An article to love, an article to hate
This is the beginning of a weekly installment.
1. An article to love:
What Women Want: Porn and the Frontier of Female Sexuality by Amanda Hess
“Deen has carved out a niche in the porn industry by looking like the one guy who doesn’t belong there. Scroll through L.A.’s top porn agency sites and you’ll find hundreds of pouty women ready to drop to their knees, but just a few dozen men available to have sex with them. These guys all have a familiar look—neck chains, frosted tips, unreasonable biceps, tribal tattoos. Deen looks like he was plucked from a particularly intellectual frat house.”
This is Good’s recent piece on James Deen, a porn star who could be any of my friends from high school, and his fan club. Turns out male porn stars are starting to become objects of affection and obsession for high school girls - this one has tumblrs and fan clubs to his name. Why? Because he’s not just a giant bald penis but a young skinny Jewish guy that looks like Seth Cohen from the OC: endearing. Nonthreatening. Less we forget he’s boning MILFs and bombshells and Jenna Jameson. Wonderfully written and researched, takes strokes on how a new tweeny female audience is becoming a vocal audience for online porn, and they’re looking for something different.
2. An article to poop on:
Penn State, my final loss of faith by Thomas L. Day
“Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street.”
I’m sick of articles like this, blaming our parents’ generation for all the thick headedness of today’s era - it’s so simplistic. Thomas Day, things weren’t better in the 70’s, they were just easier to understand. There was more overt racism and sexism and bigotry, there were wars, a draft, suburbanization. But you’re welcome to make a hundred generalizations: They caused skyrocketing unemployment and a deteriorating global economy. They are full of perverts (is that unique?). And poor us, looking bad in our riot at Penn State, because we didn’t have them to lead us (a typical case of reflecting responsibility outside of ourselves).
But it’s so easy to fall for that, and that’s the danger of this article. My sister sent it around to the family. My mother apologized.
If we’re going to generalize, let’s do it with less chagrin: I think extreme advances in technology have upended the present understanding of our world, and it’s led to a type of globalization that’s affected every industry in our economy in ways we’re not used to and didn’t know how to prepare for. If anything, our parents’ generation blame the media instead of the cause partially because new technology doesn’t come naturally to them. It’s threatening to have to ask a 22 year old to explain how to make a website, or how to download a document or videochat someone in Tehran when you come from an era where your elders were the ones completely in charge and doubtlessly in the know. My roommate’s CEO is 24. I don’t think my mother and father’s generation was better off than we are - they were forced to rebel. We’re given authority.
