Rants and Rambles

The girl-next-door is still good fodder for the male fantasy (always has been, always will be) but the girl-next-door’s mother is fast becoming a favorite wet-dream as well.

I think that there are several reason for this including (a) an expansion within the mind set of North American men and women to find sexy those people who are healthy and happy (rather than sweaty and anorexic), (b) a shift in population demographics that has created a lot of demand for maturity, and (c) the fact that, as fantasy-fodder, a desperate housewife has an edge over a picky playboy bunny.

The fact of the matter is that the sex objects we see in the main stream media are aging.

What seems absolutely ludicrous to me is that people seem surprised by this.

For example, my 61 year old mother saw the movie Calendar Girls and thought it was wonderful. She thought that it was particularly wonderful because the movie dealt with older women as sexual subjects (or objects). She was happily surprised that we, as a society, were coming so far forward in our appreciation of more mature women.

But perhaps my mother, an avid avoider of all things current, is not a good example. A better example would be the editorial in yesterday’s newspaper's television-supplement in which the author claimed surprise at the growing list of older women who are making it into mainstream television. The editor in question cited Glen Close, Farah Fawcett, Murphy Brown and the main cast of Desperate Housewives as evidence that in his opinion, quite suddenly, we are seeing older women get acting roles as attractive older women (Apparently the Golden Girls and Murder She Wrote support the theory of change).

Sure, this phenomena may have recently hit TV, but where did this change come from and how long has it actually been with us?

I think the answers to both these questions can be found, at least in part, with Internet Pornography.

The fantasy of a younger man with an older woman (for both the young men and the older women) has been around since there were young men and older women. It should come as no surprise to anyone (least of all an editor for a television supplement) that, despite the fact they are all pushing 40(at least), the women of the television program Desperate Housewives would be popular as sex symbols. Boys have probably been fantasizing about the cute mom living next door since there have been mom’s living next door. There are countless of media examples over the years that portray this kind of thing. The Graduate (Ann Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in 1967) is a prime example. However, we do appear to be currently seeing a bubble of the sexual appeal of the mature woman in the main stream media (i.e. television and film).

Moreover, people do seem to be remarking on this trend with mild surprise when, if they had been paying attention to the growing number of porn sites dedicated to the mature woman, there would be no surprise at all.

Of course Desperate Housewives is weak as an example for my point (Desperate Housewives is a weak example of any point). After all, the women of this show (excepting the one they killed a few episodes ago) are hardly representative of the average physique for their age group. Hell, they are hardly representative of the average physique of women of any age. They are slim, fit and sexy women no matter how old they are and it would be wrong to suggest that male attraction to these women is based solely on their ages.

For that reason I am not going to suggest that the attraction is based solely on their ages. I am, however, going to suggest that part of the attraction men have for these women is based on their ages.

Anyone who has read the book Boom, Bust and Echo by David K. Foot (MacFarlane Walter and Ross, 1996) could predict that, as the “baby boomers” get older, so too will their taste in “sexy”. Nor, with seniors being the fastest growing demographic on the internet, is it difficult to imagine that the age of models depicted as “sexy” might be on the rise as well. After all, while 45 may seem old and wrinkled when you are a horny adolescent, it probably seems damn fine and spry when you are pushing eighty. More importantly, I think that 45 is starting to seem damn fine to contemporary adolescents as well.

For one thing, health is becoming attractive on its own regardless of “body type”. Oh, sure, during the Eighties it was all about what you actually looked like and there is still great appeal for the “perfectly” shaped Playboy model (and, for some reason that escapes me, the borderline anorexic teenager too). However, there seems to currently be a huge demand for “healthy” and “happy” as sexy, and this demand transcends the supposedly "ideal" body type.

Blame it on the social growth of the male and female mind and give credit to the women’s movement whether you want to or not: the fact remains that, while people may not be getting less attracted to the current (basically unattainable) ideal of beauty, they are getting more attracted to people who do not meet the requirements of perfection.

This widening of what the average man will consider beautiful (and I firmly believe that women have always held each other to higher standards than those to which men have held them) transcends such things as body-types.

It also transcends age.

M.I.L.F.’s (as they are known on the Web), or Moms I’d Like to Fuck, seem to represent an ever larger proportion of the pictures on the Internet (mind you, this is merely a casual observation). Of course, it is easy to see why any straight guy (and maybe some gay ones too) would love the idea of banging away at Terri Hatcher (at least in theory - in practice she’d probably snap like a twig). But a quick scan of the supply of porn out there demonstrates beyond a doubt that not every MILF needs to be a Terry Hatcher look-a-like.

There is a growing demand for healthy looking, normal, middle-aged women among the men out there (at least, there is a growing demand for pictures of them naked). Because of this desire for older models, middle age amateur women (and over-age porn actresses like Nina Hartley) are finding themselves in higher demand. Be it glamour shots in dated lingerie or grainy, poorly lit pictures of some guy's wife taken in the living room, the number of these photos as a percentage of all the photos out there appears to be ballooning rapidly.

A final (and probably the most important) factor, of course, is the all important world of possibility. Call it the bird in the hand factor.

Face it, for practical purposes we can state that zero percent of men are going to get to sleep with Madonna. The fact of the matter is that most guys are just going to keep sleeping with their wives and girlfriends and be thankful for their good fortune. On the other hand, guys (and girls) do like to fantasize and the more real the fantasy is, the easier it is to… well… have a “successful” fantasy. While I believe that men are expanding their horizons regarding the nature of beauty, the added appeal of the less than “perfect” model is that there is some small chance (but at least a chance) that the fantasy could become real.

The appeal lies in this miniscule (possibly only theoretical) but real chance.

Think of it like day-dreaming about traveling on vacation. Most people probably spend a lot more time dreaming about a trip to… say… Greece, then dreaming about.... say … a trip to the moon. This is true even though most of us would agree that (risks removed) the moon would probably be a lot more interesting as a travel destination. The reason Greece is more fun to dream about is that you might actually get to go to Greece one day. Even if you can just never see it happening, it is a real possibility. On the other hand, as facinating a trip as the moon would be, there is simply no way you are ever going to get to vacation on the lunar surface. A moon vacation is still possible, but it is not a real possibility.

Like a trip to the moon, a romantic (probably “romantic” is the wrong word) encounter with Britney Spears is not a real possibility for any men (or, at least, not a real possibility for all but a statistically negligible percentage). On the other hand, a similar encounter with that reasonably attractive 30 or 40 year old woman at the Coffee Shop … well … that could happen. Of course it is not going to happen(we all know that), but that’s not the point, is it? What is important is that it could happen. That is, the event is within the realm of real possibility.

Similarly, middle aged men are not going to get to bump uglies with last month’s Playboy centerfold. They might, however, get to do the deed with the good looking “desperate” housewife who lives next door.

Again, the fact that in real life they won’t actually get to seduce Mrs. Robinson is not important for the male fantasy world. The fact that these housewives are desperate (a double entendre if I ever saw one) is important. The Terry Hatcher’s of TV land are not the ultimate goal. They are, after all, unattainable. What they do, however, is create the scenario into which someone a bit like Terri Hatcher might fit.

From Calendar Girls, to Desperate Housewives, to the romance in Something’s Gotta Give (Jack and Diane, 2003) and the song Stacy’s Mom by Fountains of Wayne (2004): the shift towards more mature women as sexy is not a surprising change in the mainstream media. The mainstream media, in fact, has been pretty slow at catching on to the trend. The chance of meeting a so called “cougar” (i.e. older women who haunt bars looking to pick up younger men for casual sex) has been titillating young men for more than a decade now and porn sites catering to photos of women who might be a real possibility, have been growing steadily since man figured out how to make a picture out of zeros and ones.

And I know. I know. These fantasies have been around longer than that. The Graduate is a prime example of the main stream dealing with a sexy older woman and a younger man and it was filmed almost 40 years ago. More importantly, boys have probably been fantasizing about the cute mom living next door since there have been cute mom’s living next door. There have been countless media examples over the years that portray this kind of thing. What I am saying however, is that we are seeing a bubble of it in the main stream media right now. What I am saying is that people are acting surprised when, if they were paying attention to the growing number of porn sites dedicated to the Mom Next Door, there would be no surprise at all.

What I am saying is that porn can be a predictor of upcoming trends in the main stream media.

I know it is weak. It is just an observation. I have not done a scientific study or anything.

Jeeesh!

So, what is the next trend in Main Stream Media? Well, based on an informal survey of growing porn topics (and since kiddie porn is, thank god, still illegal), my guess would have to be transexuality. We are starting to see a bit of it late night on odd channels like Showcase now but I foresee a series of movies and television programs dealing with this topic before the end of the decade. Neither will these contain the tame androgyny of Bosom Buddies (Tom Hanks, circa 1980). We are talking about shows with some sexy…. well…. transgendered people to add to our long list of all things beautiful (and acceptable).

[Sorry that this is so long]

There seems to be a lot of pictures showing naked children showing up in my pornography these days. While the regular contributors to the sites and newsgroups I visit generally seem to be trying to put a stop to it I still find it distressing. I find it distressing because I worry about the harm to children and I find it distressing because the mere act of accessing the photos (which is sometimes hard to avoid when you, in fact, are surfing for porn) is something that is illegal in Canada.

Years ago I was working on a Master’s Thesis tentatively entitled “Pornography, Hate Propaganda and Canadian Jurisprudence”. I never finished my thesis (or the Masters program) partly because I moved on to other pursuits and partly because I had become tired of life in “The Academy”. The primary reason that I was unable (or, at least, unwilling) to continue was that I had become extremely disheartened with the idea that there was actually any reasonable way to choose one set of views over another.

At that time I had been formally studying and thinking about thought (the history of thought, the logic of thought, the psychology of thought and the underlying beliefs about thought) for almost 7 years. I was, and I hope I do not sound too boastful, not a half bad thinker myself. The problem was that I became so adept at dismantling the ideas of others that I was virtually unable to substantiate a basis for any ideas at all. Not even my own.

Sure, in my regular, everyday life I still had opinions but these were more like gut instincts than any kind of idea founded on a solid belief system. For example, intellectually I became pro-life and pro-choice. Similarly, I was against the death penalty but could see no solid, rational argument to support that position. I was against America’s conquest of the world while, at the same time, wondering how I could justify it as wrong.

I had (and I still suffer from this) lost any sense of having a moral measuring stick upon which I could support or condemn the actions of myself or others. The supposedly reasoned arguments of the centrist left, which I tended to agree with (and still do), became, in my mind, no more rational than those arguments from the extreme right, which I came more and more to empathize with even if I didn’t agree with the conclusions.

The root of the problem was my realization that, to take any stand on any issue, there are certain basic things you have to believe to be absolutely true. The Christian Right, with their anti-abortion position, believe it to be true that human existence begins at conception. This, in turn, is based upon their belief in God the Almighty and certain other unalterable “Truths”. The pro-lifer’s, on the other hand, believe in variety of humanistic rights based systems which place the value of a human life as something that occurs somewhere closer to the time of birth. While pro-choicer’s have the longer argument, the length of your argument is not a measure of its truth and neither side’s argument is more “rational”.

The bottom line is that, forced to justify their beliefs, those in the pro-choice camp eventually hit some basic beliefs that cannot be logically proven and are just as unassailable by reason as a belief in God and His word.

Human rights, whether I agree they “should” exist or not, are simply an unjustified belief. There is no moral ruler upon which we can measure the value of existence. I personally believe that there is a basic value that is intrinsic to human (if not all) life. I have no rational justification for that. It is not written down anywhere. In fact, on the basis of external proof, those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God at least have something to point to. As a rational humanist (I guess I would be that), I have nothing to support my beliefs at all.

Which is a long-winded way of explaining why the Porn vs. Obscenity problem became so vexing to me. Like everyone else, I wanted to be the one who decided what was obscene and what was not obscene. Unlike everyone else, I was writing a paper on the subject and needed an argument to support my position.

I could not find one.

You see, I like porn. I just do not like all porn. I do not like bestiality, child pornography or violence. I do not think that the possession or distribution of these sub-categories or erotica should be legal. But how to justify my position? There are, after all, a great number of people out there whose tastes are tamer than mine. People who feel that there should be no pornography at all and people who feel that pornography should be limited to the glamour-type images that one finds in Playboy. On the other side of the coin there are people who think that absolutely nothing should be taboo. People who see nothing wrong with man-boy love and hard-core S&M.

Whether I agree with them or not, who am I to tell either group that they are wrong?

There are a myriad of arguments to support those on either side of the debate. There are absolutely hundreds of books and thousands of articles which explain in great detail why pornography is either harmful or helpful to us. Granted, most (but a far cry from all) pro-pornography activists argue that it is not so much that pornography is good for us but that the alternative (indiscriminate censorship) has such negative consequences that it can not be tolerated in a free and democratic society. Then again, those arguing for pornography from the bastions of our Universities and Political Forums are hardly in a position to argue that jerking off simply makes them feel good.

Women also argue both sides of the debate with some stating that pornography is liberating and inherently gives women power and others arguing that it is degrading and perpetuates the stereotype of woman as sex object. Libertarians argue that pornography is merely a less than particularly useful (but nonetheless necessary) aspect of freedom of expression. Religious groups everywhere argue that it is just wrong and point to the exploitation and bad manners that seem to go along with it.

I could argue any of these positions. I could not argue them as well now as I could when I was reading about the topic every day, but, to me, none of these positions is definitely right or definitely wrong.

Forced to choose a manner of justifying my own position I think I would use one that involved “harm” as that would provide me with a lengthy and rational sounding argument, justify my position reasonably well and garner the support of the liberal elite who in general populate our universities and are amenable to arguments formed upon that basis.

In the end, however, how far would I get? Is a cow actually harmed by being sexually assaulted by a man? I doubt the cow even notices. Is there a definite harm only in pictures of pre-pubescent children? Computer generated kiddie-porn? Stories? What about the harm in consenting adults living out a rape fantasy on video?

Before you get yourself all in a knot of deep moral outrage, keep in mind I personally think there is harm in all these things. My problem is figuring out how to unequivocally demonstrate that harm while, at the same time, claiming that the porn I do want to be able to look at does not carry with it the exact same (or similar) harmful effects.

Really trying to justify your own moral position becomes untenable unless you have a God who hands down rules that can not be challenged. I have to believe that porn is not inherently harmful because I like pictures of naked women but I do want to draw a line somewhere. How do I condemn the hedonistic assholes who appear to enjoy pictures of young girls without in the same breath justifying the bible-thumping bastard who wants to condemn my tastes?

You would think that drawing the line would be easy. Maybe drawing the line is easy for you. Certainly I have no problem condemning a person who molests a child or the guy who takes pictures of little kids. I have a harder time condemning someone for viewing the final product, mind you, but generally I would be willing to punnish anyone involved in the manufacturing process or dissemination of obscene material.

It is the justification for these beliefs that I have a problem with. I believe very strongly that children can not give consent (real, informed consent) to anything more socially complicated than whether they want to play on the swings or the slide. I am adamant in my belief that even older children should not be allowed to make all those decisions that could affect their entire lives until they are old enough to at least partially understand the consequences of those decisions. Young kids and even teenagers often need to be protected from themselves.

As soon as I try to justify this position, however, even just to myself, I get caught up in issues of consent and autonomy that are so mind-boggling infinite that there is no place upon which to rest my beliefs. What age can kids start giving consent? Can adults truly give consent? Can all adults or just some? What about people who have been conditioned to think poorly of themselves (think the poor, uneducated masses) and, therefore, are easily exploited? Does the mere act of exploitation remove the possibility of consent? If we take away the ability to grant consent, how do we hold people responsible for anything?


AAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!


In the end, I would just like to be able to look at the porn I like without downloading a bunch of the obscenities that, apparently, others enjoy.

Is that too much too ask?

NBC Programming at its worst

It is a sad day when characters in the Showcase program Trailer Park Boys are closer to being a satirical representation of the business world than they are of any real people who stereotypically might live in a trailer park.

Okay. So The Apprentice is popular. Can’t argue with that (in fact, that is what scares me). I had never watched more than a few seconds of it before either changing channels or switching off the television. Last night, a bit tipsy, I watched about five minutes of The Apprentice after The Family Guy had ended and while waiting for Law and Order: Trial by Jury to begin.

I gave up on The Apprentice very quickly. I have heard enough about it that I know it must contain something that the public can call “drama”. Hell, our newspaper devotes a column to it every week. I don’t read the column. But seeing it in the business section (rather than the entertainment section where it belongs) is enough to convince me that (a) it is a damn popular show and (b) there must be something dramatic involved. I was, however, seriously unprepared for the five or ten minutes I just managed to watch.

I mean, holy crap, are these the people that are going to be sitting in the boardrooms of America soon? Am I actually expected to believe that these people will be running the corporations of the world? If they are, we are all a lot more doomed than I thought we were.

Doesn’t the show supposedly get something like a million applicants with each series: all desperate to perform like trained animals? Moreover, have I not been led to believe that the people on this show (other than the education vs. street smarts series – which, mind you, the one I just watched could be part of) are well educated at some of America’s top business schools?

If these things are true how can these people act like such dramatic idiots? I am from “Lower Rubber Boot”, Canada, and the businessmen and women here show more decorum over casual business meetings at Tim Horton’s than the people on The Aprentice demonstrate in the boardroom. I certainly would be unwilling to go to any meeting where the people attending acted in the manner that the people on the show did during the few minutes I watched.

And what is going to happen when these whiny, back-stabbing cry-babies bring their arrogant, egoistic mannerisms to the real world of business? Isn’t there are move on to have corporations be more ethical in the future? How will these people ever bring ethics and morality to American corporate culture: They don’t have it in their personal lives?

No, if the people I saw, including a tobacco chewing clown (literally), are any indication of what tomorrow’s leaders will be like then we all better start hoarding food and water and learning to speak Mandarin right away. Common sense and common decency are looking like they are about to go out the window. If American schools are churning out idiots like this I am glad I didn’t choose to attend one (and that was an option).

But are those responsible for this lowest common denominator programming really kidding anyone? The people on this show were chosen because they treat each other like trash. The show is popular because many people (too many people I think) can relate to this ignorant and obnoxious manner of social interaction. It isn’t even that these people are educated that scares me the most, it is the fact that the show must be popular because viewers see something of themselves in these infantile gesturing bafoons.

What is the most terrifying aspect, however, is that the people on The Apprentice treat each other like Ricky treats people on Trailer Park Boys. The important difference being that Ricky is played by an actor (remember them) who is putting all his skill into being the most ignorant, self-centered, criminally-minded trailer-park trash stereotype that he can possibly be. The people on The Apprentice, on the other hand, are supposedly real people with some manner of education in the business world (be it formal or otherwise) who act the same way!!!

What does this say about our society and culture? Too many things to mention here.

Far too many things.

I am still reeling from my dreams of the night before last (two of them thanks to the dogs wanting to go out at 6:00 a.m.) and am now suffering the tensions brought on by the dream that was fresh in my mind upon awaking this morning.

I am not certain that I have ever actually seen the psychology text that makes all the claims about dreaming but I can tell you that at least two of the common beliefs about dreams are not correct. At least, they are not correct in my case.

The first misnomer is that dreams only occur during R.E.M. sleep (named due to the Rapid Eye Movement that occurs at this stage) and that R.E.M. sleep takes from about 45 minutes to an hour to reach. I can lie down on the couch on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon, fall asleep for no more than fifteen minutes and have a dream that feels like it lasted hours. Either I am slipping into R.E.M. sleep exceptionally fast or the psychologists who supposedly say that you only dream while in that state are full of shit.

The second lie that is commonly told (and this despite the fact that many people refute it) is that humans dream in black and white. I am partially colour-blind due to a degeneration of my cones (the colour receptors in the eye). Because of this I essentially see anything with a lot of blue in it (e.g. blue, violet and purple) as blue, anything that is light in tone as either beige (light brown or green) or grey (turquoise, aqua-marine, pink, grey) and anything that is dark in tone as kind of earthy brown. I enjoy mid-tones, get mixed colours confused all the time (e.g. maroon, brick, forest green) and can only tell amber from red if they are together (the brighter one is amber). I essentially live in what is a colour-reduced world where tone (brightness and sheen) tend to be more important than actual colour.

Occasionally this is an advantage. When I was a boy, finding the “brown” army men in the “orange” grass was always easier for me than for my adequately-eyed friends. Also, places where paint has gone on thicker tend to look like whole different colours to me so they stand out and certain camouflage tend to fail (I cannot see hunter orange in a bright green forest but I can see brown and green really well on the same background). More importantly (I see I have rambled off track – the irony of which will be seen in a moment) my dreams are in full and vibrant colour. More amazingly (but hard to describe) is the fact that in my dreams I am very aware of the fact that I can see colour.

I can not explain what this is like; perception simply will not allow it. For example, have you ever heard a fog-horn? If you said yes then take a minute to remember what the fog horn sounded like. Do you actually hear the horn? Do you mentally make a low-noted see-saw sound? Is it the same as hearing a fog horn? Of course it isn’t but, if asked, you would claim to remember having heard one before. Same as remembering the smell of bread baking: You don’t actually smell the bread again when you remember it.

The worst part of being colour blind is being asked: “What do you see blue as?” One of the best parts is replying “Without using the word blue, what do you see blue as?” I can not describe what it is like to see blue in my dreams any more than I can describe what it is like to see a blue sky other than to say, it was such an amazing … well…. blue.

So am I completely exceptional in my dreaming? Am I an alien being of some kind who only shares most of my world and experience with humans? Of course not. I do think, however, that we as a society accept these myths into our common conscious so we can feel special as individuals.

If it is commonly accepted as fact that people dream only in black and white then I (and many other people I have met) are the fabulous and special exceptions to this rule. If it is generally believed that people can only dream while in R.E.M. sleep then, likewise, myself (and probably a few million others) are exceptional. Does this make us “better” than other people? Of course it does. Don’t be offended: it does not make us “better” on any real (i.e tangible or important) scale that is quantifiable or even matters in the greater scheme of things. However, as humans, we have a need to single ourselves out and feel good about it when we can. This lets us feel “better” or “special” for at least a moment. It is all in our own heads of course. I mean, hell, we don’t even know why we dream, what about the fact that some of us dream in colour could be important?

Despite all the work of the good-intentioned simpletons who think equality has something to do with reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator, it is important for each of us to feel “different” than those around us. You even hear people bragging about infections for god’s sake! “When the doctor saw it,” the woman bragged, “he said it was the worst case of multi-ethno-egognosis he had ever seen”. “Oh yeah,” replied the man, “I broke my leg in two places waterskiing and they were both spiral fractures! Do you know how uncommon that is? The Doctor told me that he had never seen that before! And that spiral fractures are the most painful.”

Doctors know that many patients like to be special even if it means being the sickest, or being the sickest and still standing. How many times do we hear “I can not believe your managing to still walk around after what you’ve been through!” It makes us feel good. It makes us feel different than other people: like we are somehow special.

There are a myriad of other examples of this from constantly having high temperatures to low heart rates or being able to hold your breath for greater than the average length of time. With me, maybe it is dreaming in colour (and in linear stories with shifting points of view – they are very exhausting but at least they are interesting) and/or being colour blind.

The point is (if there ever was one) that I think we invent these commonly held beliefs so that we can feel special. Or, maybe, when an idea, even a flawed one, allows the creation of a situation where some people feel special, that idea generally has a good chance of being accepted into common culture. Thus, when someone did a study in 1962 (or whenever – I do not know of any actual study) which found that people dream in black and white, even though the study was seriously flawed it caught on because it made people who dreamed in colour feel more interesting.

There must be a balance though. If the idea makes too many people special it will quickly be “disproved” because when too many people are special in a certain manner that manner of being ceases to be special.

I would like to see a study that shows how few people need to be affected before something like this will become part of our common conscious and how many people need be affected before it falls out again. I think that would be an interesting social experiment.

I could slip from that into other reasons why bad studies become part of our collective conscious but it seems like a good place to end so maybe another day.