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The pornification of America
Boston Globe ^ | Don Aucoin

Posted on 01/24/2006 2:50:39 PM PST by SmoothTalker

Actors having real sex in art-house movies. Erstwhile child star Lindsay Lohan appearing barely clad on the cover of her new album. Teenage girls strolling down Main Street USA attired in ''Porn Star" T-shirts. A bikini-wearing Jessica Simpson bumping and grinding in the music video for ''These Boots Are Made for Walkin.' " College-age women flashing for the ''Girls Gone Wild" video series with nonchalant exhibitionism.

Not too long ago, pornography was a furtive profession, its products created and consumed in the shadows. But it has steadily elbowed its way into the limelight, with an impact that can be measured not just by the Internet-fed ubiquity of pornography itself but by the way aspects of the porn sensibility now inform movies, music videos, fashion, magazines, and celebrity culture.

Braving the inevitable accusations of prudery -- which they reject -- critics such as Paul are sounding the alarm. They say the current hypersexualized climate distorts the attitudes of young people toward sex and relationships. In particular, they contend it has a damaging effect on the self-image of young women and girls, who are confronted with a culture that objectifies them while disguising it as female empowerment.

''Our culture once glamorized cigarette smoking to a large extent. It was promoted by the medical establishment, the film industry, TV," she says. ''But once the evidence of harm began to be disseminated by the government, and by schools and the private sector, the number of people who started smoking went down. My hope is that once people realize the negative effect that pornography has on individuals, their children, their wives, and society as a whole, there will be a mind-set shift."

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: busybodyamerica; corruptionofyouth; liberaltarians; moralabsolutes; moraldepravity; nannygohome; noneyadambusiness; pr0n
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To: Dark Skies
I must be jaded because Jessica Simpson is about as sexy to me an Lisa Simpson

I'm not sure jaded really covers it...blind, maybe?


21 posted on 01/24/2006 3:14:39 PM PST by Jim Noble (And you know what I'm talkin' 'bout)
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To: SmoothTalker

While your complaining about that zip code, I've moved into the community and set up residence.


22 posted on 01/24/2006 3:15:27 PM PST by redpoll (redpoll)
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To: Dark Skies

Wow, not everyday you see an old cow riding a horse.


23 posted on 01/24/2006 3:15:30 PM PST by Panerai
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To: Panerai

lol...I still think Jessica Simpson looks like an idiot (something like a blow-up doll). And I promise you she's going to age poorly...and Lisa will never change.


24 posted on 01/24/2006 3:17:42 PM PST by Dark Skies ("A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants." -- Churchill)
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To: Dark Skies

You can't be serious.


25 posted on 01/24/2006 3:19:46 PM PST by Rutles4Ever
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To: SmoothTalker
Supposedly this explosion of porn is a reaction against feminism. I'm tempted to say, "A pox on both your houses!" Certainly this article's critique of the porn-is-cool aesthetic is itself warped by PC-talk:
Braving the inevitable accusations of prudery -- which they reject -- critics such as Paul are sounding the alarm. They say the current hypersexualized climate distorts the attitudes of young people toward sex and relationships. In particular, they contend it has a damaging effect on the self-image of young women and girls, who are confronted with a culture that objectifies them while disguising it as female empowerment.
I suppose it would be "prudery" to suggest that young kids need to be kept way, far away from the sexual images that are forced upon them in pop culture today--not because it affects their "self-image" but because they should not have to deal with sexuality when they are just youngsters.

I was reading some blog comments a few days ago about the middle-school soccer kids who were booked into the same hotel as a swingers' group. The swingers apparently swung right in the kids' faces. The commentators on this particular blog contended it was good for the kids (who were, it seems, from benighted Catholic school backgrounds) to have to deal with "real life" in the person of half-naked old lechers.

26 posted on 01/24/2006 3:23:42 PM PST by madprof98
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To: Rutles4Ever
Fraid so...I'm in my 50's and went through my teenage bikini babe period a long time ago. Old timers still love women, they just have different tastes.

Jessica Simpson is too transparently shallow (as is Brittney Spears).

27 posted on 01/24/2006 3:25:43 PM PST by Dark Skies ("A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants." -- Churchill)
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To: Dark Skies
I'm in my 50's too, but I hope I never get as old as you!
28 posted on 01/24/2006 3:27:16 PM PST by wireman
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To: billybudd

I didn't say Lisa was sexy...I am saying Jessica has little appeal to men who like real women.


29 posted on 01/24/2006 3:27:59 PM PST by Dark Skies ("A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants." -- Churchill)
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To: MeanWestTexan

And *my* point is that he's equating finding someone of age unattractive with finding a child unattractive. *That's* disturbing.


30 posted on 01/24/2006 3:28:11 PM PST by billybudd
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To: SmoothTalker

It's American culture- the most important thing in life. It comes above earning a living in importance, and even while doing that, sexual thoughts enter the mind of the average American once every 2 1/2 minutes, or so the survey says.

Sex is the main mission in life- male, female, animal, or object is fair game. It's amazing people can still work, take time to eat, or take out the garbage, cut the grass. But as hollywood shows us, sex is possible during any possible activity.

Even when the earth is cracking open, swallowing a city and it's entire population, and people have but a few minutes to save their own lives, there is always time for a quickie.

Men can be badly hurt, have broken legs and bullet wounds, loose half their blood, but they can get it up for a quickie with a hot woman who has walked through a sewer full of human waste. With the evil (and also horny) enemy in persiut only minutes behind, and their victims broken, bloody and exausted, covered in filth, new energy is found, and sex is do-able.





31 posted on 01/24/2006 3:28:20 PM PST by Nathan Zachary
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To: SmoothTalker

Whenever porn becomes the topic of discussionI always remember a quip I read years ago in the Readers Digest.

A little old grandmotherly type was returning home to the USA from a visit overseas to Denmark. The US customs agent, a young man, ask her if she had any pornograghy to declare. She looked him straight in the eye and said, "young man, I'll have you know, I don't even own a pornograph".

Maybe that's what the US needs now, fewer people who own a pornograph.


32 posted on 01/24/2006 3:30:05 PM PST by RedWireNut
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To: SmoothTalker
"Nice body, shame about the face. That nose needs its own zipcode."

Really? Looks fine to me, face, nose, and all.

33 posted on 01/24/2006 3:34:15 PM PST by Nathan Zachary
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To: SmoothTalker

This piece ignores the economics of pornography. Porn was once expensive, and now is cheap or free. What usually happens to the rate of consumption of a good when its cost decreases?


34 posted on 01/24/2006 3:39:21 PM PST by TChad
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To: SmoothTalker
What! No Pictures?

(Somebody had to say it)
35 posted on 01/24/2006 3:43:57 PM PST by Whitebread
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To: Jim Noble

So, you like dumb blondes who starve themselves to look like corpses with boobs?

She doesn't look all that "fine" to me. If you look a little closer, there is stuff starting to sag off her jaw, and other places. Nothing a little surgery can't fix mind you. Surgery can't fix genetics though. It doesn't make anyone good company either. She's an object that you would want to have sex with. Buy a doll.

That's the problem these days. People think sex is all there is, what ever happened to love? It's no wonder marriages don't last.


36 posted on 01/24/2006 3:45:55 PM PST by Nathan Zachary
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To: Whitebread
What! No Pictures? (Somebody had to say it)

You type real slow..don't you.

37 posted on 01/24/2006 3:47:31 PM PST by Focault's Pendulum (I'm not a curmudgeon!!!! I've just been in a bad mood since '73)
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To: Jim Noble

That young lady needs a good helping of fried chicken or brisket with all the trimmings. Repeat until the meat reappears on the bone. I'm female btw, but I went through the "anorexia stage" with one of my grown daughters.

Dayum, Jessica is toooo skinny. Maybe Nick can't stand bumping bones is a reason for the rumored divorce?


38 posted on 01/24/2006 3:50:40 PM PST by TheSpottedOwl ("The Less You Have...The More They'll Take"- bf)
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To: SmoothTalker
This is the inevitable result of forty years of social libertarianism and market capitalism. The market will ruthlessly exploit the dark side of human nature to market products. It does so efficiently and with ever increasing effectiveness. Each step downward numbs us to the next one.

I used to be a libertarian. But I concluded some time ago that no society can combine social libertarianism and market capitalism successfully for long. Inevitably, the degradation of the human spirit that accompanies this combination will result in the return of the jackboot.

Nothing I have seen in the past forty years gives me any comfort that I am wrong.

39 posted on 01/24/2006 3:52:12 PM PST by ModelBreaker
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To: SmoothTalker
"Actors having real sex in art-house movies. Erstwhile child star Lindsay Lohan appearing barely clad on the cover of her new album. Teenage girls strolling down Main Street USA attired in ''Porn Star" T-shirts. A bikini-wearing Jessica Simpson bumping and grinding in the music video for ''These Boots Are Made for Walkin.' " College-age women flashing for the ''Girls Gone Wild" video series with nonchalant exhibitionism. "

It gets continually worse and will for a long time.

40 posted on 01/24/2006 3:53:08 PM PST by TAdams8591 (The first amendment does NOT protect vulgar and obscene speech.)
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