I, am a man. And, being a man, I love the boobies. Yes yes I do. Mm mmm... For getting me all stirred up there ain't nothin' like the frame of a dame. So, praise be for the internet, which was invented with the singular purpose of cataloguing every conceivable configuration of feminine body parts in billions of bountiful pixels.
Kids today don't know how good they have it. When I was but a verdant scampful of sexual whimsy, the only release for my swelling manly tension was the mail order catalogue. At that time, women were delicately curved and a softly lit tan, sweetly wrapped in floral swimwear. And I remember well the long, late nights when my parents went out. I would watch European art-house films on Channel 4, straining my eyes in silence, like a pervy leopard just inches from that elusive flash of nipple. Now, with a few swift clicks of a mouse, young men have access to every female angle. Lucky little sods.
The female body is unequivocally the most beautiful thing a heter man could ever see. The Taj Mahal is an ugly stump; the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, an embarrassing daub; the sunset in the desert, a red blotch over some dust. The world in all its complexity and majesty is but a mouldy turnip, and nothing to a woman's rolling hills and dales.
On a recent trip to Brighton, Danny and I stumbled upon an exhibition of photography. Its advertisement displayed a partially naked young lady, so I suggested to Danny that we should investigate further. The photographs were the work of that same semi-nude twenty year old, who called herself Miss Aniela, and all were self portraits. The whole exhibition came across as massively narcissistic and viewing it felt voyeuristic, like looking through a window onto another life.
The photographs themselves were good. I know little about photography, but clearly they were the work of a person developing their craft, experimenting with angles, poses, lighting, colours and effects. All were very attractive and some, quite striking; however, I could not help but feel the main reason I liked them so much was the artist and subject herself.
I was not alone in this feeling. In fact, the exhibition had come about as an extension of Miss Aniela's collection on flickr.com, which had attracted some attention. It is obvious the photographs have much artistic merit, but also obvious they are slightly erotic in their moodiness and nudiness, and as such they raise many questions about privacy and the body which on the flickr fora created an art versus pornography debate.
My personal wrangle was this: do I like the pictures only because they have a pretty girl in them? After much thought, I decided, no - I like many qualities of the pictures. But then: do I like them so much only because of the girl? The answer to this is yes, which begs the further question: are they somehow lesser than other works because they use the cheap trick of including a pretty girl? I would argue, no.
Art is always about the beautiful - even art which is deliberately ugly, is ugly in a beautiful way - and throughout history, the image of beauty has been the human body, sometimes male, sometimes female. Of course we find human bodies beautiful - we are human. It is therefore natural that great art will include great bodies. It is also natural that a great body will be sexually arousing; otherwise we'd never get down to it.
I therefore find Miss Aniela's work beautiful, and simultaneously I find it sexual. These two responses come naturally together: art can be arousing, and porn can be beautiful. In the "is it art or porn" debate, there is really no decision to make. The best of both must be both.
