Surfing Google news I found this article at the UK’s Metro Magazine about women enjoying porn. It’s got all the usual semi-amazed discussion about the idea of women actually enjoying smut, plus a short interview with Anna Span.
Nothing new there, although it has brought to my attention a new academic book by Clarissa Smith called One ForThe Girls. It’s a look at women’s experience of porn via the UK magazine For Women, which was published in the 1990s. The official blurb says:
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Significantly this book moves beyond the usual rehearsal of claims about readers’ vulnerability to ideologies hidden in the text and uses readers’ designations of ‘sexy’ and ‘pleasureable’ to underpin an alternative theorisation of pornography. Exploring readers’ responses to nude male pinups, explicit stories and sexy articles, the book traces the patterns of response hidden behind the title ‘porn reader’.
There’s an interesting review of this book here.
My first reaction to this book was… not fair! She stole our name!
Then I thought that perhaps this book has been in the pipeline for a really long time, possibly before For The Girls came into existence. Why else would this academic choose an incredibly out-of-date magazine, now defunct, as her official example? I’ve never seen a copy of “For Women” magazine and it’s really difficult to find any reference to it on the internet.
It sounds like this book is a worthy addition to the discussion surrounding porn for women but it’s a pity the author restricted herself to one example from the world of old media. The internet has created so many more opportunities for women to explore explicit material, and opened up a greater debate about where feminism fits into an enjoyment of porn.
I originally wanted to write a non-fiction book about the grown of women’s porn and even got started on the first chapter. And then I realised I’d much rather be making the smut rather than sitting back and academically musing about it.
Although I must admit, this blog does both jobs for me.
Hi Ms Naughty
Read your comments on my book One for the Girls with interest (and took the opportunity to look around your site – like it very much!). I thought I should write a note to answer the questions you raised – yes the book was a very long time in the pipeline – started out as my PhD and took a long time to find a publisher. Because I wanted to look at the production and consumption of pornography I needed to find a publication to examine – too often discussions of porn tend to stereotype the people who write/produce it and those who read it and For Women seemed an obvious choice then. It is an ‘old’ magazine but I think the key points I raise about the complexities of women’s engagements with porn are still very current and absolutely vital so For Women is not a key text in many ways, but it did offer a means to explore the dialogue between a form of pornography and its readers. If you’ve had a chance to read it, I’d be really interested to hear what you made of it.
Best
Clarissa
Clarissa, thanks so much for your comment (and for visiting my site). It seems my criticisms were a bit extreme 🙂
I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet but I’ll keep an eye out. There aren’t many serious considerations of women and porn so of course your book is very welcome.