On the other hand, I bet our grandparents, before there were porn movies, had no idea about stuff like cunnilingus. So that’s a point for porn.
Really? Is pornography so pervasive that everybody is familiar with it? I’m not talking about a few minutes of curiosity looking at an XXX internet site from time to time. To develop a conscious preference a person would need to spend a lot of time watching porn.
Doubtless there are men and women who do but so far as I can tell from my near adult teenagers, its regarded with distaste. Fun for a laugh but removed from real life.
Maybe I’m underestimating what variety of porn many people have seen. I’m no wilting flower, but visual porn doesn’t do a whole lot for me. So when I do see porn stars practicing their craft, it’s under a few circumstances: a partner would like to watch something with me, a pop-up shows up on my computer (luckily that hasn’t happened in years) or I very gingerly go looking around for porn in some of the more brightly lit dark alleys of the internet. All of these tend to lead me to fairly “mainstream” porn without much variation in shape, size or even coloration of women’s bodies.
So while I’m perfectly aware that there’s porn out there with women shaped like me, I haven’t seen it. When someone says “porn star”, I’m thinking Traci Lords, not overweight middle aged women with uneven breasts and stretch marks and moles and scars.
What’s my point? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s that while variety exists in porn as a whole, great variety doesn’t exist in the mainstream kind of porn that women with body issues are likely to see. Maybe we/they should expand our horizons…maybe it would embiggen our notion of our own sexiness if we saw rolls and wrinkles having sexy fun time (but I suspect it has equal or better chance of grossing us out and reinforcing our deeply held cultural disgust of age and obesity.)
Maybe it’s that if you’re going to be comparing areolas with a public figure, it’s not going to be the 10:00 news anchor, 'cause we haven’t seen her areolas.
I don’t think porn or the mainstream media influences men. I think they simply take advantage of what men already find attractive.
Agreed. When did you see an unattractive woman on a soap, for instance, or on a catwalk?
I’d say they have more influence than “porn”.
Once upon a time, many moons ago, in some thread about I don’t know what, a doper mentioned a preference for a certain type of labia. “WTF?” I thought. Not being particularly interested in porn myself, it had never occurred to me that it offered other people the opportunity to see a large enough variety of genitals to develop aesthetic preferences. And you know what? The upshot of that thread is that I now have a stronger opposition to porn. So, yeah, while I’m not going to talk negatively about the specifics of my private bits in contrast to porn images on the web, I can see why other people would.
Yet Maggie Gyllenhall finds work. Normal-looking women aren’t shut out.
You can develop a preference for a certain of labia from more than just porn. In general one could also say that ‘young girls in their prime’ can be just as influential with regard to the perception of women’s bodies, as porn stars are.
In my case, some seemed to be imitating what they saw in porn, period, and expected me to behave like the women in porn as well. Sorry, I’m not a fantasy.
But then, a lot of guys also seemed to be playing the courtly gentleman’s role when we went on dates - and many of them did it about as well as I played the porn star.
Huh? Young women aren’t any less likely to have protruding labial flaps than older women.
I meant the second part generally. Girls in their early twenties in general resemble the male ideal closer, then girls in other age groups.
I didn’t mean the labia thing, that’s just to say that many differences exist and once you get more ‘experienced’ in said matters, you can develop a preference without porn having anything to do with it.
Sure, they could. But unless they don’t watch porn at all, how likely is it that they do?
I think that would be impossible to figure out. I would expect that most men who get to ‘see’ enough girls to develop a preference, will have experience with pornography as well. Then it becomes kind of hard to discern what cause what.
The current big thing among teen girls is thigh gap. They’ve gotten this crazy idea that they’re overweight if their thighs touch. Google it and you’ll find lots of articles.
All the photo-shopped images in pop culture and the oh so gorgeous actresses in movies are creating more and more body image problems for everybody.
I’m said to say it’s not just teenage girls, I’ve heard guys talk about the same thing. I can’t help to think back to some ridiculous tv show (hot or not, or something of the like) where celebs judged the bodies of boys and girls, and Lorenzo Lamas pointed out (with a particular girl) that something is off if your legs don’t touch at all above the knees (damn right he was as well).
The point is that the vast majority of naked women viewage that most non-porn-abstaining men see is going to be via porn, especially in their early years. How could it not be an influence? Certainly we have seen that sharp increases in labia reduction surgery rates and pubic hair-removal among the female populace have been preceded–not followed!-- by those styles being adopted by pornographic models. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to suggest that this probably isn’t a coincidence.
I’m not arguing that this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is certainly a big thing.
No offense, but why do you think it is cool to characterize the shape of some people’s thighs as somehow “off”? Don’t you think it might be nicer if we, unlike the hosts of certain ridiculous television shows, could manage to refrain from making insulting comments about other people’s bodies?
Dear Colander, as you usually do in these kind of threads, you try to find fault in anything any guy posts.
The first one, all I’m saying is that since pretty much all guys that get to experience many different vaginas, are also likely to have seen porn… it is difficult, if not impossible to say whether preferences arise from what they have seen, or what they have experienced. Btw, the fact that girls shave and go for corrective surgery, can just as much be a result from girls watching too much porn…
Waht that show is concerned, I was just matching the words that were said there… and preference wise - in general - I agree. Wouldn’t say it matters much to me, because I’m yet to ‘let a girl go’ because of a ‘thigh gap’. I’m just jumping on the bandwagon against girls going after thigh gaps, here.
Really? Let me check on that one…
Nope, turns out it’s just you today. Fancy that.
And? This thread is about how much porn influences the perception of women’s bodies. My thesis is that the answer is “quite a bit.” It is actually not very difficult to tell that this is the case because it is possible to observe that the rise in popularities of certain grooming trends follow those same trends’ appearance in pornography. Do you think your point stands in opposition to my thesis?
You are also jumping on the bandwagon of saying rude things about the body of a woman because you do not find her optimally sexually attractive. Don’t you think that is a lousy kind of thing for people to do?
Well, I’ve also heard female pornstars get their anuses bleached (since the skin around the anus is naturally darker in a lot of people, and I guess they are concerned it might be mistaken for something else brown) but I don’t know how quick teenage girls are going to jump on the bandwagon to get their assholes a few shades paler :dubious: