Many thanks to Ten Apples and a Flat Sponge for pointing to this outrageous plastic surgery hack job of the image of Venus, voluptuous Goddess of beauty and love. Here is a photo of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Venus With Apple:
And here is a liposuctioned resin model of the same that you can buy at the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen:
As Ten Apples so rightly puts it,
“See this? It’s not just the supermodels on the cover of Cosmo, it’s not just Oprah, it’s not just Kiera Knightly or whatever her name is, being stretched and elongated on her movie posters. Oh, no! Even Botticelli’s Venus and the Thorvaldsen Aphrodite are “too fat” and not bobble-headed enough to sell in today’s market. They’ve been Slim-fasted and Photoshopped (or had ribs removed) because in someone’s opinion, even neo-classic art lovers who would be looking to decorate their homes with reproductions of their favorite pieces would not want to look at such chubby women as artists like Botticelli chose, as models.
(B)before you dash off an impassioned email to the manufacturer, ask yourself this question: IF the company were to refigure the statuettes to fix the problems, would you be willing to make a commitment to support their business by placing an order, and enlisting your friends and family to support their business as well?* By all means, use these images for educational purposes, and to help increase our cultural “visual literacy”. But remember that outrage comes cheap on the internet–finding constructive solutions to problems is harder. Are you a part of the solution, or merely venting personal frustrations?”
*Keep in mind that it’s a manufacturer, with quantity wholesale requirements.
Point taken, and it isn’t as if creative license hasn’t been taken with say the likes of Jesus, but the business of making girls and women feel insecure about what they look like is a very profitable business and the redefining of time trusted images of goddesses is repugnant and very damaging.
Moving on… Make Love Not Porn, is a site developed by Cindy Gallop around the thesis that, “Things are pretty straightforward in the world of hard-core. Real live sex- not so much.” The website offers various porn perceptions versus reality, such as:
Porn World:
- Men love coming on women’s faces, and women love having men come on their faces.
Real World:
- Some women like this, some women don’t. Some guys like to do this, some guys don’t. Entirely up to personal choice.
In an e-mail, Gallop explains her goal in creating the site,
My objective with MLNP is to stimulate an open, healthy discussion about sex to counterbalance the fact that in a culture of puritanism and double standards, where most parents are too embarrassed to speak to their children about sex and educational institutions are not encouraged to implement programs to compensate for this, hard core porn has become, de facto, today’s sex education. I am not anti-porn, in fact I am a fan of porn and watch it regularly myself, but for a number of reasons porn tends to present one world view; porn goes, ‘this is the way sex is’, and I just want to get more people talking, and doing, around the idea of ‘not necessarily’.
Kudos to Gallop for tackling a difficult subject and for doing so in a way that encourages dialog.
Which brings us to the final part of this little triptych of musing on sexuality and the debasement thereof. Raw Story is reporting that Kristin Davis, a New York madam has told ABC News that Wall Street CEO’s, bankers, lawyers and media execs have been paying for the service of her employees at the rate of $2,000 an hour with corporate credit cards. According to Raw Story, names on the madam’s list that have been confirmed by ABC include,
- A vice president of NBC Universal (owned by General Electric)
- The part owner of a Major League Baseball team who “loves Kelsey”
- The CEO of one of the country’s largest private equity firms who met “Cameron” at the Peninsula Hotel
- A major New York real estate developer who, according to the list, “will come to the door wearing women’s panties”
- A partner at the Wall Street law firm Cravath Swaine Moore “looking for a party girl to come fully equipped” and spent a total of $20,000
- An investment banker from Lehman Brothers who saw “Kelsey and Keely together” and later saw “Aria and Skyler at the same time”
- An investment banker at JP Morgan Securities who “loves Brooke” and spent $41,600
- An investment banker at Goldman Sachs who “only wanted all-American girls” and spent $27,000
- A managing director from Merrill Lynch who saw “Lana” using the name “Nataly”
- A managing director from Deutsche Bank “who called about seeing Nataly again”
In other words not only are we getting screwed by Wall Street and the banks, looks like it isn’t just figuratively.
