Body Image, Sex Industry, and the Media

On the recommendation of a fellow poster, I'm splitting this off the size thread because discussing them together may not lead anywhere. Even this topic comes with its own baggage.

Seth wrote:

using this article as a launching pad, I'm curious to see the opinions on the role the adult entertainment industry plays on body image.

a source for the article above wrote:

Most strippers, as with other women who work in the sex industry, are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Research indicates the number is between 60%-80%. …Often as adults they reenact their childhood trauma by working as strippers, Playboy models, and prostitutes. The men who, now as customers, physically and visually invade the adult women’s bodies, reenact the role of the perpetrator. These women work in the sex industry because it feels like home.

This doesn't conform specifically to the size issue, and I can make another topic if requested, but it's related to body image. How does the modern sex industry influence female body image?

At first I was thinking of this solely in terms of female body image but given the audience I'm also curious to hear how the sex industry affects male body image.

I'm thinking male body image could be a thread of its own. There is considerable evidence that things like comic books, action figures, and the like have significant effects on male body image. But I digress even with the first response post.

As for the figures in the study above, I'd be very curious how large the study set was and what methodology was used. I have no reason to doubt them, but the figures of 55% personality disorder and 35% multiple personality seem high. I don't know sex workers and only talked with one part time stripper (who attended one of my house parties when I was living in Seattle), so my exposure to the industry is rather limited.

My ex used to bartend at a strip club, and the numbers aren't off for the places I was familiar with the staff at. I only remember two out of the whole lot that were even close to functional and all of them had come from broken backgrounds.

One was a very high priced gal who toured and pulled down a serious wage for her appearances because of the truly ridiculous size of her rack. She was saving for a breast reduction and medical school and was about two years from her goal last time I saw her. I hope she's practicing somewhere right now. If I knew her actual name I would try to find her. She had an awesome, wicked sense of humor. The other was the daughter of a prominent clergyman who had daddy issues but it wasn't that sort of abuse. Major case of Preacher's Kid Syndrome. She chose that particular place to work because it was down the hill from his church. I used to giggle at the number of his flock that would come in, see her there, and turn right around because they thought she'd tell on them. They always came back later.

Childhood abuse wasn't the only problem. Addictions and other mental illnesses are rife. One gal was firmly convinced she was saving up to move to run her own place on Mars. Another gal could only function outside her house at all if she wore specific crystals at specific points on her body and would completely panic if something went wrong with one of them. All the personality disorders (MPD in particular) are such a controversial diagnosis I don't know - it's hard to quantify that.

Thing is, a problem with this is too many people try to turn the stat the other way and say anyone who has been abused will end up in this sort of state. That's not even close to true. I know plenty of people who have come from some seriously broken backgrounds who didn't go into any part of the sex industry.

I both doubt the figures and question their relevance; unless there is a direct link shown between guys who like to see strippers and childhood abuse, it's an irrelevant statistic. It's generally accepted that pedophilia of any sort is a completely separate sexual activity from any adult activities, so I guess I don't see how a guy who likes to bang prostitutes is somehow responsible for that prostitute's childhood trauma.

Is this really body image? It sounds more to me like whether or not the sex industry is acceptable and/or should be legal. Working off personal childhood traumas by taking your clothes off doesn't have anything to do with "body image".

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I both doubt the figures and question their relevance; unless there is a direct link shown between guys who like to see strippers and childhood abuse, it's an irrelevant statistic. It's generally accepted that pedophilia of any sort is a completely separate sexual activity from any adult activities, so I guess I don't see how a guy who likes to bang prostitutes is somehow responsible for that prostitute's childhood trauma.

Is this really body image? It sounds more to me like whether or not the sex industry is acceptable and/or should be legal. Working off personal childhood traumas by taking your clothes off doesn't have anything to do with "body image".

I tend to agree it isn't about body image.

Here's the whole article. I forget how few people here actually click "open link in a new tab" before respondin, and didn't pick the most on topic portion.

Would you rather have brains or beauty?”

“Beauty,” replies the Miss University London beauty pageant contestant adding because if she weren’t beautiful “nobody would want to listen to her anyway.”

Should we assume this quote came from newspaper archives, maybe from the 50s? Unfortunately not. The Guardian included this quote as part of a story reporting on the growing trend of UK university beauty pageants in December 2008.

Take a closer look and a disturbing pattern emerges.

The Guardian reported in 2006 that one of the UK’s leading retail groups WH Smith, reported its Playboy stationery line as one of its best-selling of all time. Ironically, its popularity lay not with boys, but adolescent girls. And while the BBC reports that WH Smith has since withdrawn these products, shops like Wet Seal in America still sell clothes promoting the Playboy bunny brand to teenage girls. Numerous large retail stores in both the UK and US sell inappropriate sexy clothing for children that many parents actually buy. Reports indicate the female public figure many American teenage girls look up to is Paris Hilton, well-known for her sex tape and rich father. And then I discovered that Brown University offers pole-dancing competitions, as does Cambridge University.

That’s right, folks. Forty years after feminism’s second wave burst onto the scene, 40 years after female activists burned bras, and 40 years AFTER Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny to expose the misogyny involved in that world, women have gone from being viewed as sexual objects to – you guessed it! – still being perceived as sexual objects, whose only real accomplishment and source of power lies in their lust-provoking abilities.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The second wave was about empowering women, destroying the ideology running rampant stating a woman’s sole purpose was to sexually please men. In many, many respects, it succeeded. Women received more opportunities to shine than their mothers, particularly in the workplace. According to the U.S. Department of Labor data from 2009, women held “49.8 percent of all jobs, their highest proportion in history.”

But if a beauty pageant contestant from one of the best university systems in the world admits her looks are more important than her brain, if young girls feel the pressure to look sexy that they purchase the likes of pole dancing kits, what is this saying about female liberation and gender equality?

Sadly, some women are also encouraging such choices, celebrating it as “post-feminism.” As Christie Hefner, Playboy CEO and daughter to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner explains, “the post-women’s movement generation has just a more grown up, comfortable, natural attitude about sex and sexiness that is more in line with where guys were a couple of generations before.”[i]

So, the oppression of females through sexual means by men back then was not so much a human rights violation as it was actually a portrayal of male enlightenment, and now that we slow and insecure females understand this we are reverting back to objectifying ourselves?

I’m all for sexual expression and liberation, and if participating in pornography or pole dancing satisfies you, then fair enough. But the fact is many women involved in pornography describe their experiences as unfulfilling, as the famous memoirs of Traci Lords and Jenna Jameson show. Yes, Jameson might be quick to promote the pornography industry, but one has to wonder why she also says if she ever had a daughter, “she would lock her in the house before she’d let her get involved in the sex industry”?[ii]

Not to mention, many women are drawn to the adult entertainment industry out of financial or emotional problems, often resulting from sexual abuse. Both Traci Lords and Jameson’s personal stories speak of childhoods or teenage years filled with trauma. As Mary Anne Layden, Ph.D., and Director for Women’s Psychological Health in Philadelphia states:

“Most strippers, as with other women who work in the sex industry, are adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Research indicates the number is between 60%-80%. …Often as adults they reenact their childhood trauma by working as strippers, Playboy models, and prostitutes. The men who, now as customers, physically and visually invade the adult women’s bodies, reenact the role of the perpetrator. These women work in the sex industry because it feels like home.”

And what about the women who don’t work in the sex industry but want to associate themselves with Playboy and pole dancing? I don’t buy that this is genuine sexual liberation. It’s still about pleasing men.

Perhaps this happened because we grew overwhelmed with the impossibly hard to reach standards of beauty laid out for us by the images of airbrushed, artificially altered beauties? Perhaps we fell for the underlying message of ads flaunting such photos, that we are simply sex objects, who are only to be seen? Or maybe we just became tired of pointing out the objectification of women only to be dismissed, called prudes? Instead, we convinced ourselves life would just be “easier” if we repressed our anger and lived in denial? After all, who wants to be perceived as insecure and undesirable, especially to men? Whatever the reason, in an ironic move to feel “empowered” and wanted, instead of beating our oppressors, we are sadly joining them.

Next time you fantasize about being a Playboy bunny, feel pressured to visit a strip club even though you’re heterosexual, or to take up pole-dancing classes, remember the words of Susan Brownmiller, one of the most involved members of the real women’s liberation movement in the 70s: “You think you’re being brave, you think you’re being sexy, you think you’re transcending feminism. But that’s bullsh*t.”[iii]

Women of the West the battle still wages. Let’s join forces and get our acts together, lest we run the risk of selling out.

Paleocon wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I both doubt the figures and question their relevance; unless there is a direct link shown between guys who like to see strippers and childhood abuse, it's an irrelevant statistic. It's generally accepted that pedophilia of any sort is a completely separate sexual activity from any adult activities, so I guess I don't see how a guy who likes to bang prostitutes is somehow responsible for that prostitute's childhood trauma.

Is this really body image? It sounds more to me like whether or not the sex industry is acceptable and/or should be legal. Working off personal childhood traumas by taking your clothes off doesn't have anything to do with "body image".

I tend to agree it isn't about body image.

It is about image. It's not just your physical body image, per se, it's your total perception of yourself and what you are worth. If you see yourself, based people's actions towards you over the years and a hundred other things, that the only worth you have in the world is in guys wanting to look at your tits then that's the way you build your life.

She doesn't have to be abused, or even go into the full-on sex industry to make poor choices in life because of this. How many ex-cheerleader-types do you know getting by gesturing with their chest and sleeping around?

You don't want to read too much into this, though. You can't just say "any girl wearing a Wonderbra and having Juicy written across the ass of her workout pants" has a problem. I don't know where to draw the line.

“Beauty,” replies the Miss University London beauty pageant contestant adding because if she weren’t beautiful “nobody would want to listen to her anyway.”

Or is what she is implying that "nobody would want to listen to her on TV or her million selling single" I think people are getting more and more out of whack with their expectations. Practical expectations are that it is much easier to get people to listen to you in you local environment. Impractical expectations are that we are born superstars, with effortless adoration by millions at our fingertips. You can get the former just by trying. If you expect the latter without putting effort into the former, making yourself pretty isn't going to be healthy/sustainable whether you achieve superstardom or not.

Seth wrote:

Here's the whole article. I forget how few people here actually click "open link in a new tab" before respondin, and didn't pick the most on topic portion.

Next time you fantasize about being a Playboy bunny, feel pressured to visit a strip club even though you’re heterosexual, or to take up pole-dancing classes, remember the words of Susan Brownmiller, one of the most involved members of the real women’s liberation movement in the 70s: “You think you’re being brave, you think you’re being sexy, you think you’re transcending feminism. But that’s bullsh*t.”[iii]

I prefer the words of Susie Bright.

I have issues with Playboy and the sex industry as it is, and of course there's pressure even outside of it, but the fact that the author doesn't buy that this is about genuine sexual liberation needs more support than just pretending feminism ended with the Meese Commission.

That’s right, folks. Forty years after feminism’s second wave burst onto the scene, 40 years after female activists burned bras, and 40 years AFTER Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny to expose the misogyny involved in that world, women have gone from being viewed as sexual objects to – you guessed it! – still being perceived as sexual objects, whose only real accomplishment and source of power lies in their lust-provoking abilities.

Sorry but this is bullsh*t to me. Sex sells. Its universal. It involves both sexes. It is not stronger now that it was 100 years ago or 100 years from now. Any percieved increase is due to the increase in number of and availability of advertisements.

The author contradicts herself with the statistics in her own piece. She is erroneously giving equal weight to her spin as an important statistic. The fact that women hold the highest percentage jobs that they have in history is not to be overlooked.

Yes both sexes are objectified and women are moreso than men but the job numbers indicate that women's credibility through growing job responsibility is also on the rise. I think its the ratio of objectification vs credibility that is more out of whack for women than men but through the authors own words, the situation is improving.

Fang, what job numbers do you have that show this? Because from my sources the glass ceiling isn't going away nearly as fast as your statements imply it is.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor data from 2009, women held “49.8 percent of all jobs, their highest proportion in history.”

From the article Seth posted.

And I think due to the economy the glass ceiling may be eroding faster than that. I saw something I thought on the Rachel Maddow show that indicated that more men were losing jobs than women during this downturn. This seems credible to me because of the extreme advantage employers have in the market. From personal experience, companies are outsourcing, and hiring contractors, to be sure to squeeze every nickel of profits they can. And if indications are correct, they are also retaining lower salaried women.

This could be the leverage women need to break through if not severely crack the glass ceiling.

I read an interesting discussion about the glass ceiling the one day. The thrust of the argument was something like this:

- A high percentage of C-level executives are males, as of 2009, only 12 Fortune 500 companies and 25 Fortune 1000 companies have women CEOs or presidents and overall only like 15% of CEOs are women.

How does one become a C-level executive? By invitation. Let's come to terms with the fact that the executive level is a club, you don't hire executives from a resume mill, most of those positions are through existing relationships.

Now, women have been successful in penetrating the workforce and account for a reasonable chunk of total jobs, but at the executive level there hasn't been much growth at all.

Theory: Sexual harassment law has inhibited women from reaching the upper echelons of corporations.

For me personally, my corporate experience suggests that this is likely a very contributing factor. I hold a high rank at my company, I'm pretty chummy with my employees in general but let me tell you one thing for sure, I would never go out for a night on the town with just me and a female employee. Ever. If I hang out with one of my male employees, go golfing, whatever, no one thinks twice. Any male leader who spends time with a female employee is just asking for rumors and setting themselves up for harassment/discrimination liability.

The discussing piece I was reading had a bunch of anonymous quotes from fortune 500 executives, and most of them said that they won't have closed door private meetings with female staff for fear of appearances.

So when people are using relationships and personal trust to invite into the executive club, it is far more likely for males to develop the type of bond that facilitates that. Of course the supposition that a man and a woman can't hang out and bond, have it be platonic is ridiculous, but that's what people think. Oh, the CEO spends a lot of time with female worker X, they must be bumping uglies. Worse yet, as in the case of the CEO of HP, even though there was no sexual relationship the veiled accusation and fact that he was doting on her was enough to make him lose his job. Unfortunately there is real sexual harassment, also unfortunate is that if you as a leader spend time privately with a member of the opposite sex and they completely fabricate an accusation, the taint will stay on you innocent or not.

bandit0013 wrote:

Theory: Sexual harassment law has inhibited women from reaching the upper echelons of corporations.

I'm not saying you're incorrect in your explanation, but let's get one thing clear. Sexual harassment law didn't cause the situation we're in now. Sexual harassment did.

bandit0013 wrote:

Theory: Sexual harassment law has inhibited women from reaching the upper echelons of corporations.

For me personally, my corporate experience suggests that this is likely a very contributing factor. I hold a high rank at my company, I'm pretty chummy with my employees in general but let me tell you one thing for sure, I would never go out for a night on the town with just me and a female employee. Ever. If I hang out with one of my male employees, go golfing, whatever, no one thinks twice. Any male leader who spends time with a female employee is just asking for rumors and setting themselves up for harassment/discrimination liability.

The discussing piece I was reading had a bunch of anonymous quotes from fortune 500 executives, and most of them said that they won't have closed door private meetings with female staff for fear of appearances.

So when people are using relationships and personal trust to invite into the executive club, it is far more likely for males to develop the type of bond that facilitates that. Of course the supposition that a man and a woman can't hang out and bond, have it be platonic is ridiculous, but that's what people think. Oh, the CEO spends a lot of time with female worker X, they must be bumping uglies.

Then shouldn't the theory be at least fear of sexual harassment lawsuits from hanging out with women being stronger than fear of sexual harassment lawsuits for NOT hanging out with women and the age-old politics of the workplace that significantly predate sexual harassment law?

gregrampage wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

Theory: Sexual harassment law has inhibited women from reaching the upper echelons of corporations.

I'm not saying you're incorrect in your explanation, but let's get one thing clear. Sexual harassment law didn't cause the situation we're in now. Sexual harassment did.

Well, I don't know if I'd call it sexual harassment. You have a generation in power right now (because CEOs tend to be older, experienced) who came from a cultural setting where women were less valued and educated, etc. The genders didn't mix the way they do today. It's a cultural problem, but I'm disinclined to refer to it as sexual harassment because I see that word as a reference to an pre-meditated, aggressive act towards the opposite gender, and I don't really see that as the main force of why things are the way they are right now. (It's not like all the future execs in the 70s got together and said NO WOMEN ALLOWED MUAHAHAHA)

It's more the fear of being sued.

bandit0013 wrote:
gregrampage wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

Theory: Sexual harassment law has inhibited women from reaching the upper echelons of corporations.

I'm not saying you're incorrect in your explanation, but let's get one thing clear. Sexual harassment law didn't cause the situation we're in now. Sexual harassment did.

Well, I don't know if I'd call it sexual harassment. You have a generation in power right now (because CEOs tend to be older, experienced) who came from a cultural setting where women were less valued and educated, etc. The genders didn't mix the way they do today. It's a cultural problem, but I'm disinclined to refer to it as sexual harassment because I see that word as a reference to an pre-meditated, aggressive act towards the opposite gender, and I don't really see that as the main force of why things are the way they are right now. (It's not like all the future execs in the 70s got together and said NO WOMEN ALLOWED MUAHAHAHA)

It's more the fear of being sued.

Your definition of sexual harassment is just wrong, unfortunately.

I'm not saying sexual harassment is the driving force behind the way things are, but if you think the fear of being sued over sexual harassment is then the actual root of that is actual harassment that occurred, not the laws in place to protect the victims.

gregrampage wrote:

Your definition of sexual harassment is just wrong, unfortunately.

I'm not saying sexual harassment is the driving force behind the way things are, but if you think the fear of being sued over sexual harassment is then the actual root of that is actual harassment that occurred, not the laws in place to protect the victims.

If you're not saying that it's the driving force behind the way things are then I have no quibble with your wording. That's how I read your response initially.

I think fear of lawsuits is a contributing factor to the glass ceiling because of how executive/board relationships are formed. That has nothing to do with actual sexual harassment which is rightfully a punishable offense.

bandit0013 wrote:
gregrampage wrote:

Your definition of sexual harassment is just wrong, unfortunately.

I'm not saying sexual harassment is the driving force behind the way things are, but if you think the fear of being sued over sexual harassment is then the actual root of that is actual harassment that occurred, not the laws in place to protect the victims.

If you're not saying that it's the driving force behind the way things are then I have no quibble with your wording. That's how I read your response initially.

I think fear of lawsuits is a contributing factor to the glass ceiling because of how executive/board relationships are formed. That has nothing to do with actual sexual harassment which is rightfully a punishable offense.

bandit0013 wrote:
gregrampage wrote:

Your definition of sexual harassment is just wrong, unfortunately.

I'm not saying sexual harassment is the driving force behind the way things are, but if you think the fear of being sued over sexual harassment is then the actual root of that is actual harassment that occurred, not the laws in place to protect the victims.

Like I said, I wasn't disagreeing with your explanation, but your wording implied the laws were the problem.
If you're not saying that it's the driving force behind the way things are then I have no quibble with your wording. That's how I read your response initially.

I think fear of lawsuits is a contributing factor to the glass ceiling because of how executive/board relationships are formed. That has nothing to do with actual sexual harassment which is rightfully a punishable offense.

I kind of get where Bandit's going here, to the degree that the time-honored Good Old Boy's club is how way too many of these sorts of decisions get made in all walks of life. And even if a man is totally above-board, it has been my experience many men are gunshy of building those kind of quasi-professional relationships with females.

I don't think in a lot of cases does it have as much to do with fear of lawsuit, per se, as it does with the inability to relate to females in that fashion, though. My particular area of development expertise is about 90 percent male. If you can't at least cope with hanging out with the guys, you're at a huge disadvantage. And some women are just more comfortable in that realm. I know I am, and take a look around here.

On the other hand, a man who is more comfortable hanging out with the girls than the guys has a far different perception by his peers and has his own color ceiling to deal with even if he doesn't swing a different way.

I'd be interested in those numbers and the study methodology, as well. It isn't that they seem completely off-base to me, but they don't really match up with what I've seen. Granted, these are just my experiences, but I lived with strippers, and I worked, in a sense, 'for' sex workers/adult entertainers. Without getting into details, what I was doing was 100% legal, as a kind of sales admin/consultant for adult entertainer's web pages. (RedJen can back me.) ^_^;

I'll be frank. I was dealing with a higher-end level of entertainers - they weren't walking the streets. That may change the content of the stories I heard. There were certainly folks who had suffered abuse. But there were very different reasons each person was working in the industry.

A large portion of my clients were transsexual male to female entertainers... working to pay for the many expensive procedures throughout their transitions. The numbers I heard for hormone injections, vocal re-training... woo.

As most can imagine, there is a huge, sex-working underground, complete with a following of wealthy corporate types who travel to meet specific entertainers, and who rate the ones they spend time with. It's boggling. On topic, though, I would think that more than a shared past of abuse, many of the escorts came from low-income backgrounds.

Some were paying their way through school, some were trying to raise children as single parents, and others had chosen sex work over minimum-wage jobs. I had more than a few women complain to me that there was 'just no way' to have a decent lifestyle, or provide one to their kids, on minimum wage.

It made me sad, to be honest, because these folks aren't idiots. Many expressed fears that they could never leave the industry because they had nothing to put on a resume, and couldn't go back to trying to live on $8.00 an hour.

At the end, after my time at that job, I have come to the opinion that sex work should be legalized and heavily regulated. Do these 'stripper' images work against general body image? While I think that it's possible, I actually think that the general media/entertainment world does more damage. Generally speaking, in a perfect world, younger folks shouldn't be seeing many of the images of adult entertainers.

I think a scantily-clad teen movie or pop-star has more of an impact. But that's just my perspective.

Dragonfly wrote:

Do these 'stripper' images work against general body image? While I think that it's possible, I actually think that the general media/entertainment world does more damage. Generally speaking, in a perfect world, younger folks shouldn't be seeing many of the images of adult entertainers.

I think a scantily-clad teen movie or pop-star has more of an impact. But that's just my perspective.

THIS. Multiple posters on this forum have said their daughters under the age of 10 have body image concerns already. These problems start long before the sex industry has any impact on a woman.

gregrampage wrote:

Multiple posters on this forum have said their daughters under the age of 10 have body image concerns already

I'm with you. I was horrified to hear that my niece, at 6, threw a fit because her mom wanted to buy her a one-piece swimsuit. My niece said she wanted a bikini, to show off her 'belly' for the boys. She was also terrified that she was too fat at 7. o.o;

Dragonfly wrote:

At the end, after my time at that job, I have come to the opinion that sex work should be legalized and heavily regulated. Do these 'stripper' images work against general body image? While I think that it's possible, I actually think that the general media/entertainment world does more damage. Generally speaking, in a perfect world, younger folks shouldn't be seeing many of the images of adult entertainers.

I agree that sex work should be legalized and heavily regulated, but I don't think that will solve the resume/cv problem because I'm not sure what job you can apply for outside of the sex work industry where your experience with actual sex work is viable...?

bandit0013 wrote:

but I don't think that will solve the resume/cv problem because I'm not sure what job you can apply for outside of the sex work industry where your experience with actual sex work is viable...?

I don't think it will, either... :/ I don't know what the solution is, there. It was always so sad to hear. I recommended some of the free courses a person can take online (GCF - Goodwill offers some Excel classes, etc.), and encouraged women to utilize free business courses whenever possible... but beyond that, I was stumped. Still am, honestly, though it's been years since I had that job.

Yeah, but on the bright side Dragonfly, the conversation reminded me of this:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/wong-and-owens-ex-porn-stars/2906

Dragonfly wrote:
bandit0013 wrote:

but I don't think that will solve the resume/cv problem because I'm not sure what job you can apply for outside of the sex work industry where your experience with actual sex work is viable...?

I don't think it will, either... :/ I don't know what the solution is, there. It was always so sad to hear. I recommended some of the free courses a person can take online (GCF - Goodwill offers some Excel classes, etc.), and encouraged women to utilize free business courses whenever possible... but beyond that, I was stumped. Still am, honestly, though it's been years since I had that job.

At the very least it would (over time) reduce the stigma that's attached to working in the sex industry.

I would include the porn industry and hefty sections of the fashion industry when I think of the sex industry, but I appreciate your insights, dragonfly.

I also think the porn industry itself is a pretty wicked reflection of body image. In 40 years we've gone from Ron Jeremy - who, penis size aside, is a pretty representative model of the American physique, to male models who double as bodybuilders. And the female models? While I have no problem at all with body modification, I suspect that many women try to compare their non-augmented bodies with the shapes seen in porn and naturally come up lacking. That is not healthy for anyone.

I think even in the more mainstream fashion media, we have gone to an aggressively "pumped up" look for both men and women. In men, it is expressed in bulging muscles and angular expressions. In women, it is expressed in improbably pumped up lips, breasts, and hips.

If anything, the "stick like" figure stereotype of female models is about 20 years out of date. The new, and not so subtly more destructive, appears to be that of impossibly extreme and near cartoon proportions.

momgamer wrote:

Fang, what job numbers do you have that show this? Because from my sources the glass ceiling isn't going away nearly as fast as your statements imply it is.

Note: It's harder to see glass floors than glass ceilings.

Seth wrote:

Here's the whole article. I forget how few people here actually click "open link in a new tab" before respondin, and didn't pick the most on topic portion.

We actually strongly prefer not copying entire articles from other sites. It's not fair to the author.

I'm also curious to hear how the sex industry affects male body image.

I'm not sure if it is instructive rather than anecdotal, but here's a thing that happened to me recently. In Settle, there's an annual amateur porn festival called HUMP! (look it up, but it's most definitely NSFW). The idea is that you make your own porno and submit it, a panel selects the best, then they're shown in the theatre, then all copies are destroyed immediately afterwards. So you can be a pornstar for a day without worrying about it escaping onto the internet. Me and a bunch of friends go every year (and it'd not unusual for us to recognize someone on the screen), and it's a hoot. Some of the submitted stuff is funny (intentionally so), some hot, and some kinky.

Anyway, the upshot of it is that this year, I walked out of that movie theater feeling like a million dollars, body-image-wise. Why? Because it's porn made by regular folk with regular bodies. And the difference between that and "regular" porn was so stark and marked. It's not like I was suffering from body image 'issues' beforehand, but it actually served as somewhat of an ego boost.

As if I needed that.