# Porn at the airport **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 13, 2006, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537 "2006-06-13T04:10:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/21 "2006-06-13T16:26:43Z")
Actually, the first porn I ever purchased… And the second, too, IIRC, were at airports. One, somewhat clandestinely, as I was 17 and going on a family trip, and… Hey! Porn! The second was on a dare. Punchy from lack of sleep, a 14-hour weather-related lay-over in New York, and a friend of mine really wanted a penthouse mag. He cajoled me until I bought it for him. Come to think of it, reverse the order of these events. But still, first two porn purchases… Now we’ve got the internet! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weird\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@The\_Weird\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weird_One)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/22 "2006-06-13T16:36:29Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > [chela](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=372053&highlight=porn) is that you? 😃 > If you think that Playboy = porn, all I can say is I don’t think that word means what you think it means. :dubious: Really? Playboy is certainly the mildest kind of porn there is, but I still consider it porn. It has naked people (granted, not a lot, but they’re there) posing provocatively for the sexual gratification of others. I’m genuinely curious - why do you think it’s _not_ porn? Also, let me be the first to say that any sentence containing the words “porn” and “layover” makes me giggle like a middle-schooler. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/23 "2006-06-13T16:37:18Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > Selling it? Or buying it? > > Selling it, I’ve done some temp sales positions at bookstores that have had Playboy, Playgirl and similar stuff. College bookstore so the consumers were college kids. Didn’t bother me to sell it and it didn’t seem to bother the people buying it. > > Buying it, I first remember seeing a Playgirl at Waldenbooks when I was about 16. It had naked pictures of a guy on a soap I watched who I was in lust with so I stole it. When I was in college there was a regular-type bookstore that sold harder core stuff (erections but no sex) and I bought magazines there and no one seemed to care. > > A few years back I bought a Playgirl in a grocery store because an online friend of mine was featured. The clerk didn’t care but the guy behind me in line was _very_ concerned that I understood that the magazine I had selected had naked men in it. He thought I’d made a mistake or perhaps hadn’t noticed the muscular shirtless man on the front cover. That last part made me giggle. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/24 "2006-06-13T16:37:44Z")
> [@Spatial Rift 47](#): > > Neckties. samplers, tattooes, anything! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/25 "2006-06-13T16:42:06Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Playboy and the like. > > -Kris Ah. Well I have higher (lower?) standards for what porn is than you, I guess. “To be smut it must be utterly without redeeming social importance.” (Can’t resist quoting Tom Lehrer in a thread like this. ) ---
**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/26 "2006-06-13T16:52:11Z")
> [@The Weird One](#): > > Really? Playboy is certainly the mildest kind of porn there is, but I still consider it porn. It has naked people (granted, not a lot, but they’re there) posing provocatively for the sexual gratification of others. I’m genuinely curious - why do you think it’s _not_ porn? If you’re just reading _Playboy_ for the articles, no prob. But if I’m seated next to some guy on the airplane who’s actively perusing the centerfolds, I’d be pretty uncomfortable. It’s tough to avoid seeing what the person next to you is reading (I dont’ have anything against naked gals, I just don’t really wanna stare at someone twat midflight). Which is why I think having Playboys and Hustlers at the airport is kinda weird. Tho’ I guess maybe travelers buy them to keep them company in their hotel rooms. I don’t think it’s weird to buy the mainstream mags at a bookstore tho’. I used to work at Borders and I didn’t have any problem selling them. The covers usually arent’ horrendously offensive. I do think the more unusual mags are probably better left to the specialty store where titles like “Golden Showers” won’t offend anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/27 "2006-06-13T17:05:36Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > [chela](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=372053&highlight=porn) is that you? 😃 > If you think that Playboy = porn, all I can say is I don’t think that word means what you think it means. :dubious: It’s not particularly naught, but, uh, most people buy it to masturbate to. I think that makes it porn. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/28 "2006-06-13T17:19:21Z")
Hmm. Does it make it porn if you fap to it? I mean, there was a time when the Victoria’s Sectret catalogue probably would have sufficed. ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/29 "2006-06-13T17:26:51Z")
😕 What place that sells magazines doesn’t sell porn? Not many. And I think the “lonely guy in the hotel room” is a good enough explantion. Although I’d probably read it…I mean “read” it right there in my seat on the plane . But then I’m a chick, so we can put this things off. For a while. As for selling it…not B&N but Borders, when I was working there I recall a guy who came up with :eek: about a dozen porn tapes (Borders is pretty good about porn) and his ID in his hand showing that he was 18 THAT DAY. Spent \<$120. Guess he had a good birthday…although a girlfriend might have been better. Frylock, I don’t know what your problem is. I just came here (no pun intended) from a thread about guys buying tampons. And how they should be embarrassed because menstruation happens…well, masturbation happens. So why be embarrassed wherever you buy your…assitence. Let’s get over this. ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/30 "2006-06-13T17:28:16Z")
> [@Loopydude](#): > > Hmm. Does it make it porn if you fap to it? I mean, there was a time when the Victoria’s Sectret catalogue probably would have sufficed. Heck, there was a time when the Sears catalogue would have sufficed. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/31 "2006-06-13T17:35:33Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > If you think that Playboy = porn, all I can say is I don’t think that word means what you think it means. :dubious: Thought there was even a term for this. Soft porn vs. hard porn. Or softcore vs. hardcore. Nekked people is porn, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/32 "2006-06-13T17:41:54Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Thought there was even a term for this. Soft porn vs. hard porn. Or softcore vs. hardcore. > > Nekked people is porn, IMO. [The Creation of Adam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam) (Sorry for the Judeo-Christian bias. Indian art certainly has a lot of nudity, but most of it _was_ porn. :)) ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/33 "2006-06-13T17:43:05Z")
Incidentally, while it’s widely speculated that Michelangelo was gay, I think we can say for certain that he wasn’t a size queen. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/34 "2006-06-13T17:43:33Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > [The Creation of Adam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam) > > (Sorry for the Judeo-Christian bias. Indian art certainly has a lot of nudity, but most of it _was_ porn. :)) Oooo, right. Got me there. How about - nekked people pictured for the purpose of titillation is porn? ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/35 "2006-06-13T17:48:06Z")
Oh, I nearly forgot… it’s Porn! on a Plane! ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/36 "2006-06-13T17:50:38Z")
> [@betenoir](#): > > Frylock, I don’t know what your problem is. I just came here (no pun intended) from a thread about guys buying tampons. And how they should be embarrassed because menstruation happens…well, masturbation happens. So why be embarrassed wherever you buy your…assitence. Let’s get over this. If you’ll read my original post again, you’ll note that I’m not commenting on any embarrassment on my own part, but rather, embarrassment I expected would be felt by the people behind the counter. When I imagine the prospect of buying it myself, I do feel something like embarrassment, but not at the prospect of buying porn, but rather, at the prospect of causing embarrassment. Probably because I’m Bible-Belt raised, I just sort of expect people to be more “ew!” about this than they probably actually are. Still… there are minors working at these places. Is there no one here who buys porn at places like Barnes and Nobles and who doesn’t sort of maybe hang back to wait for the right person to buy it from? That’s what I would have expected… but I’ve already commented on where the skew in my expectations may come from… -Frylock ---
**Author:** ![The\_Controvert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@The\_Controvert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Controvert)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/37 "2006-06-13T17:58:55Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Ah. Well I have higher (lower?) standards for what porn is than you, I guess. “To be smut it must be utterly without redeeming social importance.” > > (Can’t resist quoting Tom Lehrer in a thread like this. ) When I was a wee lad, I had to perform 40 hours of community service to graduate from high school. In Nebraska. I was glad of my choice to volunteer at the downtown public library when I discovered a monster archive of Playboys in the magazine section. For the general public. In Nebraska! :eek: Suffice it to say, the hours flew by while I was busy “reshelving volumes”, which really meant sampling the motherlode piece by piece in the restroom. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DooWahDiddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9bcb4/32.png) [@DooWahDiddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DooWahDiddy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/38 "2006-06-13T18:38:18Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > If you think that Playboy = porn, all I can say is I don’t think that word means what you think it means. :dubious: Read the dictionary much? [The Free Dictionary.com](http://www.tfd.com/Pornography) defines pornography as “Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.” Now, whether it does it for you or not these days is kind of beside the point. The bottom line is that those pictures are there (and God bless 'em, says I) to arouse and stimulate. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/39 "2006-06-13T18:48:14Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > (Can’t resist quoting Tom Lehrer in a thread like this. ) Actually, you’re quoting the judge who acquitted his Aunt Hortense. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2006, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537/40 "2006-06-13T19:06:50Z")
There was a time when Playboy was not pornography. A photo of Marilyn Monroe with nothing on but the radio, however provocatively she was posed, was considered contemporary photo art. Naughty, but nice. Yeah, my mom raised hell when she found my Playboy in my room, and yeah, the centerfold did help relieve all those pubescent tensions. But there were interviews with Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer, and that made Playboy not pornography. Years later, while working at an “adult bookstore” while going to college, I saw real pornography – people displaying their genitals and even masturbating (soft core, believe it or not) and having sex with each other (hard core). There were no interviews with cutting edge cultural figures, no Kurt Vonnegut fiction, no tips on how to buy stereos, no movie reviews or letters to the editor none of that stuff. The differences between porn and not porn were pretty easy to see. Penthouse started out being not porn, then became pornographic when it began to show the models’ genitals; Screw and Hustyler were porn from the git-go. Then Playboy started trying to compete with Penthouse in the late 1970s, and a few labia were seen peeking out of the pubic hair. That ended when Hef’s daughter took over the magazine. So, to my generation, Playboy is still the demarcation line between porn and not porn. And if a photo of a nude woman makes you nervous, remember that in Britain and Europe, daily tabloid newspapers often feature photos of topless or nude women. In the UK, the Daily Sun still publishes the Page 3 Girl, and has devoted a [web site](http://www.page3.com) to the models. The wack-off-ability of a photo doesn’t make it pornography. Context does. And yeah, I’ve bought Playboy in airports, many years ago. No, I never opened the gatefold and gazed at it on the plane. Can you say “discretion”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/porn-at-the-airport/360537.md?page=3)