Porn for Women
Porn for New Moms
by the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative
(Chronicle Books) $12.95

The Porn for Women series exists in every cutesy gift shop in
the Northwest, packed with glossy photos of traditionally attractive
men eagerly doing tasks that are stereotypically reserved for
housewives—dishes, vacuuming, laundry. One photo has a dude
“adorably” wrapped in a cozy blanket and his caption asks, “Wanna
snuggle?”

What the Porn for… series—recently expanding from
Porn for Women to Porn for New Moms—wants to do is
“redefine the way we look at naughty pictures”
and “salvage the
term ‘pornography’
from the gold-chained, hairy-chested,

leisure-suit-wearing, mouth-breathing knuckleheads.”

But they fail and here’s why: Not only is their definition of a
woman—the dishwashing spit-up rag who just wants to
cuddle—still living in the past, but so is their definition of
porn and those who enjoy it. Instead of changing the way we look at
naughty pictures, it just takes them away completely, replacing them
with what a new mom really wants to see: some young buck saying, “Damn!
You look hot in those sweatpants!”

Ooh la la!

Gag.

Porn for Women doesn’t celebrate women’s sexuality; it
stifles it. The series assumes that our hormones are no longer
raging—menopause stole them at the age of 30. And instead of
finding a happy medium of sexy, naked, sweaty stuff that’s perhaps not
as crude as what the “knuckleheads” enjoy, Porn for Women lazily
takes it to the other side of the spectrum.

Sure, I wouldn’t mind having some dude do my dishes, but I’m not
gonna get off on it. What I want in bed is different than what I want
to live with—that’s the entire purpose of porn: to fulfill a
fantasy that one could never have in real life. Call me a knucklehead,
but when it comes to porn, I’ll take a raging cock over a vacuuming
sucker any day.

Megan Seling is The Stranger's managing editor. She mostly writes about hockey, snacks, and music. And sometimes her dog, Johnny Waffles.

One reply on “New in Books”

  1. When asked to define ‘Art’
    Andy Warhol said: Art is anything you can get away with,
    However, subjectively speaking, IMHO books like this certainly aren’t, and shouldn’t be judged as art. It’s quite obvious who the publishers target market is: Forty and fifty menopausal’s who want a discussion piece for their coffee table. I personally wouldn’t call this book ‘porn’, but then who knows? There’s a lot of interesting fetishes out there.

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