Viewing Member - Sir Ted

In his book "The Naked Ape," pop anthropologist Desmond Morris points out that human beings are about the only species of mammal on the planet in which females have permanently swollen mammaries (i.e., the only ones with boobs).

In most animals, espeically most primates, swelling only occurs when actively nursing or perhaps during mating season.

In other words, there's no reason women should have breasts any larger than men except when they are pregnant or nursing. His conclusion is that while the actual milk producing part of the human female breast is obviously for the purpose of nursing babies, the breast as a whole serves an almost solely sexual function. They serve as signals to men that announce "Hey, I'm a female of childbearing age!"

Don't laugh. Back when we were all a whole lot more hairy, telling at glance who was female or male wasn't quite so easy.

So, Morris says, the breast became a valuable sexual signal, one that evolution conditioned men to respond to.

Given the abundance of mammary magnificence on Newbie Nudes, Mother Nature did her job well (BTW, you just know Nature is packing some double D's herself! ).

Like almost every heterosexual male in the last, say, thousand eons, I find women's breasts breathtaking. But at the same time, I'm not what you'd call a "breast man." They've never been the part of the female form I particularly fetishize.

(I guess if I had to pick one of the typical parts that I most respond, to, I'd have to say it's the hips/ass area--the curve from the narrowest part of a woman's waist to the widest part of her hip is like God's calling card: a little bit of the divine on earth).

I posted above shots posted by two of my absolute favorite folks on NN: Sexy Siobhan and Natuarlly Red. To me, both these photos show truly beautiful breasts. I know the stereotype is that for men, the bigger the breast, the better. Or, at the very least, the stereotype is that men tend to like a certain kind of breast--small or huge; natural or enhanced; nubbin-nippled or ones with areolas the size of desert plates.

For me, though, it's all about proportion. I think I'm probably more representative of the typical man than the
stereotypes are in this regard. It's quality over quantity.

Siobhan has lovely, large breasts that fit with the rest
of her body's curves. As big as they are, they don't distract from the overall beauty of her figure or her face.

If you took Siobhan's breasts and put them on Naturally Red, they'd look out of place--bizarre, even. But on Siobhan,
they are perfect. By the same token, Naturally Red's breasts aren't any less spectacular. They are wonderfully shaped and, again, suited to her particular curves.

Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't wish either Siobhan's or Naturally Red's assets to be any larger or smaller than they are.

Breasts are signs--symbols that speak of femininity. They, almost uniquely among anatomical stuctures, serve a communicative purpose. They speak the language of desire, of the eternal feminine. And whether spoken in a seductive whisper or an orgasmic cry, there is no word in any language equal to their beauty.

In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes talks about two different aspects of a photograph we react to when we gaze at it. The most obvious is what he calls the "studium." This is whatever the overt or intended meaning or focus of the picture is--whatever the person taking the photo wanted you to see, notice, appreciate, etc.

More elusive is the punctum. This is Barthes's name for the odd detail, the unintended effect or nuance of a photograph that "stings" us--hits us unexpectedly without any intent on the part of the person taking the photograph. It might be an odd detail of the background, some subtle aspect of the subject's clothing, a chance reflection in the subject's eyes--anything that was never intended to draw your attention, but does nevertheless. The punctum is insistent and powerful, sometimes overwhelming the studium.

There are any number of wonderful things about the above photo of the glorious Spanx. The azure eyes gazing steadily at the viewer. The bit of pink ribbon, connoting a delicate femininity, juxtaposed against the ribald blackness of the corset. The lovely glimpse of a pale pink nipple peaking out, suggesting an irrepressable sensuality that can't be contained. The fingers of the hand held up in false modesty while the rest of the pose reclines in open sexuality and carnal submissiveness.

But these are all things the photographer probably noticed on some level when taking the photo. They are all part of the studium.

What draws my eyes away from even these wonderful charms, what stings me, is the tiny rip in the fishnet stockings.

Why should this be so? Why should this defect, this tear, this void, draw the eye so?

Perhaps it is the sense of openness, of revealing what would be concealed, offering access to the gaze (and to the touch) of what would be covered. There is a sense of transgression, perhaps even of violence in a highly stylized form, that clashes pleasurably with the stillness of the female body in repose. It is an imperfection among perfect things--the flaw that serves as the foil to the beauty of the rest of the picture. But it itself is beautiful, isn't it?

Normally, I use this space to do semi-philosophical riffs on erotica, photography, etc., but at the moment, I'm a bit too pissed to be abstract and highfalutin'.

Is there anything *less* erotic than photos appearing on a site like this that are put there for the sole sake of humiliating and embarrassing the subject? Putting up photos of exgirlfriends, exwives, or just women a guy doesn't like (and it seems to be men doing this to women, although it would be just as sickening the other way around) without their knowledge is putrid. It's also pathetic. It announces, with full confidence, that the person posting them is limp-dicked little twit.

Even if you threw out the obvious moral and legal issues, the fact remains that these pictures aren't even erotic! There's nothing remotely arousing about them. They just reinforce the idea that sexuality is something that is inherently humiliating and/or violent, and we've got enough of those attitudes around without supposedly sex-positive sites like NN enabling such crap.

I won't name names here, but I have had to hit the "alert moderator" button a number of times. It's clear that others have already done so on a number of the photos in question, yet still the photos remain up and the cretins publishing them apparently continue to be members in good standing of NN.

This needs to stop.

Normally, I use this space to do semi-philosophical riffs on erotica, photography, etc., but at the moment, I'm a bit too pissed to be abstract and highfalutin'.

Is there anything *less* erotic than photos appearing on a site like this that are put there for the sole sake of humiliating and embarrassing the subject? Putting up photos of exgirlfriends, exwives, or just women a guy doesn't like (and it seems to be men doing this to women, although it would be just as sickening the other way around) without their knowledge is putrid. It's also pathetic. It announces, with full confidence, that the person posting them is limp-dicked little twit.

Even if you threw out the obvious moral and legal issues, the fact remains that these pictures aren't even erotic! There's nothing remotely arousing about them. They just reinforce the idea that sexuality is something that is inherently humiliating and/or violent, and we've got enough of those attitudes around without supposedly sex-positive sites like NN enabling such crap.

I won't name names here, but I have had to hit the "alert moderator" button a number of times. It's clear that others have already done so on a number of the photos in question, yet still the photos remain up and the cretins publishing them apparently continue to be members in good standing of NN.

This needs to stop.

A photograph of a circumsized penis is a double inscription. It records the image of a a recording--in this case a

physical recoding inscribed on the body itself, a record of an act of violence.

I mentioned in a previous post how issues of power and gender are complicated--cut (pardon the wordplay) both ways.

Case in point: if circumcision were something done to infant girls, would it still be carried out with any regularity

in the United States?

The answer, obviously, is no.

Why is circumcision still done fairly routinely in the U.S.? Part of the reason is the medieval (if that) stance on

medical care we have in America, where the illness and infirmities of our fellow citizens are seen first and foremost

as a profit-making opportunity. And if they aren't actually sick, we'll invent something!

Circumcision is the most common surgical procedure in the U.S. It takes but a moment, only the crudest of implements,

and it adds many hundreds of dollars to a hospital bill. There is no monetary incentive for American doctors to not

do this procedure. Quite the contrary.

But this might be overcome if there were enough social and moral pressure brought to bear.

Which brings us back to the issue of gender.

If circumcision were a procedure done to baby girls, it would have been done away with decades ago, because questions

like this would have been raised, first by feminists, and eventually by a larger and larger segment of the

population:

"What sort of sick society do we live in where we have such twisted ideas about female sexuality that we, as a matter

of course, sexually mutilate the genitalia of our infant girls?"

"How do we expect girls in our society to grow up with a healthy attitude about their bodies and their sexuality if

one of the first experiences in life is the excruciating pain of this 'surgery'?"

"How can women have a healthy attitude about their sexuality when, every time they see themselves naked--getting

undressed, going to the bathroom, taking a shower--they see the scar left on their body and are reminded,

subconciously at least, that their genitals were seen as 'unclean' and in need of purification through violence?"

"Why do we feel the need to force this procedure on girls when they are helpless, rather than allowing them to make their own decisions about the most intimate parts of their anatomy?"

"How bizarre is it that the fact that this procedure tends to reduce sexual sensitivity of the genitals is actually touted as a supposed benefit?"

"Doesn't such an act serve as a twisted inauguration of women into a society that sees sexual violence against them

as not only acceptable, but good for them?"

"Isn't this act the epitome of a sadistically patriarchal society that sees women's bodies and sexuality as something

dangerous that must be controlled, altered, and violated in order to be deemed 'clean' and 'acceptable' despite the fact that there is no medical reason for this procedure to be done?"

Such questions would have been right on the money, and circumcision, were it something done to infant girls, would have gone the way of the dodo a long time ago as a result.

Yet, so twisted are our notions of gender, that we collectively have an easier time thinking of infant boys being treated violently in this way than we do infant girls. Because there is no "masculinist" movement, and because of our deeply entrenched ideas that males and violence go together (be a man, boys don't cry, and all that), that we see little wrong with what amounts to systematic sexual violence on infants.

The photograph inscribes the scar, which inscribes the violence--but the violence isn't the simple act of mutilation itself (one so grotesque, by the way, that my wife who is a nurse was became physically nauseated when she witnessed one the first time--this from a woman who looks at the chance to watch somone's chest getting cracked open for open heart surgery a real treat).

As bad as that may be, it inscribes the violence that we inscribe on our own collective self.

How can we pretend to be surprised when such violence, in only slightly altered form, leaves its own countless scars when it is committed not by the masked surgeon, but the masked intruder?

Once upon a time, when there were only a handful of texts that everyone in a culture knew by heart (usually the Bible, and a few folk songs and stories), allusions and echoes in one work to another would strike almost every literate person the same way.

Today, culture is fragmented rather than unified, visual rather than verbal, and overwhelming in its sheer volume. When we hear, read, or (most commonly) see references to other texts, they are something utterly personal, probably not even intended by the creator of the text.

Here is one such case of a visual "echo" in a NN photo that is probably confined only to me.



This photo of the incredible Myspanx stands out in her gallery for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it's a bit softer than most of her pics, which are intensely, almost aggressively, erotic. This pic has an entirely different feel.

But when I saw it, I had the feeling that part of this response had to do not just with the photo itself, but with another image that was in my memory that Myspanx's pic somehow echoed, at least in my mind. I just couldn't come up with what it was.

Then, it finally hit me: it was this cover of Rolling Stone featuring a photo of Jennifer Aniston.



I suggest that this visual echo affected the way I "read" Myspanx's photo. Given my sense that the Aniston photo was being connected in my brain with the Myspanx photo, it's interesting to note how the emotional/cultural connotations of the Aniston photo might have affected my reaction to the NN photo.

Aniston, after all, was on a show called "Friends" on which she played a relatively wholesome girl--a woman for whom the "nice guy" on the show pined. In real life, Aniston has been portrayed as the good girl to Angelina Jolie's vixen/harpy. Whether this is in any way true or not is another issue, and not terribly relevant. The importnt point is Aniston's portrayal in the tabloid media as the heartbroken good girl jilted by her pretty boy ex for a strumpet with a nagging case of adoptomania.

So, an image of Aniston is likely to conjure up generally soft, warm feelings given our cultural associations with her.

Flash ahead to me taking a look at Myspanx's photo, and it's undertandable that in addition to the softer image of the photo itself, the fact that it "echoed" this earlier photo of Aniston, and conjured up on a subliminal level the cultural associations of sweetness and niceness would make this "warm and fuzzy" feeling pop for me.

Of course, I might be the only one on NN to have made this particular connection. I doubt Myspanx, or the cameraman taking the shot, had any intention of creating this echo.

But when we live in a culture that is so awash in visual texts, it's inevitable that any one text will call to mind others, but that these connections will almost always be idiosyncratic. Sure, it might be possible to create a picture that makes a point of imitating a famous image (Marilyn Monroe standing a subway grate, the Mona Lisa), but with so few commonly-known texts, it's impossible to count on viewers making connections except in these very obvious cases.

At the same time, the number of images circulating makes it ineveitable that there will be unplanned "echoes" in the minds of viewers for almost any image out there. Indeed, such echoes may be essential in order for us to fully read, understand, or enjoy visual texts at all.

Most people, regardless of gender or sexual persuasion, would find the first photo erotic, sexy, cute, or at least pleasant to look at.

Most people, regardless of gender or sexual persuasion, would find the second photo odd, laughable, perverse, or at least unpleasant to look at.

I wonder why.

I claim no moral highground. My gut level responses are as I describe them above. Like most, I find the image of a woman with male clothing to be intriguing and fun to look at. Like most, my first reaction to an image of a man in women's undergarments is one of at least vague displeasure.

Part of that, of course, is that I'm a heterosexual male, and will be more likely to find a photo of a semi-clothed woman appealing than that of a semi-clothed man, but that can only explain part of it.

No, there's something deepseated in our (i.e. Western) society that trains us to have very different reactions to crossdressing. I think the reason for this is the relation between gender and power.

Let's look at a more obvious example that will set up this thought. How many times have we all seen toddlers scampering around in their parents' clothes, playing "dress up," and had our hearts warmed? There is, in fact, whole genres of greeting cards and kitchy statuary based on the "awwwww" factor elicited by tikes in grown-up clothes.

But does the opposite work? If we see an image of an adult in a diaper, our reaction isn't "awwwwww" but gales of laughter, incredulity, and probably a bit of nervousness. (By the way, this reaction would be amplified if the adult in a nappy was a man rather than a woman.)

Why so? Because it makes a certain sort of sense for children to "play at" being adults--to aspire to adulthood. After all, adults are the ones with power. It makes sense that those without power would enjoy taking on the trappings of those with power. It even makes sense that those of us with power would enjoy watching them do this (assuming, of course, that there was no true threat to our own power--if the little tykes dressing up in mommie's high heels actually stood a chance of running the world, we'd find their play much less charming).

But it strikes us as ridiculous for anyone with power to debase themselves by taking on the trappings of those lower on the power hierarchy than themselves. Why would anyone do that? Not only does it just seem silly, but I suggest it disturbs us on a deeper level--it represents a far greater challenge to our understanding of the accepted power structures of our society than does the image of the powerless esteeming to become powerful. The child in Daddy's tie reminds us (assures us, in fact) of the stability of the permanence and acceptance of all involved of the adult/child power relatonship. Daddy in a nappy? Another story altogether. It suggests a questioning, or even rejection of established power hierarchies that makes the world feel less secure. Because this reaction is usually subconscious and fleeting, it usually takes the form not of consciously felt fear, but in the "safety valve" through which we vent much of our subliminal anxieties: laughter.

Now,let's return to the images at the top. I suggest that the reason we find women crossdressing to be sexy, appealing, or at least acceptable is for just the reason that we find children playing "dress up" cute: there's something charming and reassuring about seeing someone at one level of the power structure pay homage to that structure by symbolically (in this case, through clothing) transgress their station and take on the trappings of a higher one. Such an act, while it might seem superficially transgressive, is actually quite conservative. It pays homage to the powers-that-be, acknowledging them and only playfully and momentarily breaking the boundaries within that system.

The man wearing women's clothes, however, is like the adult wearing a diaper: it seems silly, at least in a culture that still associates maleness and power, for a man to take on the trappings of a woman. A man who even symbolically "debases" himself by taking on the trappings of one less powerful strikes us as foolish and, more importantly, to flaunt and challenge the power structure itself. It is disturbing to us in a way that a woman "playing at maleness" isn't.

This is not to say something as obvious as that our society is still sexist in many respects or that maleness is unquestionably a privileged position. It's way, way more complicated than that, and the very association of power with maleness is a double-edged sword in many respects (more on that in a future post).

It *is* to say, however, that power, gender, and sexuality are inextricably linked, and that we collectively tend to react to photographic images that play with this triumverate in ways that are often based not on an utterly neutral and completely individualistic aesthetic, but on the ways we've been taught to (mis)read such images.

Why is a woman in overalls, especially Naturally Red, so erotic?

There's something about the masculinity of the clothing itself--the association with work and labor--that contrasts with the femininity of the subject. I've noticed that overalls either tend to emphasize masculine charactersitics in a woman (hence their popularity among some lesbians) or, by their very masculinity, highlight the femininity of the woman wearing them.

Obviously, this picture is an example of the latter!

The notion of why women wearing stereotypically masculine clothing are particualrly sexy is interesting, especially given that the opposite--men wearing women's clothing--is more often than not seen as laughable. The fact that a small minority find male transvestitism sexy is a classic example of the exception proving the rule.

There are a number of reasons for this, but that's for another post.

Why does this picture strike *me* so much, though? It goes beyond the fact that the overalls on such a feminine woman highlight her erotic charms (charms that seem to defy the denim's defeminizing tendencies, and by so defying, are amplified).

No, it's the associations with overalls...for me, childhood, Oshkosh B'gosh, and all that. They call to mind a time before awareness of one's own sexuality, or that of peers. They recall a gender-neutral time (or the created false-memory of such a time).

The femininity erupting from the overalls, on a subliminal level, recreates a sense of rupture . . . when a boy suddenly sees his female peers emerging in their full sexuality . . . usually leaving him behind in the process. The photo is like Venus emerging from a denim foam in her undeniable erotic power, but not having fully emerged . . . the coming into of eroticism from the ungendered playground or sandbox . . . the moment of tangency between "play mate" and "playmate."

So, one of the cool things about NN is the blog feature, which I'm just figuring out how I'd like to use. I've got a more mainstream blog elsewhere, so I won't use this for general things, but more for thoughts about erotica, sexuality, gender, etc. (i.e., the good stuff).

I've been reading some stuff about the philosophy of aesthetics and photography, and I'd like to use this space to do some applications of that...not scholarly or academic stuff, but sort of postmodern riffage on issues that come to me from specific images on the site--no editing, just improvisational musings that particular images conjure up.

Not only will this give me an outlet for thoughts I might not bother to write elsewhere, but it will also let me "advertise" particualar images/posts that are worthy of getting looked at.


Feel free to leave comments--love to trade thoughts.

I was thrilled to see one of my favorite posters from another site (not the homophobic site mentioned in a previous post, but one much more like NN) had made her way here. If you haven't seen luvhoney's pics, do yourself a favor and check out her profile. They're sexy, erotic, sensual, and lovely to look at (and not only because luvhoney herself is so beautiful--her s.o. does a great job in capturing that beauty with the camera).

Anyhow, I've posted a vid I did featuring one of luvhoney's pics on my own profile. As always, any feedback, ratings, comments are greatly appreciated!

Almost as soon as I came across (pardon the pun) luvhoney's presence here, I saw that another favorite, Mia199, is also here at NN. Again, if you haven't seen her pics, they're great and you should take peek. She has a lovely, slim figure which she shows off incredbily nicely, espeically with stockings and heels. Some of the best lingerie shots you'll ever see.

My appreciation for luvhoney and Mia199 also confirms what I already knew: I seem to have a thing for English girls. I always knew I was an Anglophile, but this is a bit over the top! Actually, I had an English girlfriend once, but the distance issue eventually made it impossible. (No regrets, though; I wouldn't have met my wonderful--and very American--wife otherwise). Congrats to those of you here on NN who are managing to keep up long distance relationships.

Of course, in my week or so on NN, I've also noticed how many of my new favorites here are Canadian. Hmmmm...there's something about those Commonwealth girls. Does having the Queen on your money automatically make you sexy? Dunno.

Anyway, to luvhoney and mia199, I'm right chuffed to see you and you're luvly bums here on NN!

Sir Ted