I was in the Royal Farm Store the other day, and I noticed that one of the skin mags was out of it’s protective wrapping, I think it was Gent. I haven’t looked at one of these in years, so I picked it up and flipped through it. In addition to the pictures of naked models I was expecting, they had couples spreads, with full sexual contact. I was a bit suprised, because the last time I’d seen such a magazene, the most they would show was simulated fucking and flacid penii. These spreads had full penetration close ups and the like. When did this happen? Was there some court case that allows this sort of thing that I missed hearing about?
That is when I first noticed the same thing.
Freaked me right out. I remember seeing erect penii and adjacent orafices but never penetration.
Same bewilderment here. No idea why or how.
I’ll bet it has to do with competition vs. the readily available hardcore porn on the internet, principally Usenet.
Uh, so I’ve heard…
When I read the OP, my first thought was along the lines of showing pubic hair, and then, pink. If Larry Flynt and director Milos Forman got it right, “hardcore” went mainstream (more or less) in the U.S.A. when Althea showed pink, somewhere during the second Nixon administration.
But I seem to remember many early 80s late 70s magazines like Hustler used to show penetration a lot. But then it went away under the Reagan admin. So I guess you could say when did the go back to hardcore.
Ahh fond memories of swiping them from my dad’s closet. There was this one about these Greek gods and godesses, mmm-mm.
There’s no laws that regulate what constitutes hardcore and softcore–the so-called rules were basically formed by the jagged borderline between what producers pushed and what retail outlets would sell, which was determined by the clash between the local community definition of “obscene” and what porn buyers wanted.
So skin mags being “softcore” was an industry decision based on “if we go hardcore we’ll lose sales because 7-11 won’t carry us” or “if we go hardcore we’ll become political targets of prudish crusaders” etc.
The recent change into hardcore is, as mentioned, partially a response to declining sales because of the internet, and a general perception that US society is unclenching its sex-attitude asshole just a bit. I do believe Hustler was the first to convert. So keep an eye out for Playboy’s upcoming “All-Anal Interracial Gangbang” issue.
Yes, the world is better place…
Seriously. It’s a good thing. 
Dammit, Arnold! I was all set to make fun of Dave’s Balto-grammar!
And then you show up. What’s a DC boy to do?
It’s been a long time since I’ve bothered to buy a skin mag. If you’ve got Web access, you’d have to buy them for the articles now: if it’s in a skin mag, you can probably see similar pix for free on the Web. I’m sure the same is true of the Penthouse letters and whatnot. So the pornzines are simply losing their market, because what do they have to sell?
I assume they’re frantically trying everything they can just to stay afloat, but I expect it’s kinda like George Clooney repairing his boat in The Perfect Storm - you can put plywood over the windows, but the 100-foot wave is gonna take you under anyway. Some will survive, I’m sure, but there will be a lot fewer of them in a few years.
Just think of it as evolution in action.
I think one of the mags (maybe Penthouse) regularly has pissing pics, too.
Even Hef (or rather his daughter) is getting a little bolder with Playboy lately. No hardcore or pink yet, but definite lippage.
Happy
Yeah, the SO gets Playboy, and I was looking at some of the pictorials, and while they’re not close to Penthouse yet, there were semi-open-leg shots, with a little visible clit, which I never saw in the past (I have older brothers. Shut up.). And a few years ago, I saw Penthouse doing penetration, which was new.
It probably is due to the increasing availability of hardcore porn on the net, they have to get a little more graphic in order to compete.
Happy Lendervedder says:
We always called this “snibbage”.
[Homer Simpson voice] mmmmm Dalene Curtis [/Homer Simpson voice]
Penthouse has lately cooled off on the watersports since an apparent peak in '98-2000, just as they also went ans stayed full-pen hardcore, but has IMO sinned greatly in featuring ever more pseudo-artsy euro-trashy photoshop-grainy black-and-white faux-Mapplethorpish let’s-show-unusual-things-up-her-anus style pictorials. I stopped checking it out. Their articles continue to get ever more tabloidy.
Playboy not only has moved on a bit on the pubic modesty angle, but now even features a regular column in which various former Playmates discuss their fave sexual activities and BJ techniques. This seems to have gone in hand with the “hardening” of their cable channel, which in the beginning was basically VH1 with tits. The articles, alas, show ever more frequently a disturbing attempt to compete with the fratboy mags like Maxim and FHM. Guess that is a reflection of Hef’s own rediscovered interest in age-inappropriate antics. (Not that even in the glory days it was always all that great – a lot of it was reflected glory from the likes of Fleming, Updike, Haley, Theroux, Mailer, etc., that would rub off on to a just-OK in-house editorial team.)
OTOH the new Playboy has now given us BOTH Tenison sisters, so God Bless…
jrd
“Penii” is a perfectly cromulent word. It’s particularly useful when ralking about DC, Chancey-boy, so watch it!
I remember seeing something like this a few years ago. I actually think it wasn’t real penetration as much as doctored photos. They may have switched to real penetration now, but previously it looked like they simply took one of the “exremely close bits” photos and photoshopped the girl down a couple inches. The shots didn’t seem to show the vulva bulging a bit as it would if it were being pushed aside during real penetration. Shocked me and my wife as well.
Steven
Did that copy of Gent embiggen you?
The latest Playboy is the first that I can recall to feature a clean-shaven girl as the centerfold. A definite shift from their “we’re too good to show labia!” attitude of the past.