Visual erotica for women

[SparklingExplosionGoldBrass]

Because the discussion on this at Ladyfest was fascinating but didn't go on long enough, I fancy continuing it here.
Soo, iirst off, why aren't there proper erotic magazines (with pictures of naked men in them) for heterosexual women?

Nicole Kidman doesn't look like she's ever had sex, either

You need to watch the film. It's not about the relationship between Cruise & Kidman, more of rite-of-passage story about the guy growing out of his fantasy.

OK, will watch out for it on Sky

Maybe I just need my sexy films to actually be sexy

Sorry, I didn't mean "Watch this film or else", AF! I meant: if you'd seen it, you'd get why the leads don't have to be sexy in that story.

What was that Spanish-language film with the two utterly fit guys and something about a mother ?

Bloody hell, that did it for me

"Y Tu Mama Tambien"

oh

my

god

< kills thread with lust >

sorry about that

I don't find looking at photos of muscular tanned (probably gay) young men remotely erotic. I wouldn't go and scream like a simpleton at the Chippendales if you dragged me kicking and screaming and paid me to go.

I think most women need more than a one dimensional photograph of a half naked body to feel aroused. For me 'sexy' or 'erotic' is an very intangible thing, and has little to do with whether someone is classicly handsome or fit.

'Y Tu Mama Tambien' - shudder. Went to see that on a first date once, didn't know what I was getting myself into.
The post-cinema pint was a bit awkward.

is that a good shudder, or a bad shudder, wukter ?

Bad AF, no second date [date]

FFS not [date]

sod the date, what about the fit blokes ?

They were a startling contrast to the yoke sitting beside me doing that casual yawn/aem around shoulders thing.

No sorry can't seperate the film and the date in any coherent way.

you need to watch the film again

on your own, at home

Oooh, I haven't seen it! Thanks from a bored old lady ....

So, umm, we like films with stories that are about sex and feature people with gorgeous bodies getting it off. We like glossy production values and can live without genital close-ups. (Or is that just me?)

I noticed that the films I said I find sexy all have an element of ritualised sex about them - dunno if that's just me, just Hollywood, or what? In real life, it would terrify me. But erotica's about fantasy, isn't it ...

of course

and obviously I fantasise about two Mexican blokes < ahem >

The only Mexican bloke I shagged was useless :(

I can't imagine asking Woody Allen for tips on finding a lover, though!!!

I like dark men

thankfully, I married one

From my experience (which is actually extensive and first hand) the reason so many of the previous women's erotic mags have been so compromised is that too many men have been involved in the production and distribution. Even when women have been nominally in charge of the editorial content. It;s been mostly men saying (first of all) well it won't sell (based on NO evidence) so you can't have much of a budget. Then saying, well you can't do that eg show an erect penis, because, well, you just can't. Oh and you'd better fill up about half the pages with fashion and lipstick and DIETS (again, all done in a lame half-hearted way because you have no budget and the beauty/fahsion PR companies don't want to be associated with willies) because that's what the advertisers women really want. Then you get men at the printers saying it's disgusting and illegal and they won't print it unless you tone it down, and even when you;'ve made it really tame you get some knob in the distribution company saying, well my wife wouldn't like it therefore it won't sell and then you get individual shopkeepers going., it's disgusting, decent women won't buy it. I'll just not even display it and then tell the distributors it doesn't sell.

Like Grace said: the inadvertent patriarchal conspiracy. They;re not all ringing each other up going Help! WOmen might look at cocks! Take action now before they stop doing the washing up! It's just that somewhere in their minds is this idea that women having any kind of autonomous active sexuality (rather than waiting passively for a man to choose them) is Bad and Mustn't Happen.

interesting to see Diva Magazine brought up which is a magazine made by lesbians for lesbians...

i've done some illustration work for them before (in between running Punternet of course) and had the weirdest conversations about what a lesbian should look like. i was under very specific instructions including to draw only women with short hair (tousled preferably) and keep make up to a minimum. it occurred to me that their notion of what an appealing lesbian looks like is as narrow, if not more so, as the generic hetero press/media.

Oh and if you think that there's no stigma attached to women having autonomous sex lives these days, look at the treatment of Zoe Margolis (who, let's be clear,simply wrote a blog about her sex life which is widely regarded as open and honest) - outed in the press, labelled a sex worker (which she isn't - she sued the paper who said that and won) - no one could accept that she wasnot just a woman who has lots of sex but a) doesn't do so for money and b) is not fucked up and miserable and ashamed of it.

SGB - well why isn't that same setup all online and cut out the middlemen?

Wukter: Well there's this
and appears to be a fair bit of stuff here - found those with a bit of googling.
TBH I haven't considered online porn that much because my background is magazines, and because people still buy magazines (after all, you can hide a mag under the bed whereas if you share your computer with other people in your home you might not necessarily want them to see what you've been looking at).
But I think the same shit would apply TBH - it's all very well putting up a website but you have to get people to know it's there and to come and look at it, and I would imagine that most of the link sites would go, oh well, come on, women don't really like that sort of thing, not worth it, you won't get any advertisers - so again you have to be really fucking determined and have some money, to get anywhere.