So the last 24 have had me corresponding with a few people in the sex-blogosphere and elsewhere about HD and HDV and focal length and focal plane and zits and razor-burn and genital herpes, and what it all might mean to the collision of sex and the moving image.

Well guess what? It’s time to back up again.

I’m old enough that I can remember when seeing a shaved pussy in a girlie magazine was a still a novelty. I remember thinking, “Wow! That’s so brazen! That’s so hot!” The idea that a woman would purposely remove her pubic hair to afford me a better look at her so secret place was positively captivating. There was wonderful lewdness about a carefully depilated pussy presented for my enjoyment, and sometimes there still is.

Just not as much as there used to be.

Shaved beaver has become de rigor in porn. Women with pubic hair have been come a specialty item, what ‘the industry’ calls a fetish; so much so that that sites featuring “natural models” frequently feature women who quite obviously use a razor on a daily basis. (I guess what that means is that it’s natural to have the pubic hair off your thighs, but unnatural to shave it off your cuntlips.)

Not let’s back up again.

Once upon a time I used to be a food photographer. Not a great food photographer, but not a bad one either. I was good enough at it that my food photos in magazines and books and I got paid decently do to it. Food photography is persnickety. Cheese and chocolate take on a weird look if they’re left out too long, meat looks an unappetizing pinkish grey if it’s not styled and lit properly, and a zillion other little things that can make food photos look positively revolting.

At the same time that I was a food photographer I was also making a lot of rude pictures of my girlfriend. She liked spreading her legs for the camera and I liked turning the Hasselblad on her and making Penthouse-like images of her lovely, uncoy nakedness (Playboy was too tame, Hustler was too over-lit,) and that included taking close-ups of her very beautiful, very pink, very delicately formed pussy (which, rather daringly back then, was sometimes shaved.)

Pussy (and other sex parts for that matter,) are like food. Photographed beautifully and all you can think about is eating the picture. Photographed poorly and you lose your appetite. A beautiful food photograph will change your shopping list. A beautiful pussy photo will give you a boner. But an unflattering, uncrafted image of pinkish-grey meat won’t do either. It’s off-putting, or even revolting.

One of the easiest solutions is simply not to show things that aren’t any fun to look at. That’s why some actors are only show in close-up from one side. That’s why some pornstars forever seem to have something around–a corset, a scarf– around their waist. It covers the c-section scar, or appendectomy scar, or whatever.

Do you suppose the hideous gaze of HD(V) is going to mean we’ll see more pubic hair in porn? Will porn finally turn corner and start experimenting with eroticism of (at least sometimes) showing less?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 8:09 am and is filed under Filmcraft, HD, erotica, pornography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.