OBJECTIVE characteristic beyond not wanting to harm them.To my mind the Bible holds not only 0 healthy attitudes about women, but the most violent anti-women statements you can find anywhere. One passage extolls the virtue of God as he sends armies to rape and kill two girls. On the flip side many believe that feminism delivers unhealthy attitudes towards women.This is a purely subjective criteria, unless you are going to qualify it.But as far as negative beliefs about women or desire to cause harm the answer is NO.But this does raise a few questions in my head:1) what about attitudes towards men, they are in porn too?2) what about gay porn?3) why would you think viewing people having sex (the most natural act which people are born to do) would have an adverse affect, especially when kids get to think about it anyway? Just because they don't have an image does not mean the fantasies go away... if anything they have the ability to become more perverse and fetishized.

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2. Is there any reasonable way to effectively regulate internet porn? I think the answer is no.

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Actually there is. The problem is it isn't 100% childproof, and that's the problem with people saying the "availability" of porn on the internet is an issue of some kind. Yes that is true for adult spam, blindlinks, and popup ads, but the rest is kids looking for it themselves and busting through any controls that are set. The problem then is kids and not the porn websites or their owners.I think effectively dealing with S,P,B will be easy enough as it is still possible to go after most of them even in other countries.Personally, I've been thinking about ways to take care of the child problem. Right now people want to shift the entire burden off the kid and on to the rest of the world. That means screwing with people's rights to free speech.Instead society can shift the burden back to the kids. I don't see why it would be hard to mandate that children under 18 (or whatever age is appropriate for each country) must have internet accounts set up by the parent. Pretty much this is done anyway, but the parent must actually identify a specific user id for the child when (s)he logs on. At the ISP side, have it recognize child ids and put them through specific servers.As part of this process, setup a database for unique server IDs which are for children accounts (perhaps start them with 123)... as well as allowing a number of free server id registrations for children for every ISP. Then it would be relatively easy to come up with code to exclude anyone coming from a server starting with 123 (no matter the number of digits afterward).After this, if a kid is found to have gotten anything online, it would be OBVIOUS that the kid is the perpetrator.As another plan, although some may argue, I'd even be willing to start labelling site numbers by content. Thus have a rating system for sites. Not lame crap like g, pg, r, and x, but perhaps something that defines the type of content that will be seen. This would be neutral info that parents could then filter. Once again, if junior cheats then it is junior and not the rest of the world that is the problem.Some people suggest having all adult sites get a xxx domain name, but that is just stupid. First of all it pushes sites with graphic content that is not sexual or where it is not the entire focus of the content into the same category/ghetto. It would be better to have neutral ratings which better identify the nature of the site.And in that way I can equally filter out religious sites for my kids so they don't have to read filth like women getting raped and chopped into pieces, and murdered because some God does not know human anatomy and hates women... not to mention hates them as well and they have to feel guilty just for being born.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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I'd say that if he has negative attitudes about sex, women, or women's sexuality, they're more likely to come from his peers, or his father figures. It's possible that porn could set the situation for that sort of kibitzing - "hey, check out the Playboys in my dad's attic", "yeah, I heard that women have teeth down there" - but I don't think much of it is going to come from porn.

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So, the widespread, cultural saturation of sexualized images of younger and younger women with extreme, idealized, often digitally-altered bodies has less of an effect on children (both males and females) than their peers and parents?Tell that to my 9 year old niece who wanted to be just like Christine Aguillera.The images in the media, including porn and the light porn that passes for music videos and fashion photography these days, are influencing all of their peers, and their parents, too.As for studies, although I know this is a little bit of a stretch, it is documented that women show an increase in dpressed feelings and become more critical of themsselves after looking at the pictures in fashion magazines. I can only think that this could, at least partially, be the case when women view porn. I don't think that, at least WRT static images, many fashion magazines and porn are very different.http://www.hon.ch/News/HSN/509939.html"Researchers found that women who looked at advertisements featuring stereotypically thin and beautiful women showed more signs of depression and were more dissatisfied with their bodies after only one to three minutes of viewing the pictures.""In the study, Mintz cited previous research that asked adolescent girls what the ideal woman looked like. The girls said she's 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 100 pounds, is a size 5, and is blond and blue-eyed."And also:"Zillman & Bryant (1999)
— 160 male and female students and community members
— watched 6 hours of
nonviolent heterosexual pornography (exposure condition), or
sitcoms without sexual content (no exposure condition),
— and then filled out questionnaires about their personal
happiness, sexual attitudes, and behaviors.
— Results:
— After exposure to porn, participants:
were less satisfied with their intimate partners.
assigned greater importance to sex without emotional involvement.
Effects were confined to the sexual realm.
Effects were the same across genders and sample communities."[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-24-2004]

Schraf,You bring up a lot of good points. I wonder if the long-term effects of exposure to sexually graphic images can really be measured in a lab format. Yeah, I might feel depressed and inadequate immediately after seeing hours of video of bodybuilder guys without an ounce of body fat making out with beautiful women. But something tells me after I leave the lab and see everybody walking around in winter clothes again, my self-esteem would slowly return.The best point you made was about the constant barrage of images from non-porn sources. Just this morning I saw that Outkast video (they show it every hour on the hour on both MTV and VH1) for the song "I Like the Way You Move." The scantily-clad women working in the garage, for example, couldn't be dressed like women who actually may work in a garage. Because the point of that scene is that women wouldn't be working in a garage, yo! It's comedy! And later in the video we see the presumably African plantation, where scantily-clad women are, well, grazing. Women should feel fine about these images? And I fully agree, the sliver of the spectrum that is allowed to be visible on magazine covers is a message to women that they don't deserve to be seen unless they're real skinny.If I deplore the fact that the entire female population is not represented in our notion of beauty, I'm disgusted by the way the entire female is often not represented in these images. There's a big difference between only showing a woman's rear end in an jeans ad and a clinical gyno-shot of just her naked hindparts in a magazine. Does anyone else get a bad decapitation-vibe after seeing several shots in series of a woman's body without seeing her face?It's a free country and all, so I don't suggest censoring these images simply because I have problems with them. However, I wish they constituted a smaller percentage of our standard images of women. And I think women have every right to feel insulted that these seem to constitute the only acceptable representations of female sexuality in our culture.

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The dark nursery of evolution is very dark indeed.
Brad McFall

Schraf, the effects of sexually imagery on children has NOTHING to do with the issue of body dissatisfaction issues from ALL MEDIA. To compare the two is to make a very bad bait and switch to make a point on this topic.There are NO studies that back up a claim that sexual imagery leads to negative (bigoted or angry) influences on people toward women. In fact, almost all show the EXACT OPPOSITE.

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"Researchers found that women who looked at advertisements featuring stereotypically thin and beautiful women showed more signs of depression and were more dissatisfied with their bodies after only one to three minutes of viewing the pictures."

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If we want to address the impact mainstream media has on self-image, perhaps what we should be doing is making people realize that they are okay no matter what mainstream media presents, rather than slamming the media.The media are simply using imagery that is going to appeal to the greatest number of people according to their demographic analyses. Back in the past it was chubby women, then it went to stick thin women, then it went back to a more normal size, and now it is going back to kind of thin. So what? These are trends in media which go back and forth.Curiously, even if one were to be concerned by this topic, you also appear to have a view that women are the only ones "affected" by the lack of diversity in body imagery in the media. Men are equally shown to be overly attractive in mainstream media... otherwise they are "losers". How about the "Average Joe" show that totally punked on any guy that wasn't a model? Damn it the whole "Queer eye for the Straight Guy" show is predicated on this belief!And there are plenty of men that do not enjoy the female body imagery found in mass media. It is attractive, but in a bland vaccuous way. This is why porn has become increasingly diversified with time. Men seek out many different "ideals" when it comes time to select imagery for masturbation... and in real life, for sexual partners.Which brings me to your trying to throw mass media into play as a stereotype of porn... have you seen modern porn by the way?... while the biggest and most mainstream porn companies do tend to use the same type of models as mainstream general media, porn is not restricted to those ancient relics of the porn industry.Modern porn (and its been growing this way for at least 15-20 years) includes all varieties of body types, and orientations. It is less skewed with body stereotyping than mass media. In fact many women (with the advent of the internet) have started their own companies to show that "regular size, average shaped" women can be sexy and sexual and they are quite succesful!While I agree that what you have brought up is an issue that needs to be addressed, I believe:1) empowering women internally to understand mass media is not where one should go to get one's perspective of self is more important than trying to blame the media...and2) it is a complete red herring (at best guilt by association) to the topic of this thread.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Yeah. Well, I guess I'm aware of the impact of the media fixation with thinness on women's (and men's) body image.On the other hand with Americans waddling in at record weights these days I'm not sure that people couldn't do with a little more desire to be healthy, at least.It's not just a problem for women, you know. As many men as women report feeling dissatisfied about their bodies, and if it isn't a cultural expectation to be ripped, it's one that demands enormous levels of personal or financial success in order to be viewed as an attractive man.Obviously that doesn't excuse anything at all. To tell you the truth I think fashion mags are the worse offenders. Women in porn tend to have a significantly greater range of body types, with the caveat that they tend to have similarly ridiculous breast sizes. On the other hand fashion mags seem to be the ones with the most impossible standards of beauty. That and their avaliability to children - when was the last time you saw a 9-year-old with Penthouse - makes them the greater influence in my view. I guess you could argue that it's porn that leads the push, somehow, but I don't think that's true.And I think we're ignoring the fact that there's an evolutionary aspect here. Humans are always looking for the superior mate, and there's a number of ways we judge that, usually based on sex. Men tend to look for attractive women and women tend to look for men displaying an ability to provide. Is it any wonder then that culturally, our views of the ideal are going to reflect these evolutionary drives?

Ahhhh... added a study I see. Can you really not find the gaps in where this experiment is fluff?

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Zillman & Bryant (1999)
— 160 male and female students and community members
— watched 6 hours of

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1) Rather small group of very small representative group (though I will be happy to cede this point for the greater problems which follow.2) Watched 6 HOURS OF PORN? I do not see how this is an average input of porn in one sitting and I would likely be tired of sex in general at the end of this much less my sexual partner.

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nonviolent heterosexual pornography (exposure condition), or
sitcoms without sexual content (no exposure condition),

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3) This is the selection of controls? It doesn't even address the points which you brought up in the rest of your email. How about makeover shows, or relationship dramas/action/horror, or MTV videos, or how about asking them to think of sexual fantasies for this time (to weed out affects of fantasizing versus enhanced fantasizing), or READING sexual and nonsexual fantasy (to weed out visual versus textual effects)? On a personal note this is one of the WORST setups I have ever seen in a controlled experiment. By the way what sitcoms?4) were they sitting and viewing this porn as a lab rat, or as they would use porn for themselves? (ie were they allowed to masturbate? Was the porn chosen for them or was it selected by them according to their personal interests?) This seems to be a very important matter especially if one is forced to undergo 6 hours of inundation.

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— and then filled out questionnaires about their personal happiness, sexual attitudes, and behaviors.

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5) A notoriously bad way of determining effects of anything, especially longterm effects. I am going to try and track down this study to get a look at that questionnaire.

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— Results:

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6) Be honest, do those results even appear to be suggestive that something OBJECTIVELY harmful was a result of this viewing? The last two are not even listing of effects seen in behavior, just parameters of the two effects they saw...

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were less satisfied with their intimate partners.

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7) In what way? For what reason? Something serious? For ALL POTENTIAL PARTNERS? The last question is especially true for the question of effects on children who generally DO NOT HAVE INTIMATE PARTNERS? If this study's result is that kids will learn faster what physical/social attributes they want in a intimate partner when older, then what is the problem?8) Was this a lasting or a temporary effect? Did they check up on them after select periods of time? This smacks of the study on the "Mozart effect". Remember that study which showed (in the same kind of subjects I might add) that listening to Mozart improved thinking ability? And now parents are running out buying Mozart for Kids crap... Whoops. What the study found is that in college students audio stimulation by Mozart raised "thinking ability" for a SHORT TIME PERIOD. There is NO LONG TERM EFFECT. That's what media has been shown to do, including violent imagery... it stimulates for short periods of time.

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assigned greater importance to sex without emotional involvement.

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9) Hahahahahahahaha... was money and time seriously devoted to find out that after watching sexual fantasy material for extensive lengths of time that a person will assign "greater importance to sex without emotional involvement"? It's for masturbation! I'd love to know if people were allowed to cum before filling this out or not (and in six hours more than once). Of course this also falls under the problem above anyway, was this temporary or permanent?10) Even if somehow a permanent and drastic change was induced, could you please explain how disassociating sex from emotional involvement is harmful/wrong? That is at best a SUBJECTIVE judgement of the nature of sex's relationship with emotional relationships.I thank you for presenting a perfect example of a worthless study on the effects of media on human behavior... it shows what needs to be avoided in this debate.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Women in porn tend to have a significantly greater range of body types, with the caveat that they tend to have similarly ridiculous breast sizes.

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That depends on what you are looking for or where you are looking. It is NOT true that going to an average porn store that MOST women in mags and videos will have ridiculous breast sizes.I will agree that some of the larger and older (ie mainstream) porn companies tend to play on the big breast thing, but that is not the dominant theme of the industry, especially not the RIDICULOUS breast thing (which makes me kind of gag).I suppose one could argue that small breasts take up less of the market place, but that is not the same as saying huge breasts dominate.Just to let you know, natural breasts (large or small) are becoming a hot ticket in porn. My gf gets good money (as well as the girls she plays with) for keeping it real.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

That's cool. Nonetheless I think there's definately some breast configurations that just don't appear in porn. (I hesitate to actually describe them, but I'm sure you could think of a few.)Then again maybe it's just my ignorance. I suspect that people have pretty narrowly defined tastes in porn, and doubtless I've hardly strayed too far from mine. (That taste isn't ridiculous breasts, btw. ) Also all my porn comes from the internet, because I'm cheap.

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I think there's definately some breast configurations that just don't appear in porn.

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I am honestly going to tell you I do not know of, or can think of, any breast configuration that is not handled in porn... except maybe mastectomies?If you are looking for something, just email me and I'll hook you up.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Is that considered an example of "macroevolution"?

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Schraf, the effects of sexually imagery on children has NOTHING to do with the issue of body dissatisfaction issues from ALL MEDIA. To compare the two is to make a very bad bait and switch to make a point on this topic.
There are NO studies that back up a claim that sexual imagery leads to negative (bigoted or angry) influences on people toward women. In fact, almost all show the EXACT OPPOSITE.

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You don't think that women feeling dissatisfied with their bodies is a negative influence on women?And I'd love to see some studies which show greater positive feelings towards women (not in a sexual way) as a result of viewing sexualized images of women.However, I wasn't really meaning to conflate kids watching porn with what I ended up talking about. I know they are different topics.However, little children do end up seeing a lot very sexualized images of very young women in what could easily be considered soft porn on music videos, etc.What effet do you think this has, on both the girls and the boys?

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If we want to address the impact mainstream media has on self-image, perhaps what we should be doing is making people realize that they are okay no matter what mainstream media presents, rather than slamming the media.

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That's a bit like telling kids that it's up to them to make healthy food choices when the school has pop and candy vending machines everywhere and the cafeteria serves mostly tater tots and chicken nuggets.Are the schools not responsible at all for the food they serve?

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The media are simply using imagery that is going to appeal to the greatest number of people according to their demographic analyses. Back in the past it was chubby women, then it went to stick thin women, then it went back to a more normal size, and now it is going back to kind of thin. So what? These are trends in media which go back and forth.

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The marketing media is not just responsive. Successful advertizing creates a need where we didn't know we had one before we saw the ad. I'm in marketing and sales; believe me, I know this to be true.It's a two way street, here. The ad companies get demographic information, true, but they also work very hard to tell us what is beautiful and what is desireable so we will buy their mascara or their shampoo or their exercise machine.

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Curiously, even if one were to be concerned by this topic, you also appear to have a view that women are the only ones "affected" by the lack of diversity in body imagery in the media. Men are equally shown to be overly attractive in mainstream media... otherwise they are "losers".

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Men are most certainly allowed to be something other than model-like in mainstream media. All of the "sitcom dads" like Ray Romano and the male lead of "King of Queens" are more or less chubby, average looking, middle-aged guys who all have thin, beautiful actors playing their wives. Look at all of the male leads of "Friends". Only one was really good looking, and several of them were allowed to get chubby as time went on while the women got thinner. Look at "Seinfeld"; ALL of the men are homely, but the one female is drop dead stunning.Not a few male rap artists are incredibly overweight, but their videos show shapely women dripping off of them. Same with skinny male rock stars.

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How about the "Average Joe" show that totally punked on any guy that wasn't a model? Damn it the whole "Queer eye for the Straight Guy" show is predicated on this belief!

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Of course men are finally starting to feel a little bit of the heat of a unrealistic standard of physical beauty being imposed on them from the culture (they always had the height thing). The difference to me is the fact that you don't see anywhere near as many sexualized images of men's mostly nude bodies on the pages of 4 dozen different fashion magazines in the grocery store. Where is the male equivalent to Christine Aguillera and Brittany Spears in which a scantilly-clad buff young teenage boy is heavily marketed to 8 year old males to emulate?Queer Eye, as with most makeover shows (not the obscenely horrible surgical one) are not at all about making everyone think they need to look like a model. In fact, they seem to me to be the opposite. People go in thinking that because they don't look just like a model that they don't look good at all. The makeovers seem to show them that you don't have to look like a model to look really great.I'd also like to mention that there was a Queer Eye show about a man getting rid of his toupe, which is all about self-acceptance.

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And there are plenty of men that do not enjoy the female body imagery found in mass media. It is attractive, but in a bland vaccuous way. This is why porn has become increasingly diversified with time. Men seek out many different "ideals" when it comes time to select imagery for masturbation... and in real life, for sexual partners.

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Well, great, I'm glad to hear that.Does this mean that there has been a decrease in the number of breast augmentations in female porn workers? Just curious.

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have you seen modern porn by the way?

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What do you consider "modern"?Does Japanese porn count? What about internet porn viewing by mistake?

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Modern porn (and its been growing this way for at least 15-20 years) includes all varieties of body types, and orientations.

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OK, sure, there are niche markets for all sorts of interests (I've been to a video store in Japan where there were photographs, artwork and videos playing all over the place), but do you mean to tell me that if I were to walk into the average video store's adult section I wouldn't see 95% mass market, blonde, thin, tall, fake boobs, mainstream stuff?Just because there is more interesting porn, or more realistic depictions of bodies in some porn, doesn't mean that's what everybody is watching.

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While I agree that what you have brought up is an issue that needs to be addressed, I believe:

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1) empowering women internally to understand mass media is not where one should go to get one's perspective of self is more important than trying to blame the media...

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but what if the media is partially to blame?[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-25-2004]

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I am honestly going to tell you I do not know of, or can think of, any breast configuration that is not handled in porn... except maybe mastectomies?

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Never come across it myself, but given some of the things that
I have come across I wouldn't discount it.I think it IS important to note that porn doesn't suffer from
the stereotyping of mass-media representations of men and
women -- and that even those are faddy.The issue in this thread as about 'harm' though -- and especially
harm to children.A question I have in this regard is what constitues harm
in any case -- and wouldn't one expect more negative effects
via a 'though shalt not look at THAT' policy?Isn't it more likely to generate unhealthy attitudes towards
sex and sexuality by prohibition rather than exposure?I doubt most kids are that interested until their sexual functions
start to come on line anyhow.

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You don't think that women feeling dissatisfied with their bodies is a negative influence on women?

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Well to be more politically correct about it, I feel that anything which influences a person to feel disatisfied with their body is a negative influence. So yes I agree this is an issue... which I thought I made the point of saying.Where we disagree is where the locus of control is on body image.Currently our culture says "look at that person" or "watch this ad" or "look through this FASHION magazine" in order to make conclusions of self-image. This is a societal problem which cannot be blamed on the media, whose imagery and message is dictated by society.I'd like to use an example. You mentioned a young girl saying she wished she looked like Chistina Aguilera. Now maybe she finds Christina attractive. Is that wrong? Why? IMO it is only unhealthy if she becomes obsessed with having to be/look like Aguilera to the point that any difference is thought to be a problem with herself.But the more important point I want to throw back at you is what imagery can be shown if we are to make people feel good about themselves? Children especially will always feel imperfections if they are looking to imagery of ADULTS in order to make assessments of themselves. I'll tell you what I would be more alarmed if some young girl I knew (do to popular trends in media) suddenly said she wanted to look like Angela Lansbury.Awkardness and body disatisfaction is a basic part of life, especially while growing up. The key is not to change ads and imagery, but to change messages at home and to each other that conformity and appearance of material wealth is not the key to finding satisfaction with onesself.

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I'd love to see some studies which show greater positive feelings towards women (not in a sexual way) as a result of viewing sexualized images of women.

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I will get some studies for you, though I can't recall right off the bat whether they can be viewed as "not in a sexual way". What is wrong if there is no other effect than for mean to view women more positively toward women in a sexual way?Remember this is sexual fantasy, that's exactly what it's supposed to be focusing on. I am uncertain of any studies which show that action/adventure films make men feel better about women either.

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However, little children do end up seeing a lot very sexualized images... What effet do you think this has, on both the girls and the boys?

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They are more tolerant of sexual imagery. What effect, primarily negative effect, do you think this has? Remember my criteria is OBJECTIVE negative effects, and not SUBJECTIVE ones.

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That's a bit like telling kids that it's up to them to make healthy food choices when the school has pop and candy vending machines everywhere and the cafeteria serves mostly tater tots and chicken nuggets.

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What the hell has happened to the power of children? Oh yeah, we tell them they must obey whatever we say... Back when I was a kid my school switched cafeteria caterers who served junk food and essentially NO fruits/vegetables. Very popular to kids they thought. But this was back when kids apparently had guts and some self-respect. We held a boycott and after a week or so the catering company was out and we got a new menu with healthy foods.Why don't we tell them to stand up for themselves? And then why don't we respect them when they do?

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It's a two way street, here. The ad companies get demographic information, true, but they also work very hard to tell us what is beautiful and what is desireable so we will buy their mascara or their shampoo or their exercise machine.

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This is true. There will always be hucksterism, snake-oil, whatever. Is the key to this not to clamp down on imagery in media, but rather to teach those around us to be above relying on the media... teach them how to beat the hucksters?By the way, I have never felt the need to become impotent in order to get on the bandwagon of viagra, though I have been wondering if there are enough advertisements played often enough if it will subliminally induce impotence.Perhaps what we could do is restrict advertising?

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Men are most certainly allowed to be something other than model-like in mainstream media.

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I think your suggestion that most men are homely... especially when you talked about Friends. You appear to have a skewed vision of what "average" men look like.How about shows like Roseanne or Golden Girls?Your criticism of music videos is valid, but then the music industry in general is not too nice on women. I'd back you on that... though I would say that it makes more sense for a rapper rapping about his material success to have mainstream women hanging off of him. The bigger problem is whatever happened to the Janis Joplin's?

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Where is the male equivalent to Christine Aguillera and Brittany Spears in which a scantilly-clad buff young teenage boy is heavily marketed to 8 year old males to emulate?

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Women are more likely to find women and men appealing, while guys are more likely to only find women appealing. Thus the selling ticket is girls girls girls.Perhaps it is as Elaine said on Seinfeld... women's bodies are a work of art, men's bodies are utilitarian, like jeeps.By the way, since the topic is porn... go to a porn store and you will find men and women's bodies and plenty of varied shapes of women, more so than in the magazine rack of the grocery store.

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Queer Eye... are not at all about making everyone think they need to look like a model. In fact, they seem to me to be the opposite.

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Personally I like Queer Eye, but I am not going to apologize for what it is. It is a statement that to be attractive one must conform and project an image of material wealth (which includes stereotypes of sexuality). Getting rid of a toupe is simply a style choice, and NOT about self-acceptance when they also change his clothes and house to be "better". You will note how many guys they send to the gym, or to tanning salons.

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Does this mean that there has been a decrease in the number of breast augmentations in female porn workers? Just curious.

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I have heard that there is, but am uncertain of any study on it. I'll look it up.

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What do you consider "modern"? Does Japanese porn count? What about internet porn viewing by mistake?

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Current, as in what is out there now or over the last few years... No, if your criticism is of American Porn (and even if we included Japanese porn it is a known niche market)... No, because mistakenly bumping into something gives one NOTHING from which to judge the rest of an industry it is a part of.

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I wouldn't see 95% mass market, blonde, thin, tall, fake boobs, mainstream stuff?

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Well I guess I cannot make a blanket statement for EVERY store, but if you go to a number of them you will find on average that 95% doesn't cover most of anything. Blonde certainly NOT (ethnic movies are HUGE), thin maybe 40-80% (depends on what you mean by thin), tall (?, I've never even noticed this as a standard), fake boobs are hard to say since movies generally contain more than one starlet (however HUGE tits are becoming the niche market and moving out of mainstream).Since the focus of this thread is the internet then 95% is a clearly inapplicable. Content runs the gamut. As I have already said one of the largest growing sectors is women and couples making their own porn, or people focusing on natural beauty of human bodies/sexuality.I won't give a link but let me give two names of very successful sites run by women and that focus on natural beauty. They are good examples of a rising trend. NakkidNerds and Abbywinters. Both are dotcoms so it won't be hard to find. The first one may sound derogative but it is selfnamed and focuses on intelligent girls.

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Just because there is more interesting porn, or more realistic depictions of bodies in some porn, doesn't mean that's what everybody is watching.

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I am uncertain how this stands as a criticism of the porn industry or of anything I said. If people all decide to drink coke instead of orange juice, who is to blame?

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but what if the media is partially to blame?

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There choices of what to print are their own. The amount of power one ascribes to what they print in judging ones own life is one's own.Who makes the grass green? You do.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)