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174 pages

English

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Extrait

Description

Clarissa Smith is a senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sunderland, United Kingdom.

Sujets

Sociologie, société et politique

Cultural Studies

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books Ltd
Date de parution	01 janvier 2007
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781841509778
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,2200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

One for the Girls!
The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women s Porn
Clarissa Smith
One for the Girls!
The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women s Porn
Clarissa Smith
First Published in the UK in 2007 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First published in the USA in 2007 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2007 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons
Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting:
Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-164-2 / 978-1-84150-977-8
Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press.
C ONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Approaches to Pornography
2. Sex Sells
3. What Turns Women On?
4. Creating a Woman s World of Sex
5. Women, Sex and the Possibilities of Pleasure
6. Rauchy Nude Photosets
7. Emotional Vibrations and Physical Sensations: For Women's Fiction
Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendix 1: Researching Women Readers
Appendix 2: Questionnaire - For Women Magazine
Index
L IST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate 1. For Women covers.
Plate 2. The rivals.
Plate 3. The sister publications.
Plate 4. For Women contained many of the staple features of women s magazines from gossip, through celebrity interviews to problem pages and readers letters.
Plate 5. Humour and sharing
Plate 6. Readers talk to For Women : The problem page Mail shot page Invitation to contribute.
Plate 7. Campaigning - the general erection campaign.
Plate 8. The star interview.
Plate 9. Fire & Ice - the photoset Julie disliked.
Plate 10. Story-ed Striptease.
Plate 11. The pin up shots.
Plate 12. The star strip - the FW team found it very difficult to persuade stars to pose.
Plate 13. Real Men or Chubby Hubbies were much less inhibited.
Plate 14. Seizing the right to look Locker Room Lust.
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Any book is a labour of love and the product of the generosity of friends, individuals and academic good Samaritans. First and foremost my thanks to all those who helped me with this project, especially Alison, Anne, Christine, David, Diane, Eve, Gill, James, Jane, Julie, Kate, Laura, Mia, Michele, Susan, Tessa who devoted considerable time talking or writing to me. I hope I have repaid your candour with a fair and honest account. Also, my thanks go to Liz Coldwell, Jane Collins, Ruth Corbett, Kitty Doherty, Zak Jane Keir and Jonathan Richards for responding so helpfully to my inquisitions about their work and For Women magazine.
My sincere thanks to Dr Martin Barker who was a fantastic supervisor of my DPhil research, a brilliant colleague and now true friend.
I have also had the help and support of friends and colleagues at University of West of England, University of Sussex, Falmouth College of Arts and University of Sunderland, in particular Jayne Armstrong, Jane Arthurs, Kate Brooks, Russell Clarke, Mark Douglas, Alex Goody, Sam Greasley, Jean Grimshaw, Michelle Henning, Jim Hall, Maria Magro, Val Reardon, Niall Richardson, Catherine Spooner, Angela Werndly and Jason Whittaker. Thank you for your kind interest, newspaper cuttings, references, cups of tea, reading and commenting on chapters and offering moral support. Thanks also to Manuel Alvarado, Luke Hockley and John Storey for pushing me into finally writing this book.
Special thanks to my mum, Enid, I wish you were here to see this in print, to my dad, John, for reading chapters and making lovely positive comments and suggestions and to my sister Helen for enduring the terminal embarrassment of the Special Collection at the British Library; Julia & Brian, Sean & Tracey, Yves, Julia, Eliane and Val for friendship and encouragement. To Shane, Hannah and Callula, for wreaking havoc and making sure I was constantly distracted, much love!
Thanks to For Women for permission to use images and quotations from the magazine. Elements of chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 have previously been published as:
A Perfectly British Business: Stagnation, Change and Continuities on the Top Shelf in Lisa Z.Sigel (ed), International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography 1800-2000 , (New York: Rutgers University Press 2005)
Fellas in Fully Frontal Frolics: Naked Men in For Women Magazine in Judith Still (ed), Men s Bodies special issue of Paragraph , (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2003)
They re Ordinary People, Not Aliens from the Planet Sex! The Mundane Excitements of Pornography for Women, Journal of Mundane Behavior , (February 2002), available at http://www.mundanebehavior.org
Talking Dirty in For Women Magazine, in J.Arthurs & J.Grimshaw (eds), Women s Bodies: Discipline and Transgression , (London: Cassells, 1997)
I NTRODUCTION
In the movement s rhetoric pornography is a code word for vicious male lust. To the objection that some women get off on porn, the standard reply is that this only shows how thoroughly women have been brainwashed by male values. (Willis 1983: 463)
On a cold wet day in 1992 I took refuge in a newsagent and picked up a copy of a new magazine which claimed to speak to me as an intelligent woman with an interest in sex. So began my connection with For Women magazine; that encounter came at a time when I was studying for an MA in Women s Studies where pornography featured as a key area of debate for feminists and an area of concern for all women. The seeming contradiction of theorizations of pornography as a field of representation and consumption inimitable to women s experiences of sexuality with the existence of an expensively produced mainstream publication which intended to act as a spur to female sexual arousal was just too interesting to ignore. I was not alone in my purchase, the first issue of For Women was reprinted three times to meet demand, a demand fostered in part by the massive coverage of the launch of this new women s pornography .
Throughout the spring of 1992, the press, radio and television debated For Women and its rivals. Chat shows invited the male models, editors and contributors to appear and justify the publication to studio audiences. Newspapers featured commentary on the contents and interviews with editors and potential readers. The tabloids were largely in favour: the Daily Mirror and the Sun both featured double-page spreads with photos of some of the models accompanied by editorial stressing the links between the magazines, dance groups such as the Chippendales and the tabloid s own Page 7 Fellas. For both the Mirror and the Sun , these magazines were fun if a little disappointingly limp . Nonetheless, they were a welcome addition to women s explorations of sexuality: At last the dirty magazine for women ( Mirror , April 29 1992: 9).
What Was All the Fuss About?
During the previous twelve months a number of UK publishers investigated the possibility of launching a sexually explicit title for women. The reasons for this were twofold: firstly and probably most importantly, the soft-core market was experiencing hard times: sales were dropping and rival formats were squeezing the magazine sector, while legislation seriously curtailed any room for manoeuvre within the traditional formats of top-shelf publishing. Secondly, developments in popular culture suggested that the time might well be ripe for a movement out of the traditional customer base of men and into targeting women. This might be cited as more evidence of the continuing and unstoppable expansion of pornography into every sphere of UK culture and consumers willing acceptance, but this book will show that the picture is somewhat more complicated than that. Pornography for women was not a new idea; two titles had previously been launched in the UK: during the 1970s Playgirl and Viva magazines had tried to emulate the successes of the adult lifestyle magazines Playboy and Penthouse . Both were unsuccessful in attracting and maintaining the interest of sufficient readers and advertisers to guarantee longevity, and they have subsequently been used as evidence that a mass-produced pornography for women is doomed to failure. 1
For Women was then a risky project but one that seemed to be worthwhile making. The magazine was launched alongside two sister publications, Women On Top and Women Only , and joined three rivals - the existing Playgirl and two newcomers, Ludus and Bite . Its publishers, Northern & Shell, were convinced there was a market for a soft-core magazine for women but they weren t sure what format would work, so they published three - covering what they saw as all the possible bases for women: sophisticated sex, cheeky sex and sex for couples. The sister publications and the rivals closed within the year, For Women is the only surviving title. Beginning with the hunch that women wanted more than Cosmopolitan , For Women was a text in search of a readership and it needed to discover exactly what would count as more . In searching for a readership it also needed to establish a form of community and continuity: like any other magazine, FW needed to keep readers returning. Novelty may have encouraged the initial purchase, but a magazine (even one with avowedly pornographic intentions) needs to also offer a sense of familiarity - this is territory you know, understand and like . FW began its career as a hybrid using the traditional formats of women s magazines as well as the more brazen attributes of soft-core titles. In labelling itself For Women , in offering itself to women as more than Cosmopolitan , the magazine appeared to be inviting all women wanting more to enjoy its contents. Of course, the editorial intention was not to speak to all women