Posts by InternationalObserver
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Smelliot
Love it!
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I think there's exploitation and there's exploitation. Case in point: I was watching .... a couple of very average-looking girls and guys fucking.
That's the dichotomy of pornography. We do respond to it at some level, and if someone can find a way to make the equivalent of 'Fair Trade' porn we'd all buy it.
There's been huge growth in the amount of 'home porn' ie couples filming themselves (video or web-cam) and posting it to free sites on the net. One could argue that this is (where it demonstrably two consenting adults enjoying themselves) non-exploitive porn -- altho' I would note that it's usually always the womens face we see, and not the man's. What may have seemed like a fun a idea now may not be so good 10/20/30 years from now. The interweb is forever.
"hey Johnny, is this your mother?" -
people like Victoria Zdrok fascinate me
Wow - that is a great link! The short answer is that it's 'easy' money. Once you get your head around having your picture taken whilst naked ....
Some 'stars' do leapfrog straight into the big time, usually because they know their worth and start with a good agent to ensure they get into the big time ie Penthouse/Playboy. Although Wiki doesn't mention it , it's widely believed that Pamela Anderson signed with Playboy on the condition she would also win that years Playmate of The Year.
But the industry (fortune) is based on novices who sign a release for 'test shots' for $150, that end up on websites and Hot Horny Teen magazine. And it's a given that a novice doing porn will be 'strongly encouraged' to do anal because 'everyone does anal' ie before she finds out that actually they don't. At least not straight away.On a broader level, I'm constantly amazed at the number of stunning/gorgeous/drop-dead beautiful women who are prepared to take their clothes off for money in some low-rent sleazy magazine/video. One would presume they had other options, but no, there they are. Presumably all chasing the dream of being an industry Super-star.
BTW - sometimes pornstars lie to the media about their background. Hence a school dropout may claim to have gone to College or got a degree. Most are taken at their word (esp those coming to NZ for Erotica). It all fits in with the "I love my job and wouldn't do anything else" schtick.
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could also double as Bastards I Have Known:
I worked the Easter Show one year, running the stall where every player wins a prize. You had to pop a balloon or three with one of our blunt darts, and the balloons were only half full and the darts often bounced off if you actually managed to hit one. (If you've heard this before you must have been watching __The Real Hustle on Prime last Sat nite)__. And yes, the boxes of expensive stuff on the top two shelves really were empty, because you had zero chance of winning them. If you were lucky you could win a crap stuffed toy, but you were more likely to win a plastic spider which every loser recieved in order to fullfil the promise that 'every player wins a prize'. The spiders were actually defective stock supplied to the stall owner by whoever made plastic spiders - they weren't molded properly, had missing legs, head, or torso, and were probably worth 2¢.
Anyway the boss employed 16 year old truants because they were cheap and he knew they would invariably nick some money for themselves. So he'd fire them after 2-3 days because they were thieves; and put another in their place; and then fire them too when they nicked money as well. And he'd never pay them their wages either because they were theives and were bloody lucky he didn't call the Police.
After a week I realised what his M.O. was and that (even tho' I hadn't nicked any money) he'd find some reason to fire me too. So I waited until the busiest time (the Saturday night shift) and quit at 8pm. By 'quit' I mean I left him a letter saying "I quit" together with a reconciliation of the hours worked to date, and a 'reciept' for the wages I'd taken from the till. The rest of the money I left in a bag under the shelf. And since he only employed one person to work the stall during a given shift, I'd guess he lost about the same money he'd saved by firing staff and not paying them.
(BTW - we only ever saw him at the beginninng/end of a six hour shift)(I quit one hour in) -
let's not forget that Moore only did half a term as head of WTO. He had to split the appointment with the chap from Malaysia, who was an equally popular choice. I'm not sure which one of them blinked first and accepted the compromise rather than put it to a final vote ...
Half a loaf of bread is better than none ~ Aesop
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Another thing that perplexes me is the search for the origins of language .... But anyone over 6 struggles to learn a language, it seems blindingly obvious to me that no one over 6 invented language.
Which is why we must accept that God gave us language, and took it away when we misused it (Tower of Babel). But the Scient0l0g1sts might have a different view.
i'd actually be interested in the research around such questions. perhaps sir linkalot could help us out - i only say that because it seems to me that you enjoy this field of study much more than i ever could :)
To be honest all those links I provided came through one googling effort. I was trying to find a story I'd read previously via HuffPo (lordy, you don't think I troll porn sites do you?) which said pornstars last on average 18 months before getting out. I couldn't find the story tho'. Suffice to say they generally leave the industry not much better off financially than when they started.
i'm really interested in how exactly you "mainstream" this. does it mean that everybody accepts it as ok? or that everybody gets involved in it? would it be "mainstream" if rich & middle class women/men were equally stripping?
It's mainstream in the sense that no-one really bats an eye anymore. It's 'harmless fun' and it's not like they're doing porn y'know? But the reality (to generalise) is that most pornstars started out as strippers. If you get used to showing off your body for money you quickly learn how to make even more money. That is not to say that NZ strippers all end up as pornstars, obviously, but that's probably because we have no real indigenous industry. Kiwi strippers aspire to a photoshoot in Aussie Penthouse/Playboy thinking that might end up with a job in LA for American Penthouse/Playboy.
A stripper will start by doing a classy sensual routine ("I'm a dancer really, stripping just allows me to get paid for what I love") and then get more raunchy when they realise what gets the biggest tips. Then they might start incorporating 'toys' into their act because that get more dollars. Then they start doing private shows that are even more sexual, and that may or may not lead into sex-for-money ("but don't call it prostitution, I'm not a hooker"). And from there they get into porn, because after all, why not?
That's not to say all strippers end up doing porno, its just a matter of how far up the pyramid you wanna go. But I would be very upset if my daughter became a stripper. Because I know how badly it could potentially end up.DISCLAIMER All my info/opinions are based on last century. It may well be a much different industry now. That was Catherine Schaer's assertion in the Sunday magazine two weeks ago. She went to Showgirls and had a lovely time, and met the girls, and they were very nice, and wore classy (not slutty) dresses, and there were women in the audience, and they had a lovely time too. Which gave me tremendous dejavu because Rainton Haistie was big believer in making sure the girls dressed 'classy'. Because everyone (esp the media) love a 'class act', it means you don't have to feel bad for the people involved.
But then we're back to that circular argument: is there no legitimate reason for a woman to strip/do porn/prostitute herself? Must she, by definition, always be an exploited person? There are women out there who strip/do porn/prostitute themselves who would argue otherwise. Do we then dismiss their view of themselves on the basis that that they can't see the exploitation that we (in our humble righteous opinions) 'know' is there?SVU
Anyone else watch it last night? The storyline involved 14 y.o. runaways working the streets for their pimp, whom they were in love with. In one scene the girl explained how the other girls (actually dead, but she didn't know that) were gone because they had been 'adopted' by rich guys in Upper Manhattan -- "just like Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Thats my favourite movie, I've watched it a hundred times". Okay, obviously that was scripted dialogue, but it does give a reasonable indicator of how young impressionable people can be manipulated by the mainstreaming of ... what are we calling it now? ... raunch culture. Once you turn 18 in NZ you are legally smart enough to know whether you want to strip/do porn/prostitute yourself.
Pretty Woman was a huuuuuge blockbuster and yet no-one pays any real attention to the subject matter. Julia Roberts is a prostitute but she's portrayed as 'a class act' falling for Richard Gere FFS who falls for her too. It was sold as a 'love story', a bit like Cinderella. And ppl lapped it up. A film about selling your body one hour at a time to fat middle aged men who's wives don't understand them probably wouldn't have sold so well.Clearly I could talk all day on this
But it's just rant so I'll STFU now.
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I'm occasionally disgusted by what turns me on, so I don't like it as such.
Oh, thank god. The other day I read something that made me think: "Eww!"
Not to dumb down the conversation or anything, but did anyone else read the article in last month's Metro and go "Damn, Chris Trotter was kinda hot in 1981"?
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We used to go to the Ikea store in Sydney every time we visited the relatives. After three visits they were completely over it and didn't want to drive us out that far anymore. But they really are a great store, and it seems weird we haven't got one sooner.
Anyway ... the talk of 'it depends on how far you want to take things' etc <Fletcher B, above> reminded me of a news story on BFM this morning that just made me think (and I'm not a Greenie at all) "Oh Lord, that's great for the environment!" As in not.
The full story can be found here but just one notable part is:
...who will deliver the lightsaber to a waiting line of Hummers outside the baggage claim of the William P. Hobby Airport. Accompanied by a police escort, the soon-to-be real space artifact will be driven to Space Center Houston to be...
Just FedEx the f*cker and be done with it!
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yeah, I'm a long time 3 News watcher, but lately ... WTF?
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Well, this thread has had a good run, so I don't mind moving sideways:
What's up with Mike Moore's comments in the Herald this morning? He slams 'the politics of personal attack' ie a 'return to Muldoonism' and yet ...
... he's on Newstalk ZB/Leighton Smith this morning saying <paraphrasing>: "what's up with Rodney Hide? He's always struck me as looking like a young Mussolini working in the corn fields"
is that not a personal attack?