With Playboy's decision to make Marge Simpson a centrefold, I think we can say Playboy's only about eight years behind the times. That might be good for a laugh, but if Playboy wants cartoon nudity guys can actually jerk off to, they must needs look to the Far East. Considering how the popular "Bunny Girl" look in Japan is a direct descendant of the Playboy Bunny, and a lot of mainstream studios do hentai versions of their own series, you'd think there would be plenty of high profile manga artists willing to draw a Playboy centrefold. Though I'd bet Playboy would disapprove of harbouring a Japanese Bunny Girl due to corporate foolishness about copyright protection.
Doing a google image search for Marilyn Monroe a couple months ago, I came across a directory of every Playmate from 1953 to 2004. Looking at it, one notices a few things. For one, the pictures become increasingly lame as time passes, increasingly overproduced and homogenous. 1969 looks like the last time you see dark nipples with wide areolas, and after 1998, almost all the nipples are pink and barely perceptible. Part of me wonders if this is reflective of a counter-instinct to the increasing comfort with nudity in mainstream culture--if the nipples can't be covered, they shall be gradually eradicated.*
I find pictures like August, 1987 simply baffling. I know there was a preoccupation with shoulder pads for women in the 80s, but it's hard for me to get my mind around the idea that this was sexy. And it occurs to me that the Internet has really changed porn aesthetics--once, such pictures were relegated to relatively difficult to acquire magazines. Now, they're everywhere, so the styles are less contained, less idiosyncratic. Also, vintage porn, porn from before 1970, isn't so much treated as porn anymore, and it has broad (no pun intended) circulation in geek culture, not just pulp illustrations, but also photos of models like Bettie Page. So porn from those older eras ironically seems to be from a less remote aesthetic than porn from the 80s.
My tweets from last night;
Cats can make quick moral support pit stops.
Cold wars make pretty busy warm widows.
There's no shortage of tasks for many cops.
The traffic wakes you cleaning your windows.
Snow kept making quick stops on the back porch last night. He'd mew at me inquiringly, but would only accept a few quick pets. I think he really wants in the house.
I managed to get up bright and early at 2:30pm to-day, following two days where I was forced to sleep until 4pm in order to get eight hours. Hopefully I can keep this up. Before sleep last night, I read a bit of my new copy of War and Peace--I'd stopped reading for a while when I noticed in some fine print in my old edition that the translator had abridged the work. I'm not sure in what way and where because it's still huge--it's the hardcover Barnes and Noble edition from more than ten years ago. Anyway, it pissed me off and I couldn't read anymore until I bought the Signet paperback edition a couple days ago, making sure to find the word "unabridged" before buying it.
I shopped around a little bit and noticed in something like 90% of the editions the translators are women. That's sexy, though I'm not sure why. One thing I miss about my old copy is that it was translated by a "Princess Alexandra Kropotkin." She was probably 80 or something--the book itself is filled with aged princes and princesses--but I liked imagining an ascetic Princess Toadstool carefully writing every page dressed in a pink taffeta ballroom gown. Sorry, Your Highness, but you shouldn't have abridged the book.
*Though, one need only look at my comics to see I have nothing against pink, subtle nipples.
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