Another “porn for girls” magazine has popped up, this time in Germany. Gluck Magazine has just released it’s third issue, chock full of thin indie boys posing nude on their beds. The mag is run by two women, Nicole Rudiger and Elke Kuhlen and has sold out of its first two issues.
The creators say their intent in creating the magazine was not feminist. “Our audience – indie or not – just wanted to see ‘normal’ naked guys, and not the fireman types usually on offer.”
Unfortunately the main site is in German and the use of graphics means I can’t even try a Babelfish translation, so I can’t tell you much more about the magazine itself with any authority.
I did have a bit of fun translating German articles about Gluck into English, including the interview on this page.
The male Models is all Slacker types, which work pleasantly closable. Do you believe that perfect affect male bodies women deterring?
The only booklet, which gives it in this section in Germany, is Playgirl and those makes exactly that. But one knows and from the perfect man body is also surfeited one. I anyhow do not want to have wash board types in such a way in my bed. In addition it comes also that we have hardly money for production, i.e., we have usually only two films per Shooting. And then not for a long time discussed the photo selection to separate it is taken the pictures, which are not too dark. Our booklet is definitely a niche thing. Half of the women from our circle of acquaintances say: “Ihh, nee, which I do not want to see!” And the other half is completely open.
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Hmmm, yes, I see, I see. Wash board types in one’s bed is not everyone’s bag, baby.
The Guardian has published an opinion piece by the authors of a “feminist fashion zine” called Pamflet (warning, horrific pink Myspace page, hurts the eyes). Anna-Marie Fitzgerald and Phoebe Frangoul say that their initial reaction to Gluck and Sweet Action Magazine was to “was to squeal with alarm, blush furiously and drop the offending material like a hot potato.” Seems these girls aren’t much into photos of dicks.
Beyond that, they put the boot into Gluck for the usual “feminist” reasons: Porn makes men lazy in bed, porn exploits women, yada yada yada. Like Ariel Levy, they seem to believe that enjoying sexually explicit material is something only men do, and if women do it, we’re “aping” men.
“Equality is a feminist ideal,” they say, “but reversing the gaze only creates more inequality: again, that is not a template we want to repeat. We don’t need to behave like a man to be sexual beings.”
They also subscribe to the whole “women aren’t visual” theory and say they much prefer to read erotic fiction or romance novels.
Thus, after the initial bout of intellectual naysaying, we see the real reason for their dislike. It appears that Fitzgerald and Frangoul don’t like Gluck simply because it doesn’t turn them on.
“The women we know prefer sexual fantasies to be contextualised, which is why erotic fiction is far more successful than porn for girls will ever be. Sexually charged words that stimulate the imagination are infinitely more arousing than any one-size-fits-all porno mag or movie.”
Now, I’m not a big fan of thin pale guys. I quite like perving on washboard types. But that’s not to say that Gluck doesn’t deserve to exist or that what these German women are trying to do is wrong. Good luck to them, I say.
And then there’s this statement, which made me smile:
“We resent anyone – male or female – telling us what’s sexy, and hipster girls’ take on sex is as prescriptive as any lads’ mag, even if it is wrapped in girlie packaging.”
You know what? That’s exactly what the hipster girls are saying about YOU. And they’re saying it about me too. And now I’m saying it about you as well.
Damn, this “porn for girls” thing is such a bitchy business.
PS: Jessica Valenti of Feministing gets two thumbs up for this comment:
“I think the emergence of these kind of hipster porn mags for girls is a great thing… Clearly there’s porn out there that is damaging to women and warrants our criticism. But that’s not all porn. Being a feminist doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate sexuality and recognise that a part of sexuality is looking at naked people. I don’t know if I would call it a step towards equality exactly, but it’s definitely fun.”