And, another thing, does it sell women’s sports?
I have mixed feelings when it comes to photographing surfer girls in a sexually subservient manner. I’ve been responsible for orchestrating some (the luminous Rosy Hodge, the fantasy of Anastasia Ashley) and was pleased with the results, that is if the net result is to balance the arousal of the reader with the dignity of the subject.
If were to examine the photos (and why not, they’re relatively suitable for work – RSFW – click on the names above) you’d find they were built on a single premise: the scientific examination of a beautiful girl at the apex of her beauty.
This is another shoot I enjoyed very much, created during my tenure at Stab although I had nothing to do with its creation, only the story that surrounds the photos.
Other shoots, I ain’t so thrilled by.
The cupped hands over the tits (might we become rapists if a nipple is shown?) or with asses elevated and pressed into the camera. Turn ’em around and their faces are like cold piss, their teenage broth barely warm. The viewer reduced to a crippled masturbator. Gratuitous and insulting to girl and viewer.
Two years ago, there was a predictable storm over using Stephanie Gilmore’s sex to promote the Roxy Pro in France. It was hardly genius but nor was it daring or revolutionary. I was numb to it. Arousing from the point of view of the masculine culture? If only women knew the perversity of man.
And that was the point. The Roxy ad was aimed at young girls and not men.
The modern feminist who sees sex as something to be parcelled out to a man, sparingly, and only on her terms, forgets there’s a generation of female digital native out there who grew up on youporn and its variations; girls who don’t believe a blow-job joyfully given or the use of men as studs mark the end of civilisation, girls who’ve been imprinted with an overt joy of mutually consensual and sensational sex.
And for that, the ad was…perfect.
It’s very easy to get haughty about such things, though. The condemnation of male onanism is divinely simple. It’s the ultimate vice.
A few days ago, the French professional surfer Pauline Ado dropped her lampoon of a surfer using her sex. It’s cool. It’s pretty funny. I like it.
But the irony!
At the hook, liberated Ms Ado says, “Are we done with your crap? Can I go surf now?”
You have to…ask? The exquisite possibilities of a power play!
Pauline à la plage 01 from PLANETBLOW on Vimeo.
