GHT
I'll Lock Up
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Thank you very much.Click the "light style" button on the bottom-left of the page, and choose Dark Style.
Thank you very much.Click the "light style" button on the bottom-left of the page, and choose Dark Style.
Falsies, however, were widely worn as far back as Victorian times, and usually rated a quarter of a page in the Sears catalog as late as the seventies. These were intended to improve proportion, however, not to inflate the wearer's bosom to fetishistic proportions. That trend is, as you, say, relatively recent -- and coincides closely the wide availablity of pornography.
One of my closest friends is a 27 year old woman who has often expressed frustration with the fact that men her age have had their images of women shaped entirely by exposure to internet pornography, to the point where they're unable to function well in the company of a woman who isn't pumped up, fully depiliated, and airbrushed. It's only going to get worse, and the only hope I see is that such men will, at least, be eliminating themselves from the gene pool.
At social functions, it's not uncommon to be asked why we have no children. I try to answer in a way that doesn't say: "Mind your own business." But I'm often tempted. Mass extinction of modern civilisation is just the barbed response that I've been looking for. Must make a note of that.
I know for several decades, scientist have been working on a way for men to carry children to birth. Making men go through the pain of child birth is a sure fire way to end the human race! Count me out!
Your friend gives those boys too little credit. Yes, we males are given to following our little captains into battle, especially when we're young (between the ages of, say, 14 and 87) but those boys know the difference between the world they actually live in and what they might see on an online porn site. And besides, whatever one thinks of such graphic displays, the sheer volume and ubiquity of porn assures something for every imaginable predilection. If any genre of film, photography, literature, whatever is democratized, it's pornography.
Those fellows with whom I have discussed such matters tend to agree with me that artificially inflated tops and hairless bottoms just ain't where it's at. And there isn't a one of those fine chaps who lacks for libido. It just that our tastes tend toward the organic.
Can't accuse the site of not being clean anymore. Does anyone else find the white background a tad clinical?
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It's debatable. ...
... It's inevitable that this sort of cultural norm creates the issues we have nowadays where kids think girls having pubic hair is weird....
Good point, FF.
Me, I've never objected to body hair on women. And if I had, I would hope that it would have made not a nickel's worth of difference to any happily hirsute woman.
I understand that it is a not-uncommon practice these days for men to shave their chests, underarms, legs, etc. Indeed, I've been told that my hairy chest (and back, and legs, and ... ) is, or was, unfashionable.
My cross to bear, I suppose. It's pretty darned light, as crosses go. Indeed, I don't even know it's there.
By the way, there seems to be something amiss with the quotation feature on this new system. Fading Fast has me quoted as saying something I find no record of me saying. I thought the "voice" wasn't mine, so I went back to make certain. Nope, can't find me saying that.
Disturbing realization: if Calvin had aged in real time, he'd be 35 years old today. And he'd probably be a social-media billionaire.
No kiddin'?
What must be taken with a very large grain of salt is any absolute statement about the effects of any sort of media on its audience. There are sooo many variables that examining any individual factor in isolation is an impossible task. Assessments of the effects of pornography tells us more about the assessor than the assessed. And yes, I often suspect that the lady, or gentleman, doth indeed protest too much.
Having said that, though, I'm in general agreement that "mainstream" media has a much larger effect on public perceptions and attitudes than any of the "fringier" media. Sexually explicit media still carries a whiff of disrepute. That, I suspect, remains a large part of its appeal. But pop stars and the popular entertainments in which they appear are indeed "normal," worthy, to be emulated, et cetera. Large multi-national corporations advertise where they appear. Politicians pose for pictures with them. The not-at-all-subtle message is: Be like this.
I wish this wasn't the specific example we were discussing, but is the fact that kids today have a cultural standard of women not having pubic hair any more right or wrong than when I grew up (and even when my parents grew up) that it was cultural acceptable in general - in the US - for men to have armpit and leg hair, but not women? All this stuff is culturally constructed, so if we - my generation - had an arbitrary standard for women's armpit and leg hair, is it any different - or any more right or wrong - if the kids today have their own arbitrary standard for pubic hair?
though I do tend to the view that it's women who face the most pressure to fit an accepted beauty model.
Yep. I work with young women who have on more than one occasion been reduced to tears by demands from boyfriends that they lose weight and otherwise change their bodies as a condition of retaining affections, while said boyfriends are themselves dough-bellied, pasty-faced, greasy-haired schmucks.
Yep. I work with young women who have on more than one occasion been reduced to tears by demands from boyfriends that they lose weight and otherwise change their bodies as a condition of retaining affections, while said boyfriends are themselves dough-bellied, pasty-faced, greasy-haired schmucks.
A request like that - lose weight to keep affection - is great because now the woman knows the man is a complete and total jerk (you know the word I want to use here is not "jerk") and now she doesn't have to waste one second more on him.
Easier said than done in a world where women's worth is constantly measured by their youth, their weight, and their appearance. This is especially true among young working-class women who've learned early on that the only way anyone will ever pay them any attention at all is if they have the right "looks."