Did you know that Andrea Dworkin's spouse, John Stoltenberg, used to lead workshops where he would pose men like women pose in porn?
In addition to his magazine editing, Stoltenberg was himself an anti-pornography activist, and he used to facilitate “Pose Workshops” at colleges, in which male students were asked to assume the positions in which women are photographed for pornography—legs spread, pelvis raised, and so on.
This is excerpted from what I found to be a deeply respectful, almost affectionate piece that Ariel Levy wrote about Dworkin for New York magazine last year. I don't think these Pose Workshops are cool in that "isn't it fun to objectify men?" vein, more in the "how fucked up is porn?" vein. As Levy points out (in what has now become her core message), porn poses then were so much less ubiquitous than they are now: "porn was still something marginalized, as opposed to what it is now: a source of inspiration for all of popular culture."
Which makes me think of that jargony mess that the NY Times mag produced last week about American Apparel, which claims that AA's chief visionary Dov Charney has “appropriated disparate energies,” and “mastered a
subliminal lingo,” and in so doing, succeeds in “capturing and retransmitting,
with subtle amplification, the casual polymorphous perversity of today’s youth
culture.” What!? Have you ever heard of such a simple marketing strategy, which is mainly composed of women in porn poses, sound so fancy?
I'd like to see Dov Charney at a Pose Workshop.
Huh--I didn't know about this! V., v. interesting. I'd like to see Dov Charney at a porn pose workshop, too, heh heh, if you know what I mean... (Sorry--just tryin' to do my share of ogling.)
Hey Bexster, isn't it time for another post?
Posted by: maddy | May 06, 2006 at 10:47 AM