On a certain level it’s obvious to say that not everything sexy is porn. But last week, the writer Magdalene Taylor wrote a smart story pointing out that, as pornography has become more commonplace in our culture, the difference has dissolved for a lot of people. There was a lot to untangle, so we caught up with her for more—including her favorite sexy movie.
When you pitched this story, I knew exactly what you were talking about, but it's also such an abstract concept. How did you make this idea concrete?
Porn itself has always been a “you know when you see it” or “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck” type of thing. But it’s also obvious that something is off right now about how we’re perceiving sexuality in general. And so it was one of those things that just seems so obvious, but it did take a really long time to articulate what that is.
I think about the OnlyFans creator who flashed the portal to Dublin, which is like porn in some ways, but also the least sexual thing you can imagine. And I guess that's just what our culture is now.
That moment in particular is a really good encapsulation of all of this because it speaks to how much the medium is impacting all of this. The phenomenon of women flashing their boobs is like, truly not new, but we didn't previously see it as this deterioration of the fabric of society. But social media has made all of this so immediate—it has led to the sense that everything that we're seeing is like happening to us personally, and nothing is in the right place. That's part of what has made it sort of a puzzle that we each individually have to solve, like, am I looking at porn right now?
This has led to the idea that “everything is porn.”
It's an unhealthy way of looking at the world to view everything as pornographic, whether that interpretation is from the perspective of enjoying that everything is porn or from this puritanical perspective of fear and aggression towards anything sexy. It doesn't lend to a healthy sexual culture or like a healthy individual sexuality to look at the world that way.
How should we fight back, do you think?
I guess it’s just: Try to foster an appreciation of the differences between porn and sexiness—and beauty more generally! Appreciate that there are different layers to it.
In the piece you mentioned liking sexy movies. Do you have one to recommend?
It’s certainly not going to be everybody's definition, but David Cronenberg's Crash, from 1996, is my favorite sexy movie. Also just broadly, I would say like almost anything with James Spader in it. Secretary is a bit more traditionally sexy but also very bizarre. I just love James Spader.
Read and share Magdalene’s story.
