Of all the hoary clichés about women and sex, the one most ripe to be laid to rest is that which states that women favour erotic words over pornographic images, personality over pectorals. If this were true, Anais Nin novels would outsell Sex and the City DVDs and Playgirl magazine would have folded after three issues.
It is true that few women buy porn featuring images of men, but could it be that this is because the few available magazines — Playgirl, for instance — don’t have a very imaginative aesthetic? They cater only to those whose tastes run to greased, orange-toned men who are musclebound to the point of immobility. What’s more, Playgirl‘s style apes that of Playboy. The mass-produced aesthetic remains male, even if what is on the plate is beefcake rather than cheesecake. Now a new publication, the New York-based Sweet Action, is offering something a little different.
Sweet Action is ”porn for women, made by women”. It’s a slim 40 pages, mixing colour and black-and-white photography with illustrations and a few articles. The style is pure New York hipster, and the ”girls” who edit the magazine and the ”boys” who pose for it are clearly part of the city’s young, Bohemian set. As befits a small, independent zine, it’s a wonderful exercise in self-indulgence.
The ”girls” say they ”want to get women used to looking at porn and realising that they can have an active rather than a passive role in their sexuality”, and they lead by example with their editorial policy. Namely, they don’t accept erotica or poetry, and they pick straight men whom they personally fancy as models.
A Sweet Action man is not so much the boy next door as that beautiful boy you saw at the indie gig, or the ”video artist” who lolls around your favourite bar.
There are two interviews, one with Seen [sic], the fortysomething ”godfather of graffiti” who obligingly answers Sweet Action‘s questionnaire, but keeps his clothes on, and a more extensive talk with Eugene Hutz, frontman of the Ukranian gypsy punk band, Gogol Bordello, who does take his shirt off. Eugene is skinny and intense with a handlebar moustache and absinthe-drinker eyes. He reads André Breton and says things like, ”When you play in Zagreb, girls are more likely to jump up on stage and sit on your face.”
Then there are eight pin-up boys posing in what look like their natural habitats — toking a joint in a dark, urban backyard, lazing in bare flats or on the office sofa — all naked, or as near as dammit, and sporting erections. They don’t look like they grunt it out at the gym, or have their chests waxed.
Robin says they probably could be accused of ”objectifying” their models, but ”people can accuse us of a lot of stuff. We’ve never been too concerned with what other people think.”
Another young woman who thinks there is a readership for female-friendly porn is London-based fashion stylist Grace Woodward, but she is plotting a very different magazine.
”It would be a sort of cross between Deliciae Vitae [a high-end glossy], Erotic Review and Marie Claire, and not top-shelf,” she explains. ”It would have erotic fiction and erotic imagery rubbing shoulders with fetishised consumer goods — jewellery and men and Nars lipsticks. Women should be more greedy and upfront about their desires — whatever form they take.”
She may not need to do much market research about her target readership. It seems that the demand for sexual imagery aimed at women is there: the first issue of Sweet Action has sold out, and the second is going fast.
Robin says: ”We are getting a great response from women from all walks of life, some of whom had never bought porn.” — Â