The porn industry is fast becoming one of the most popular and profitable fields in film and entertainment. Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth explores this field in a chapter entitled 'Culture'. In this section, I was shocked to find new information about the rapidly increasing popularity of pornography. The amount of money the porn business is bringing into the industry is astounding, and according to Wolf, "pornographic films outnumber other films three to one, grossing $365 million dollars a year in the United States alone, or a million dollars a day". This makes porn "the biggest media category". Pornography is also dominating magazine sales, as "eighteen million men a month in the United States buy a total of 165 different pornographic magazines...one man in ten reads Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler each month" (Wolf, 79). As a giant in the film and magazine industry, the popularity of pornography worldwide has lead to a competition with other (traditional) magazines and other forms of entertainment. Magazines these days are becoming sexier than ever, as evidenced by the two ads on the left. I believe magazines are feeling the pressure of entertainment industries such as pornography, and this pressure is pushing them to be bolder than ever before concerning the content they deem as appropriate to publish. Some images in magazines, such as naked women barely covering themselves up with their arms, are borderline porn, and this line between porn and viewer friendly is growing ever thinner and the area between acceptable and offensive is increasingly grey.
The beauty myth was always used to sell magazines, but magazines are more than just pages to browse through, their true power is much deeper than that. Magazines are used as a way to connect, "They bring out of the closet women's lust for chat across barriers of potential jealousy and prejudgment" (Wolf, 76). Women can share common experiences through the carefully crafted issues of magazines; they are a representation of women's mass culture. Each reader feels connected to others because they know information or are aware of events that they can then share with others. Magazines, however, also function as the killer of self-esteem. The women in these issues are so beautiful and so stylish that it is impossible to copy or look like any of them. How did this cycle begin? Women aspire to look like a celebrity in a magazine or who marvel at a photo-shoot in the latest issue of Vogue. Magazines have transformed as women (and sex) are now used to sell almost every product imaginable. How can women still read copies of these brainwashing creations after seeing women degraded and put on a pedestal that is unrealistic and just fake?
Here is a copy of the May 1917 issue of Vogue (left) and a 1991 issue of Vogue (right):
The difference between these two covers is astounding, and it is evident that we have become desensitized to images like the one on the cover of the 1991 issue of Vogue. So what has caused this change in what is morally right? What happened that made it okay to put a picture of a 99% naked woman on the cover of a major publication? This dramatic change in cover material could be the effect of pornography, an industry that has always been pushing the boundaries of exposure. With pornography putting the heat on all other forms of entertainment, it will be interesting to see if magazines get sexier as the line between what is and isn't appropriate fades away.
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