Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

60 stella viljoen
there is still a warning of potential harm built into this label. In the
light of the subtly-nuanced aestheticism of GQ, it is clear that the
many variations of ‘soft-porn’ cannot simply be ‘cut and pasted’ into
the discourse on explicit, violent or ‘hard-core’ pornography. At the
same time, there are certain unmistakable similarities between the
various forms of pornographic media that render them all, soft or
hard, pornography.
The perception that gentleman's pornography, whether the canonised
art of the gallery or the commercialised ‘art’ of GQ, is harmless
because it is more subtle than conventional pornography, is a flawed
one. It is a perception that resulted from the notion that the extent
to which sexualised material is harmful, should be measured in terms
of how much it ‘shows’, instead of the message it communicates.
Gentlemen's pornography differs from conventional pornography in a
number of ways, but the message that it conveys is essentially the
same: the objectification of women. The extent to which this message
is ‘harmful’, within conventional pornography, is the extent to which
it is harmful in GQ.