Pornography

‘Call me a prude if you want to, but I don’t think society is in a particularly healthy state when photos of topless young women are here, there and everywhere. Men’s magazines are displayed on the shelves of shops up and down the country as though it’s no big deal, when in fact the impressionable minds of young children are being subtly corrupted by them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to ban pornography or anything, I just think there is a time and a place for everything, and I don’t see why we can’t have some sort of regulations put in place to control the sale of this sort of merchandise. If men want to look at these images that’s fine, but can’t they do it in private? Why is it that, whenever I’m on the tube, I always find myself sat next to a man looking at a page three girl, so that I’m forced to look at her boobs as well?’

Rebecca had written these comments on an internet forum. It was a follow on from a radio discussion, on the topic of the sale of pornography, that had taken place earlier this morning and which she had listened to. Now she had made her thoughts clearer.

Last night she had been out for a meal with her boyfriend. It had been a perfect evening. It was mid-August and they’d sat at a table on the street eating their meal and drinking white wine. There had been such a relaxed, genial atmosphere, and everywhere one looked people seemed happy, at peace.

Then, afterwards, feeling sated after the meal, and flushed and drowsy with wine, they’d strolled off hand in hand to the park. The evening air was so calm and gentle. They’d walked around the lake. They had smelt the freshly cut grass, the scent of blossom. It was invigorating. The sun had been setting, its image lying on the unperturbed lake. And three little children, excited and thrilled in the holiday atmosphere, had stood by the lake feeding a pair of geese with their five fluffy little goslings. The little boy had looked at Rebecca and she’d smiled at him.

The whole evening could not have been more beautiful. She and her boyfriend were deeply in love and she felt so satisfied, calm and peaceful as if she could want for no more. She was so in love and looked on the children wistful, as if an idea was forming in her head.

Then, this morning she had awoken at six and taken her Labrador out for a walk in the countryside. All the calm of the previous night had still been with her, and in the fresh, calm, dewy morning she’d strolled through the fields with Lucky. On her way home however, she’d stopped off at the local newsagents.

‘Look at how big her boobs are. I’d love to spunk on them,’ a schoolboy had said, browsing a lad’s magazine.

‘She’s nicer, the blond one’ his friend had argued.

‘No way! She’s too skinny. Have you seen the tits on this one – she is amazing.’

And they had squabbled about it.

Rebecca, in to buy the morning paper, had to overhear all of this. And although she didn’t want to act like a prude, it had upset her. It just seemed wrong that young boys should so openly be able to access pictures of naked women and talk like that. She was an experienced woman, she knew what the world was like. Had it happened on another day she wouldn’t have cared. But today it angered her. She had been so calm, happy and satisfied as if life could not get any better, and this had come as an unexpected sucker blow, a wet fish across the face. Almost in proportion to how elated and peaceful she had felt prior to the event, she now felt deflated after it.

Whenever she saw pictures of naked women, she felt some feelings of jealousy and regret. But it was nothing major. She was too calm, mature and intelligent for that. Just this time she’d been so happy that it had wounded her so. Later on she’d written the comment.

That evening she looked at the discussion once more. One comment was directed at her.

‘Why can’t you just admit that you’re jealous of these women, and that’s why you can’t stand to see these photos? I’ve met women like you before. You’re so angry and resentful and just want to ban everything, to ban beauty. You feminists are so full of rage and jealousy, I’ve seen you argue till you’re red in the face, red with rage, that all of this is wrong, but really it’s all just jealousy and bitterness. Sigh. What can be done for you lesbians? In your hearts you hate these women and more than that you hate men, and can’t let them do as they like.

‘Please don’t tell me that this is degrading to women, or that they’re being exploited. It’s not. In fact it’s the reverse. These women want to be photographed and men want to see them. Everyone’s a winner. I can’t stand the moral outrage of people like you. You have to liberate yourself, liberate yourself from all that moral hanky-panky, all that conventional, Victorian-era nonsense.’

She felt angered by these remarks. She had made a sensible, reasonable comment and got this in return. Why was it not possible to have an adult discussion on this topic, without all this silly, sexist vitriol, these idiotic male comments that went way overboard? Yet for all that, she knew that there was some slight truth in what had been said. She had to accept she was slightly jealous and raging.

Yet not in any major way. Annoyed by the stupid response, and seeing it was pointless to argue, she logged off and went and made a cup of tea for her and her boyfriend. She took it into his study where he was working and then went into the living room. She got a book out and began to read.

Paul, the man who had made the comment, was profoundly affected by pictures of beautiful, naked women, and he collected such photographs. He found the girls so beautiful and alluring and was full of passion and desire for them.

He was sensitive and intelligent, but in debates of this type he always spouted these sort of views against any women who dared to question the morality of porn. His comments always infuriated people, and you were always left wondering if in fact he wasn’t the one full of bitterness, anger, rage and jealousy and that he projected his own feelings onto others, especially the ‘feminists’ he spoke of. Surely, as a man, he could only, on seeing these beautiful women, whom he would never get to touch or feel, experience feelings of impudence and anger, rage at being teased and mocked at like that? But it wasn’t clear. He always spoke of being liberated by the images. He was in awe of the women. He would do anything for them.

He looked at a picture of the naked Lucinda on his computer. The way she smiled so rapturously, so radiantly, the way she beamed; the look of surety and confidence in her eyes, as though she were the rightful inheritor of beauty, as though she were so at home in this world, so at ease; her charming, graceful body – all of this impressed him greatly and he felt like escaping with her, from all the stupid talk of ‘feminists’ as he called them, all that moral nonsense and humpty-dumpty. She was perfect, and was so far removed from all those feelings of rage, hatred, jealousy and bitterness. With her there need be no such emotions. He gave himself up to staring at her and she seemed to smile back at him so reassuringly.

Lucinda, or Lucy as she was actually called, had made that photo a year ago, but since then her contracts had run dry. In reality she was good looking but far from perfect. Her face was a bit spotty and tarty, her skin a bit blotchy. Her body was what made her, though here again her butt and stomach were a bit flabby.

From the age of about seven onwards she had been obsessed with becoming some sort of model. She would spend ages pouring obsessively over endless pictures of glamorous women, to the point where she did nothing else all day. The pictures had a profound, profound effect on her, and though she saw herself in the women, it had been a feeling of utter, utter jealousy, that had motivated her to become a model. Had she not have become one she would have been left with such a raging hatred within her.

There were lots of better looking women than her though and whenever someone spoke of them as such in her presence she would always pretend to be a lesbian, saying that she loved and admired them too, in order to avoid those all-consuming pangs of rage and jealousy she felt toward those women. She always pretended to be a lesbian and to some extent she was, since she was so obsessed with women’s bodies. As well as this, she hated men vehemently, though here again she was very much ashamed of this feeling. But she simply couldn’t help it. She hated that any man should have power over her.

She was always in the process of breaking up or getting back together with her boyfriend. She had never been in love, had no idea of what it was, and had rarely felt content. Her mother, like her, hated men and was divorced. Her new boyfriend was always protesting his support for her daughter, always saying ‘that he had no problem with her doing these photos, and that he would support her one hundred percent.’ He always told her she shouldn’t listen to the people who called her job immoral or had a problem with it, and said he would beat up anyone who stood in her way. He argued till he was red in the face that there was nothing wrong with it, and protested his hatred of those who had a problem with it. He always had a compliment for her, and exaggerated her beauty. She thought he was weird.

Other women tended to dislike her, and actually the feeling was reciprocated. But again she was terribly ashamed of this feeling, and felt guilty that she was such a bitch. Many beautiful women worked, for example, on the staff of her local pub. And she couldn’t understand why they, with the incredible beauty bestowed to them, had no desire to become models. They were content to work here, it seemed enough for them to be ogled and chatted up by the clientele. They really were attractive, and Lucy would look enviously at the slim figure of one girl, the stunning face of another. She felt guilty that she was so ambitious. The other girls were always really bitchy with her, and laughed at her behind her back. They sensed the weakness in her, and crucified her for it. And Lucy always felt guilty and ashamed, hated by these girls.

When she had gotten her first modelling contract, it was as though she were in ecstasy. She’d spent weeks looking at her photos, so content, so utterly blissful. But when she’d been ditched and told there would be no more contracts, she had been emphatically crushed.

More than ever she experienced such burning rage and jealousy when she saw images of beautiful women. She was angered to see them so happy and radiant. But worse than this, she just hated seeing men, for example on the tube or in a newsagents, absorbed in looking at pictures of women, talking about them and praising them. She felt so cut out and jealous. She felt humiliated. She had to get back in, she had to.

She wrote off to new agencies, she bugged her current one’s. She felt so in the prime of life, and when she looked in the mirror and saw how beautiful she was, she couldn’t stand to feel as if she were going to waste. She had been given such great looks and it was unbearable for her to feel that they were being wasted, that her life was running away from her and there was nothing she could do. This was her moment, it was now or never, yet she was being neglected.

Had she have been less well endowed, she could have let it go, accepted her rejection. And though she considered doing this, as a method of ending her perpetual state of agony, whenever she took an objective look at herself, she saw a beautiful woman, and felt that it would be such a mistake to give up. It was as if she almost had a pot of treasure within her grasp, and though she might not be avaricious, if it were there for the taking, it seemed stupid to just let go, to let it slip. So she was reaching out for the golden trinket, almost touching it, but it evaded her grasp, and she was in agony as she stretched and writhed for it. She was forever on the periphery.

She would get some good news, that she might get a new contract. Then she would feel so happy and elated, as if she’d gotten her life back. She would go jogging and eat sensibly. Then, a few days later, she would get bad news to the effect that a contract hadn’t in fact been secured. Then she would plunge into an abyss of desperation, as though her whole life were over. She would quit jogging and eat poorly, and it was as if her whole life were on hold now, until she got some better news. Whether she had a contract or not dictated her entire life: if she heard she was getting one everything was great and she could do anything; if on the other hand she didn’t have one, she worried eternally and couldn’t cope.

Earlier in the evening she had been terrible. She had been profoundly tormented by the lack of communication from any of the agencies. She was thinking she would never be successful again, never. She had written to so many. Many didn’t even bother to reply. Then, if one did ask her to come in and see them, they would set an appointment for six weeks time! Six weeks! She couldn’t stand the suspense, the agony. Then, when she went, it was only a twenty minute appointment, she was in and out in a flash, got no solid answers from the agent, who seemed disinterested and wholly unimpressed by her. She felt she wasn’t listened to. She felt the agent didn’t understand. She felt he didn’t even care either, that he hated her, and wanted her to fail. The meeting would end quickly, she was let out. Then she would have to wait for weeks in suspense, wondering whether there was anything, waiting for them to call.

She was totally sick of it all, with her obsession, but she couldn’t give it up. She wanted good news now! Now! Yet at best there might be a twenty minute appointment in two months time. She just couldn’t wait that long. It was too long to be kept in suspense. And it would probably be a waste of time anyway.

Desperate, going insane, she had started banging her head against the wall. Then, when this failed to attract the attention of her mother and her boyfriend, she went downstairs to the kitchen, picked out a knife from the drawer and put it to her face. They had been shocked, asked her what on earth the matter was, and she’d broken down in tears, telling them what the problem was, even though she had done so countless times already, and they’d been here, in this exact same position, many times before.

Eventually, after talking about it, she had cheered up a bit. Her mother’s boyfriend had told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and that he would see to it that she would get a new contract. She believed him, he seemed so confident of it. They’d gone out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner to cheer her up, and as they’d sat there, enjoying the food and wine, they’d talked with genuine happiness, and Lucy had wistfully looked forward to her successful future as a glamour model. She was so, so happy. All her dreams were to come true.

But when that night she had been unable to get to sleep, she had started to become troubled by the thought that she would never get back into the world of modeling and that it was all over. She’d gotten up and looked in the mirror. And though she hadn’t put any weight on, she imagined, after the heavy Chinese meal, that she had. She thought she was getting fat, that her looks were fading, and that she was rapidly loosing all that she had. All of her schemes were going to ruin.

She had gone to the bathroom and tried to induce vomiting. Then she had lain on the tiles and rolled around in mental agony, screaming like the devil possessed her, and flailing her arms around and banging her head on the floor. She was consumed by her obsession and couldn’t escape from it. She was shackled to it. She needed to do something else, she needed an alternative focus in her life, to have a change of scenery. Had she have gone jogging for instance, she would have felt much better. But she just didn’t have the inspiration to do it until she had word of a contract. So she was stuck in a vicious circle.

She was sick of the obsession, sick of the constant up and downs, feeling queen of the pack one moment, suicidal the next. She wanted it to end, but she couldn’t let go. It seemed wrong to. She rolled around on the floor, moaning and wailing.