Tease Play

I have a theory about men’s pubic hair preferences. I think that a young man’s first exposure to naked womanhood in a sexual context sets his subconcious expectations for what a woman should be like - and defines what he will find most attractive for the rest of his life.

I well remember as a very young man - perhaps around eleven or twelve years old - having a great attraction to and fascination with the pubic area of the various fertile young ladies around me, but, never having seen them naked, my understanding of the anatomy was a little erroneous.

Men have always tended to jump to conclusions on anatomical matters. For more than a thousand years, our main understanding of how the human body was put together came from an ancient anatomist called Galen. His collection of drawings of the skeleton, organs, circulatory system, and so on, were widely copied, much studied, and relied upon almost exclusively for 1500 years. Unfortunately, owing to the fact that Galen had based them entirely on his dissection of dogs, and more or less extrapolated from there when drawing humans, they weren’t exactly accurate.

Similarly my understanding of the female anatomy was based on an entirely logical thought process; but nevertheless it was quite wrong. For example, I was quite certain that the vagina was a vertical slit on the front of the woman’s body, just below the stomach - an arrangement which is so clearly superior to the actual design that I hardly need explain.

In any case, my education in the true nature of the female fun parts came in the form of a collection of old Penthouse magazines someone else had left in an abandoned treehouse near my home. What a revelation! But more than simply supplying the anatomical details, these magazines - from the early 80s - set me up with an indelible image of what young, sexy, confident womanhood looked like. There was a model women in my head; a girl to aspire to. She was smiling. She was spreading herself open for me to see. She had small, natural breasts. And she was hairy.

 Now as is the normal way of things, it wasn’t too long before I was gaining some practical experience of these matters with girls my own age in the innocent sexual play of curious young teenagers. I quickly learned that sexiness comes in many shapes and sizes, as well as in many haircuts.

But still, there’s a part of me that likes hair. The wilder, the longer, and the denser, the better. It signals womanhood to me; I like the feel of it and the smell of it. It is animal, and crude, and a little bit dirty. It is real in almost exactly the same way that the Barbie version of womanhood, all pink plastic, baby-smooth skin, and silicon implants, isn’t. There are a thousand reasons to love it.

 But honestly, I think the real reason is that the first time I gazed on the female sex, it looked more like this…

…than like this…

As a culture we are in deep denial about our animal nature. We are intensely sexual beings, but we are at war with our sexual nature. Rejection of body hair is a rejection of the animal nature of our sexuality, and an attempt to replace it with something clean, safe, and domestic. If we can think of a way to deal with the smell of our sexual fluids and the wet patch they leave on the bed, we surely will, for the same reason. We like orgasms; but we don’t really want to have sex. Really we want to play sex with Barbie in a bizarre caricature of female sexuality; huge breasts, and no pubes.

Me, I’m comfortable with real women, with real boobs and real hair. But I have to admit I’m drawing the line at underarm hair…

I don’t find porn movies generally very sexy. I find hardcore porn movies the least sexy of all.

 ”But how can that be,” I hear some of you ask, “when hardcore shows nothing but explicit sex? What could be sexier than that?”.

That is indeed the crux of the issue; sex per se isn’t all that sexy. To be truly erotic, the brain must be involved.

If hardcore did show more than just explicit sex, it would be sexier. If it presented characters we cared about, portrayed by skillful actors, it would be sexier. If it followed a discernible storyline, and gradually built up the erotic tension to an explicit conclusion; then it would be sexier.

Instead, hardcore offers poor production values, bad acting, a non-existent plot, laughably fake orgasm noises, and interminably repetitive scenes of penises sliding into vaginas and assorted other orifices. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do rather enjoy seeing penises going into vaginas, but I get bored of it very quickly, and I don’t find it terribly sexy on its own. If I’m suitably aroused, watching a nicely shaped girl being fucked can definitely get me off. But on its own, it’s just a badly produced biology documentary.

On the other hand, mainstream movies usually offer the things I do find sexy. They have far more beautiful women. They are better shot and better edited. They have plots which make me care about the characters, and actors who make it believable. They are often highly erotic and highly sexualized. The only thing they don’t generally have is any actual explitic sex shots. Despite this, they are often sexier than hardcore.

Mainstream movies have more beautiful women

I don’t need to work very hard to illustrate this point. Here are just a few mainstream actresses. All of them have appeared in nude and sex scenes. (You can click on any of the pictures to see some stills from their nude movie scenes.)

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s very possible that you disagree with me; but I think these women are extremely hot and generally very sexy in appearance. I have never seen women in a porn movie who are so inherently attractive - even clothed - as these.  

Mainstream movies are better made

A typical porn movie is shot on a single handheld prosumer video camera - something like this is a common choice. It does a pretty good job for a camcorder, but ultimately it’s a camcorder. There’s usually not a lot of attention paid to lighting, or to set decoration, or to color correction, or post-production generally. The result is a product that generally looks worse than real life.

Mainstream movies on the other hand, even low-budget ones, tend to be shot using equipment like this which will typically cost more to rent, per day, than the above camcorder costs to buy. Generally these movies are made by people who know what they’re doing. They have been to film school to learn composition, lighting and post-production. The result is that mainstream movies generally look better than real life.

Film school students learn more than the mere mechanics of operating cameras and light of course; they also learn how to assemble a narrative and emotionally involve the viewer through good editing. So you care more than you would in real life; and if they decide that a particular scene should be erotic and arousing, the result is sexier than it would be in real life.

Mainstream movies make us care more

When you’re watching a porn movie, there’s no moment when you forget that you’re watching a porn movie. You never find yourself lost in the world of the movie. You never feel as the characters feel; you never care about what they care about; you never believe in what they’re doing.

Mainstream movies, on the other hand, thrive on this kind of thing. Every mainstream director wants to make you forget who you are, and let you escape from your reality for a little while.

Let’s imagine that two movies are to address the subject of a young man who has his first sexual encounter at college. Here’s the porn version.

Guy is in empty room doing nothing. Door knocks. Girl comes in.

Girl: hi, I just moved in across the hall. Want to fuck?

Guy: I’ve never done it before

 Girl: That’s OK

They fuck

Girl2 stands watching them from open door as they fuck.

Girl2: Can I join in?

Guy: Yes

Girl: Yes

Girl2 sucks guy, girl fucks girl2, then guy fucks girl and girl2 at same time. Facial cumshot.

The End.

Now I’m sure you found that as sexy as I did. Let’s briefly outline what the mainstream version might look like.

* Scene where they first meet in the corridor. Guy is jock, football player, strong and tough but tender inside. Girl is slender, tanned, respectably dressed but showing her figure. Lighting and depth of field is used to make us see her as he sees her - radiantly beautiful, the center of the universe. Guy tries to make small talk, makes fool of himself, offends her. She walks off in disgust.

* Scene where we see him in class, watching her discreetly as she smiles and laughs with her friends. She yawns and stretches, pushing her breasts forward. We see him look hungrily. She turns and catches his eye, then frowns at him.

* Scene where he is hanging out with his friends and we learn that he is a virgin. They tease him about it and offer to set him up with a girl who is known to be ‘easy’. He shakes his head; he only wants Girl.

* Scene where they are forced together for an assignment. She is cold, haughty towards him. We see her leaving with her boyfriend.

* Scene where she misses an appointment to work on the assignment, and he goes to her room, to find her crying on the floor, clothes torn, hair messed up, face bruised, one breast exposed. She is made to look vulnerable and beautiful. We learn her boyfriend is abusing her. Guy is incensed. With the help of his friends, tells Girl’s now-ex boyfriend to stay away from her, threatens him.

* Scene where Girl and Guy become friends and begin to learn about each other.

* Montage - their friendship becomes stronger as they work on their assignment over the weeks. We use editing to show that he is in love with her, but keeping it secret. Towards the end of the montage we show that she too is attracted to him.

* Scene where she comes to find him in his room, but he is in the shower. Quietly, without him knowing, she watches him shower through the glass, taking in the blurred shape of his body. She puts her hand inside her pants and discreetly touches herself. We see her breathing shorten, and her face flushes. She leaves before he comes out of the shower.

* Scene where they find their joint assignment was the best in the class. He asks her on a date, and she says yes. They kiss.

* Scene where they go out for dinner. She is dressed beautifully, with perfect hair and makeup. They both get tipsy drinking wine. We see him looking at her cleavage as she leans towards him, looking up at him and smiling.

* Scene where they go back to her room, and finally start to make out, intensely. Girl opens her shirt. We see Guy touching her breasts, sucking her nipples. She begins to put her hand inside his underwear. He gasps. She moves her hand. He moans and shivers - he has ejaculated in her hands. She pulls her hand out, looking at it in suprise. “I’m sorry” he says. “I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before.” He is ashamed. She hugs him tightly, nipples pushing against his chest. He pulls himself away, and goes to his room.

* Scene the next day, when she comes to his room wearing a raincoat. She wakes him up. He is embarassed to see her. “Take your clothes off,” she tells him, giggling. She opens the raincoat to reveal she is completely naked inside it. We see her full frontal for a few moments as she takes off the raincoat completely. She climbs on top of him where he lies on the bed and kisses him hard. “Come on,” she urges, smiling, “I want to be your first.” She drags him to the shower, undressing him as they go. They laugh together.

* We see them both naked in the shower, cuddling as they soap each other and touch. “You have to do exactly what I tell you”, she says. She makes him touch her pussy. We don’t see him doing this, but we see the effect on her, as she moans and flushes at his touch. Then she pushes his head down between her legs and makes her lick her. We see her face in orgasm as the shower water crashes over them both. “Now,” she says, still gasping. She pulls him up and wraps herself around him, her buttocks pressed against him. We see his face as he enters her, hear them both breathing hard and thrusting until he moans loudly and shudders. They hold each other tightly for a while as they recover their breath.

* The scene where the ex-boyfriend returns, mad with jealousy and spoiling for a fight….

Obviously that was a little longer. But I sure hope you found it a lot sexier. Even just from these brief notes on the plot, we care about the characters, we identify with them, and we see that this is (at least nearly) a believable scenario.

Conclusion

Whatever a mainstream movie chooses to be, it tends to be very much. If it is a horror, it tends to be very horrific. If it is a comedy, it tends to be very funny. If it has sex in its storyline, it tends to be very sexy indeed. Beautiful actresses and talented, artistic film makers combine with involving plots to make mainstream moviemaking the source of some of the best and truest erotica around. That’s why on the average lonely Friday night, my choice of viewing is likely to be some well-made Hollywood movie with a great nude scene, rather than Busty College Girls Three.

What could be sexier than watching a couple having sex? What could be more arousing than pictures of people actually fucking? Anyone who has seen hardcore porn knows the answer to that; it is usually pretty unappealling. For me at least, good soft porn is far more erotic and far more likely to have me reaching for the Kleenex. And good soft-core is widely available. Good hardcore is rare indeed.

So what is it about hardcore porn that makes it generally so poor? I think there are a number of factors. First, bad hardcore is easy to sell to stupid people. Few business plans have ever failed because there weren’t enough stupid people around. Second, the most beautiful and naturally sexy women generally don’t do hardcore. Third, hardcore is difficult to photograph well. Fourth, bizarre and unsexy conventions have arisen. Finally, it is emotionally dead.

1. If bad hardcore makes money, why make good stuff?

The sheer volume of hardcore material available nowadays suggests that it’s keeping someonehappy. There are large numbers of people paying $39.95 each month for their “XXX Slutz Wharehouze” memberships. However they are clearly not people of discernment and taste. I am fairly certain that they are of below-average intelligence. They probably have poor impulse control (”$14.95 for a 24-hr trial? sign me up!”), and a higher-than-average likelihood of being unable to successfully cancel their account. In other words, they are the dream customer for certain types of adult webmaster, who can then expend the minimum possible effort on generating content for his site.

2. Nice girls don’t do hardcore

I think we’ve reached a situation in Western culture where your average nice young woman isn’t utterly mortified at the thought of being seen naked on the Internet. Photo and video cameras are so ubiquitous, and the means of sharing their output so efficient, that a significant percentage of the population are bound to end up nude on some website, somewhere, at some point - whether thanks to their own exhibitionist desires, or as the revenge of an ex-boyfriend, or even just as the unknowing victim of a hidden camera on a topless beach.

My point is that it is now relatively painless for a pleasant, attractive young lady to make the decision to pose for nude photographs. Check out OneModelPlace some time and see how many amateur models there list various types of nude work in their interests. The result is that there has never been such a rich supply of beautiful, erotic, artistic soft-core material available. These girls are happy to earn a little money in the present, and have little concern about being “found out” in the future, because it’s only nudity after all. We’re nearly at the point where there is no shame in doing soft-core, and I think this is a good thing.

But hardcore is something different. A hardcore photo shoot, turning up years later, might do significant damage to your family and career in the way that soft-core no longer does. It is still largely the domain of those girls who’s tattoos, scars, and just general lack of beauty preclude them from soft-core work. Women willing to do hardcore are relatively rare, and they still tend to be doing it because their education offers them few other options, rather than as a positive and deliberate decision.

The result is that few “perfect 10″ girls do hardcore, and that the performers generally are less intelligent, and so less creative, artistic, and imaginative than their soft-core colleagues. Or to put it more bluntly, most of them are ugly and can’t act.

Here are some random hardcore and soft-core girls. I’m sure you can tell which are which.

  

  

3. Where does the camera go?

Lighting and composition are the two golden factors in photography. If you can get those right, you can make anything - and anyone - look good. Both are difficult to get right when you’re dealing with fucking and sucking; the body positions are just wrong. Anyone can take a picture of a penis entering a vagina; but how do you take a picture that conveys how it feels?

If you can find an angle that works emotionally (and it is possible), how the heck are you going to light it? In the eight inches between his body and hers, how will you fit not only a camera, but a two-point lighting setup? There are techniques to manage all these things, but they are advanced techniques. You simply can’t do it properly unless you know both the theory and practice of photography (or videography) to an unusally advanced extent.

A small number of exceptionally talented and creative photographers are able to do a good job of conveying the emotion, excitement, and sensation of sex in their work. But there are far more mediocre photographers than excellent ones; and most of the photographers working in porn aren’t even mediocre.

4. Don’t do that. It’s not sexy.  Why do you think it is?

Certain conventions have arisen in the world of hardcore pornography. At least some of them are the opposite of sexy.

Consider the picture above. Is this sneer attractive to you? Is it erotic? For me, it’s ugly and a major turnoff. This girl looks like she has a fairly pretty face, at least when she’s not screwing it up into a scowl. I want to see a facial expression which says “sex is wonderful and I am enjoying this feeling”, not one which says “I am a crazy bitch from hell and I will murder you in your sleep”.

Let’s assume that I’m not in the minority, and that most guys don’t find this expression sexy. Why then do we see it so often - or if not precisely this, some other similar twisted sneer instead?

I think it went something like this. It started as a genuinely sexy pout, like Ms. Monroe’s here. Marilyn was a genuinely talented actress, and understood the power of facial expression. If she wanted to communicate smokey, seductive sexuality with an expression, she was more than capable of doing it. But most porn stars are not great actresses.

I think this kind of pout migrated into porno-land where it became part of the grammar of porn movies. Female performers would pout as seductively as they could as a way of communicating the sexual ecstasy they were supposedly experiencing. This was copied from actress to actress, movie to movie, getting more and more distorted along the way, until no one knew where it came from or what it was intended to signify; just that it was sexy. Men like it, right?

So you have a generation of women who think that making these kinds of expressions, no matter how crudely, and how ugly the result, is inherently sexy to all men. And you have a generation of men who think there’s something wrong with them, because it sure isn’t sexy to them!

Of course, this could just be me. Maybe everyone else is creaming their pants at the crappy porn-scene head shot above. But I’m betting at least a significant minority of you are with me on this.

5. You can’t act.

More than anything, the body language and expression of the performers communicates the eroticism and excitement of what they’re doing. Or at least, it should, if they’re actually feeling any eroticism and excitement. Failing that, they need to be able to act. 

Those hardcore performers you see are fucking a stranger who they have met only moments before. The environment they’re in, whether it’s a seedy motel room, or a high-budget studio, is almost the opposite of sexy. If they’re new, they’re shy and awkward. If they’re experienced, they’re bored.  In either case, the emotions they are experiencing don’t contribute positively to the end product.

People who have the intelligence and creativity to act or pose well, and hence the ability to convey the emotion they want to convey, generally don’t end up doing hardcore. So the result is mechanical, emotionless pictures of mechanical, emotionless sex.

Is there good hardcore out there?

What am I missing? Are there sites with high-quality hardcore content which is arousing, erotic and exciting, rather than just ugly and boring? Please, let me know in the comments.

Let me take a break from porn and talk about nudity instead :) 

There’s been quite a lot of media coverage recently of Spencer Tunick’s latest mass-nudity art installation in Mexico City. I thought it might be interesting to share my experiences taking part in the 2001 Montreal affair.

For background, I was brought up in a somewhat naturist family and don’t really have any issue with being seen naked myself. I’m an ugly bastard, you understand, but that only bothers other people who’re not me. So I didn’t think it would be a big deal to take part in something like this. I certainly wasn’t concerned about public erections or anything of that type. The Tunick pictures I had seen just didn’t look terribly sexy.

So there I was along with 2500 other idiots in downtown Montreal at 5am on a cold morning, standing nervously waiting to be told to take my clothes off. For someone who was able to stay relatively detached from it, it was an interesting opportunity to observe human sexual behaviour in an unusual context.

Wait a minute - did I just say sexual behaviour? Surely every one of those men and women was there purely in the interests of creating art? Well, some of them might have been. Many more were there, like me, to be part of some big unusual event. But honestly I think the majority just wanted to see naked members of the opposite sex.

I think there is a big part of our sexual psyche that wants an excuse to do sexy things. There is a movie which featured a group of strangers being forced to strip and being tied together (man to woman) by terrorists. I don’t remember anything about that movie at all except for the idea of being forced to strip and be tied up to a naked attractive female. That’s kinky.

The Spencer Tunick installations are similar, I think. Secretly many of us would love nothing more than to get naked in front of similarly-uncovered strangers. Taking part in one of these events provides a socially acceptable excuse for us to do so. And a great many of the people on Rue St Catherine on that morning were there because they were listening to their inner voyeur.

So we’re all there. We’re still clothed. There are a heck of a lot of people, and there’s not a lot of space. There’s kind of an unspoken awareness that the people who are adjacent to you now are the ones you’re going to be exposing yourself to, and seeing naked, and that has an effect on people’s behaviour. Gradually, subtly, clusters of men are forming around attractive unaccompanied young women. Consciously or otherwise, those women are themselves clustering together as if for protection. Except for people who obviously arrived together, there’s no talking.

I’m delighted to find myself between twentyish student type with brown frizzy hair and a slightly older blonde. Not that I’m looking, but they’re both pretty nicely shaped. Despite myself, I feel a stirring in my pants. I focus on an old man, and it’s not a problem any more.

Then suddenly, it’s happening, and we’re getting naked. A moment of craziness. One of my neighbours, the blonde, is a little hesitant. She catches my eye for a brief second, and glances down at my crotch as I’m stripping. Then she turns away, and she’s naked too.  She’s a little fatter than she looked in her clothes.

What way do you face when you’re stripping in a crowd? I’m seeing flashes of genitals and breasts. Everyone is moving so quickly that it’s less than real. Then everyone - everyone - is nude and shivering and a little red, and no one knows where to look. You can only see the people next to you, and they are naked. This is the reality. Unless you crane your neck and look only at the sky, you will be looking at someone’s private body parts, and probably they at yours too. The mood changes. This is now funny. We let ourselves look at each other.

The brown-haired girl has the most stunning breasts, round and plump. She knows I’m looking, and smiles at me. I smile back; it’s OK for me to be looking; this is what she came here for. It’s a bizarrely non-sexual moment. The mood is such that I’m able to appreciate the shape and design of her body without thinking about what it would be like to fuck her.

We’re posed lying curled up on our sides. The brown-haired girl’s butt is close to me and right in my field of view; I can see her pussy lips. I wonder who is looking at my genitals right now. I hope someone is. The blonde would be my first choice, but just as likely its some guy.

We’re naked for what feels like an hour. We get moved and re-posed, but I stay close to the brown-haired girl, or maybe she’s staying close to me. We are developing a little relationship of half-glances and smiles. God knows, she’s a stunning woman, and very naked indeed, and yet I’m not getting aroused. It’s a calm, accepting feeling.

When it’s all over, we’re quickly dressed, and with one last smile, we’re gone our separate ways, platonic lovers who never shared a single word of conversation.

Spencer Tunick’s images are very boring. Thousands of anonymous pink dots. But every single one of those dots had to expose themself to the judgement of strangers. Every single one of those dots built a functioning intimate relationship with the others around them. Yes, at the end, I must say, art happened that day - not in spite of our sexual urges, but rather because of them.