Carl Zimmer, a celebrated science writer, has published a piece about Neil deGrasse Tyson in the January issue of Playboy magazine (also featuring Lindsay Lohan!). Almost immediately after the article started making the rounds on the internet, the question of whether “respectable authors” should publish in Playboy arose. … Continue Reading
Our editrix got a message from Cosmopolitan magazine on Twitter this evening. Apparently, Cosmo has added a new sex position to their catalog and they’re looking for help in naming it. Curious, we headed over and scoped it out. … Continue Reading
When Los Angeles’ adult industry was rocked by a positive HIV-test result in October, the media wasted no time in condemning the industry. The sole voice offering a full view of the case was Barbie Davenporte at AfterDark LA, an LA Weekly blog. But more interesting than her breakdown of key players in the case, perhaps, is Davenporte’s description of how an unnamed reporter responded when she reached out to assist him with information from the adult industry:
But I was rudely dismissed and told that he had in fact called [the Adult Industry Medical (AIM) Healthcare Foundation's attorney, Jeffrey] Douglas, who was hesitant to discuss AIM’s matters on the record. That call resulted in what appears to be a last-minute, “Oh yeah we’d better get comment from the other side in there” cut-and-paste of a general statement regarding AIM’s stance on condom use in porn.
Using quotes she had included in her piece from said reporter, we hit up Google, looked up “HIV porn bullshitty” and turned up another LA Weekly blog: The Informer. The piece suggested AIM was refusing to report the HIV case to government officials, citing a need for a more comprehensive test to be performed, which the reporter called “bullshitty.” … Continue Reading
There’s little to hope for these days when it comes to magazines. Shrink, shrink, shrink, they go, articles withering to blurbs to make room for all the ads needed to keep the publications buoyant. We know you miss the glossy feel of the pages at your fingertips as you sit poolside enjoying the warm schizophrenic autumns of Los Angeles and we’ve got your back.
Introducing Whore! magazine, a publication about culture, history, art, literature, design, fashion, and music, centered on creating dialogue about what women are as opposed to what traditional society has dictated they should be.
The magazine is not about sex work, though on occasion the topic does grace its pages (“The Style of Venetian Courtesans,” anyone?). Why the name? It was inspired by a quote from suffragette Tennessee Claflin: “We have tried to make ‘rake’ as disgraceful as ‘whore.’ We cannot do it. And now we are determined to take the disgrace out of whore.” … Continue Reading
The LA Weekly tackled the sex industry this week with an epic headliner about brothels. The piece, which explores the influx of women from all over this recession-stricken country to legal brothels in Nevada, centers around the stories of a handful of girls with mouths to feed. … Continue Reading
We consume a lot of media here at Sex and the 405, including a handful of magazines, ranging from Psychology Today to Playboy. Among these, Cosmo probably gets more love than it does anywhere else, both because our editrix is taken with Helen Gurley Brown and because we accept each magazine for what it is.
Having said that, brunching earlier today looking over the two stacks of magazines atop which were Cosmo and Maxim, we developed something of a complex and we have to confess that we’re pretty annoyed. … Continue Reading
Ah, welcome to the future of porn! Presenting… 3-D glasses? Really? Yes. This Friday, Playboy magazine will include a set of 3-D glasses. (Scroll down for a NSFW pic!)
“What would people most like to see in 3-D?” asked Playboy‘s inimitable Hugh Hefner. “Probably a naked lady.”
Hef’s pretty real about this gimmick. The publication’s readership has been in steady decline, going from 3.15 million in 2006 to 1.5 million today. He knows people have been raving about flicks like Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon which employ this technology and this is a way for the rag to get in on the action. Jimmy Jellinek, the magazine’s editorial director agrees: “In today’s print environment you have to create newsstand events.”
That’s what they’re doing. By offering them in 3-D, Playboy is hoping to bring something to the table that the internet can’t.
“This particular picture is one example of how books and magazines are different (than computer images),” Hef told ABC.
Of course, as Mashable points out, “3-D images like this are easy to do on computer displays, too — though the readers would have to pick up some physical glasses on their own.”
The woman to appear as the 3-D centerfold is 51st Playmate of the Year, Hope Dworaczyk. Is she Playboy‘s last Hope?
Lynsey G. writes for porn rags. She didn’t plan it, just kind of fell into it. Since last year, she’s been writing a column at McSweeny’s about her conflicted experience as a woman and feminist in the madness of one of the biggest industries in the world.
This, dear readers of Sex and the 405, is the kind of skill required of a porn reviewer:
I learned to watch the first few minutes of each sex scene, taking notes on “plot” or “witty” banter, then fast forward through the remainder at 10x speed, slowing down to note the frequency of position changes, athleticism of maneuvers, and standout dirty talk. The trick was to watch the 2- to 6-hour-long DVDs as fast as possible and then spend under an hour writing dirty, overly alliterative jokes about what I’d seen. Easy, if a bit monotonous.
For easy reference, I made up lists of alternative names for breasts, penises and vaginas, and supplementary lists later on for buttholes, as that trend gained popularity. I developed rating criteria for length, girth, cup size, amount of cellulite, and gag reflex (or the lack thereof). Things got ugly, fast.
She also gets into the occupational hazards: desensitization, boredom, higher tolerance to hardcore sexual acts, and the ever-pressing questions presented by being up to her eyeballs in an industry where everyone is a product:
After a few months of reviewing, the constant humping was wearing on my retinas and getting tedious. My personal sex drive, initially amped up by the bouncing boobs and facials, was declining in the face of overexposure. I was getting paranoid that I’d never be adequate in bed, or that I’d start thinking really kinky things were normal and scare off my boyfriend. I was finding it easier to come up with derogatory slurs about the performers’ bodies and actions. And, I realized, I was coming to understand the bitterness that edged the voices of my editors and co-writers, the disgust with humanity that drove their daily routines. I told myself I wouldn’t let it happen to me; I’d keep my life and my work separate.
[... ] the longer I keep my tenuous toehold in the jizz rag biz, the more the realities of the porn industry stare me in the face, and it’s not just the faces covered in jizz that bother me. There are a lot of really upsetting things going on both inside and outside the studio, both on the industry and consumer sides, which are disturbing and decidedly unfriendly to women. The language used to describe them in industry terminology and in social contexts, the attitudes about their worth as human beings, the aesthetics with which they are presented to the world, and the acts they perform raise a lot of questions. I mean, what’s with the fake boobs and nails and eyelashes and tans and hair? Why the no-body-hair rule? And who came up with the idea that ejaculate is the new trend in facial moisturizers? On that note, where is the line between pleasure and degradation drawn, and by whom? Why have the past few years seen such an abrupt switch from full-length feature films to half-hour-long frenzies of manic semen spewing? Is anybody overseeing this whole operation, and if so, can we arrange to have a private sit-down chat?
Follow her tangents over at McSweeney’s.
Thanks to Laura Roberts for the tip.
Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, did a playful revisit of his parents’ iconic Rolling Stone with his lover Charlotte Kemp.
The original image was shot by Annie Leibovitz in December of 1980 and appeared in Rolling Stone in January 1981. The Sean version was shot by Terry Richardson for Purple magazine in the fall of 2009.
Images and information via FilthyGorgeousThings.
As we all know, the LA Times has a new section for all the late-breaking news that were once in the paper. They decided to name it LATextra, short for Los Angeles Times Extra. Makes sense, right?
Unless you’re a member of the more literary BDSM community, of course. If you are, the name immediately conjures LateXtra, the fetish rag by Skin Two (ah! Skin Two, fond memories of my high school years when I was just discovering some of my cravings had a name).
From Island of Pain:
LateXtra (the fetish mag) can be downloaded here. LATextra (the newspaper supplement) will soon be available somewhere behind the A section in the LA Times, but it will cost you 75 cents.
Information via Island of Pain.
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