Welcome to NSFW Sunday!
Alysha Nett
+ At Nerve, Kate Hakala writes about why we don’t watch movies for the sex any more:
“It seems America’s #1 favorite topic ever, sex, will be taking a backseat to violence and talking animals in Hollywood movies. According to Vincent Bruzzese, film research expert of Ipsos, a firm which analyzes scripts for major studios, Hollywood isn’t looking for sex scenes anymore when pitching future blockbusters. He claims, ‘Sex scenes used to be written, no matter the plot, to spice up a trailer. But all that does today is get a film an adult-only rating and lose a younger audience.’ He admits that sex scenes have sold so poorly in the last two years that, ‘Today such scenes are written out by producers even before they are shot'” When I first heard this, I didn’t quite believe it. Of course sex in cinema is still as ubiquitous as ever. Then I thought about it, and realized it isn’t that common in movies that actually do well.”
via suicide girls
+ It’s better to improve porn than to ban it, argues Fern Brady:
“If we’re going to criticise or attempt to regulate online content, let’s have someone with some knowledge of the topic make the decisions for us – as opposed to a proponent of vague pseudo-feminist rubbish of what porn is or isn’t. Getting someone who knows nothing about pornography to govern our online sexual behaviour is as backwards as roping in someone who knows nothing of poverty to make vital decisions on welfare policy. And we’d never allow that.”
+ Dont blame the slut, blame the shaming:
“Stigmatizing the word ‘slut’ has become a way of controlling women’s sexual behavior. If a women thinks that having a lot of sexual partners makes her undesirable, then she might avoid that kind of behavior. She may end up staying in a relationship that is unhealthy, just to make sure she does not sleep with too many people. She may miss out on experiences that she might otherwise enjoy. And if she dares to follow her desires, the guilt and shame that may follow can be debilitating. Thanks to slut shaming, a woman’s sexual agency is seriously limited.”
+ Amazon has a plentiful “sexual wellness” section (it’s true), this means a thing:
“There is a shared perception among these entrepreneurs and others industry insiders that the rebranding of sex paraphernalia from ‘sex toys’ to ‘sexual wellness’ signals the mainstreaming of the market. Over the last decade, as much of the U.S. was enmeshed in a culture war over abortion and gay rights, a very different culture war was playing out, this one involving the changing nature of sexual pleasure. “
via sexforbois
+ Tracy Clark-Flory addresses the importance of farting in relationships.
+ Bacon condoms and lube: now officially a thing.
+ The best ways to have sex in your parents’ house include staying quiet, hooking up in weird places, using music as a cover and more.
via femmethings
+ 50 Shades of Grey may or may not have ruined erotica. Amanda Hess asks, can the genre recover?:
“Fifty Shades has only cemented erotica’s reputation as juvenile, poorly-constructed, and—perhaps most damning—totally feminine. In a world where most mainstream pornography is filmed with a male viewer in mind (and often, with guys manning the camera and the promotional machine), written erotica has been traditionally more accessible to women, who can produce it cheaply and anonymously, with few resources, no institutional support, and reduced risk of public shaming. That’s only reinforced the idea that women prefer to read their smut as opposed to watching it—and that they’re so hard up, they’ll accept whatever amateur bodice-rippers are offered to them.”
via pinktacolovers
Disclaimer: All of the photographs on NSFW Sundays are taken from various tumblrs and do not belong to us. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the tumblrs and photographers who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email bren [at] autostraddle dot com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.
I really want to finger paint…
Bless you.
That last picture is….ahem… it’s … well it’s very… (Cat come on, find a word, you’re sounding really pervy)… its erm…. well… I think erm…. (Cat! seriously..FIND A GOD DAMN WORD!)…oh me oh my…. the picture is erm…
… oh I can’t even.
Taste the rainbow?…
BOOM!! ;)
none of these really float my boat. they don’t even look like real people. most are skinny and flat-chested, and all seem to have shopped in the same store for their bras. they’re all posted in a way men would like– “come and do to me what you woud do to me. i’m passive.” not that that’s terrible per se, but that’s all we’re seeing here. yawn. i like to see a little “guess what i’d do to you,” as well. the larger woman in off-white in the trio is the hottest, in my opinion.
also, where are the androgynous or butch gals?
Hey, I hear you that you’ve got your own preferences and support diversity in the photos here. Right on. Speaking as a skinny, flat chested queer, though, your comment about them not looking “like real people” was really hurtful. Please remember that we’re ALL “real people,” regardless of how we look.
Sorry about that! That was insensitive.
Very much appreciated. And another example of why I love the Autostraddle community. :)
is there another site out there that consistently uses imagery as diverse as ours is? i mean, seriously. maybe this week isn’t the best example (although i do think it’s pretty good nonetheless in a lot of areas) but — look, i don’t write the nsfw sunday, but usually the pictures anon includes in it are diverse, but not diverse enough according to my impossible standards which involves representing everybody ever and so i end up swapping out a lot of them, which means i spend 4-6 hours (this is not an exaggeration) every sunday morning swapping out photos, trying to find a plentiful variety of butch/andro chicks, fat girls and women of color (keep in mind that we only publish professional photographs, not somebody’s personal photos, selfies, or other amateur photography, so we do have to contend with what kind of imagery exists in the first place — and there are 10,000 pics of femmes out there for every 1 pic of a butch). i do this because i think we have a great opportunity here to challenge traditional notions of what is and isn’t sexy and empower women. making sure women feel good about themselves and their bodies is my #1 priority and always has been, it’s deeply important to me and i take this responsibility really seriously.
lately we’ve had trouble with the fact that a lot of the sexy andro/butch-looking models we find don’t identify as female or use “she” pronouns and don’t want to be included in the nsfw sundays, which is really hard because we don’t ever want to hurt or offend anybody. and then we dont have the time to track down the source of every photo to be sure they want to be in these posts, that wold take days. we have published 200 NSFW sundays, each with 5-10 pictures each, and we never repeat a picture, so we are dealing with limited imagery remaining.
anyhow, this weekend my (butch) girlfriend and i decided to spend sunday morning with each other, instead of her sleeping while i sit on my laptop with ten tumblr tabs open, obsessively ensuring a precise balance of imagery. so i only spent 2 hours yesterday on this instead of 4-6. and to be honest i felt a shit-ton of anxiety about that, and i was like, omg it’s not gonna be diverse enough, i didn’t spend enough time on this, but then I comforted myself thinking that surely nobody really expects perfection every week or thinks we’re failing at diverse imagery, we’ve gotten so much positive feedback about our diversity and surely it’s ok for me to take some weekend time for me and not be so obsessive and controlling… so basically this comment hits all of those sensitive spots for me and scares the shit out of me! it doesn’t take forever to find diversity in most areas, but gender-presentation-diverse photos often do take the extra 2-3 hours. (unfortunately, as that’s what i’m attracted to as well!) so, sorry! next week i’ll go back to the old way.
I really hope you and your gf had a lush morning together, Riese. Like honestly I do.
Don’t go back to the old way. Keep having lush Sunday mornings with your gf, for so many reasons just keep doing that instead.
<3 <3
Well if it makes you feel any better I didn’t notice a lack of diversity in this week’s pics compared to any previous NSFW Sunday column (if anything it’s actually exemplary in the variety of people represented w/r/t skin color and body shapes and gender presentation etc. if one takes into account the fact that you’re avoiding publishing random personal pics, which would be shady) and I thought that this comment was totally random and unjustified.
I think the “issue” with AS is that since you care so much about promoting diversity it becomes easy for us readers to take it for granted and hold you up to crazy high standards, like when someone is successful at something we assume that it’s easy for them because we only ever see the cool final products and not the grueling behind-the-scenes work that went into it.
TL;DR : we (and you) should cut you some slack
Also on the “androgynous/butch pics” thing, I think the issue is also that the less clothes someone is wearing the harder it is to acertain their gender presentation/identity, and most people tend to inconsciously associate a (mostly) naked female body with femininity – which is another can of worms entirely and a discussion for another day and post.
(Also also I’m so curious as to who is behind the “anon” account. Is it really a distinct person who only writes under this name? Or one of the writers’s alter-ego? Or a sockpuppet account used by the whole team??)
I think the “issue” with AS is that since you care so much about promoting diversity it becomes easy for us readers to take it for granted and hold you up to crazy high standards, like when someone is successful at something we assume that it’s easy for them because we only ever see the cool final products and not the grueling behind-the-scenes work that went into it.
yes, this! thank you for saying it better than i did, and thank you for the other words as well, that’s a really good point about the ando/butch thing w/r/t nudity… (that’s actually part of why the models for the calendar this year are wearing more clothes, because we’ve had masculine-of-center models in the past who were interpreted as “femme” just ’cause they were in bikinis.)
(also yes anon is one of our regular writers who just doesn’t want her name on these posts b/c of her writing career. i used to do nsfw sundays but haven’t for a while now. and both of us contribute to the imagery.)
[also sidenote i want to be sure to stress that the commitment to diverse imagery was not a response to feedback or comments, but something that was of key importance to me from day one, and what i think all women’s publications should strive for, queer or not. i don’t think we did a great job of it at first, but i think we do okay now — the proliferation of tumblrs for different types of women has really helped a lot too.]
sorry for getting upset about this and talking about sunday mornings in general, so weird b/c i was in a good mood all day except when this annoying movie was on. it was so weird and had that guy in it from hackers. anyhow i feel like i was sort of unnecessarily rude and i don’t know why! thanks though you guys!! <3 <3 you speak my truth, and i like that so much. i think maybe there was some valid criticism there, about the poses, i guess? it’s something to think about. (i do like 560 other things while looking for pictures, don’t worry, like watching stuff i need to write about.) y’all are the best people.
i think sometimes there’s so much negativity on the internet that it bottles up inside all of us
I just wanted to comment here. I am always amazed at the amount of high quality material and the number of never before seen pictures of beautiful queer women and people. Daily your team of writers and editors create these gems. There is so much consent it’s amazing! The other thing is I have yet to find another place online where I can find so much in one place that is enlightened, funny as all get out, respectful and does delicious recaps of Bomb Girls. Autostraddle helps me feel so much more comfortable in taking my gay to the street. This site is pure gold and everyone reading this site should pay Riese and the team in gold, rubies. or other comparable currency.
I have got to say au contraire in reference to these women seeming to be generic. Take no. uno for example. This lady is not passive looking to me. I can just image her being on top grinding into me in that exact same position and going a little bit psycho perhaps, but definitely not passive. Nor is she flat chested. That tattoo really pops out at me with the green as well. Sorry to be difficult…
Totally pumped to share that “Farting in Love” article with my girlfriend. We’ve surpassed that “peeing in front of eachother w/o blushing” phase but I’m jogging ahead in the “hey, I gotta poop” or “I will be kind enough to get out of bed and walk to the other side of the room right quick” phase.
Well, that certainly brings a different meaning to the word “rainbow”.
The 5th picture stopped my pulse.
So you can shave with the bacon shave, use bacon lip balm, use bacon lube, and get set up in a bacon casket. Wow
Well then.
I can’t stop thinking about how uncomfortable that paint will be when it dries. (Or how hard it will be to get off.)
But then you get to have fun while showering together!
would it be possible to enlist autostraddle users in finding awesome and diverse pictures for NSFW Sunday? I mean, I feel like collectively we must spend hundreds of hours a week looking at girls on tumblr, and if you outlined your standards somewhere along with a place to submit links to sexy masculine of center or otherwise difficult to find pictures. it might save you some time on Sunday mornings. because, seriously, you deserve Sunday mornings.
Also, I am really into the girls wearing more in the calendar this year.
One of my favorite things about this column (besides all the beautiful naked bodies ) is the diversity of people represented. I understand that not every type of person can be represented each week. I appreciate that AS still tries its darned hardest to make it happen anyways!
EVERY BODY IS BEAUTIFUL!
*THAT* picture is even better upside down. Yes that’s right, I came back to have ANOTHER look at it.
NOT.PERVY.AT.ALL.
“Getting someone who knows nothing about pornography to govern our online sexual behaviour is as backwards as roping in someone who knows nothing of poverty to make vital decisions on welfare policy. And we’d never allow that.”
geez don’t i wish we wouldn’t
(i mean, WE wouldn’t, because we kick ass.)
YES! Picture #3. Reminds me of my former roommates friend. Nuff said ;)
It didn’t end well. It never does :D