I agree with all the other commenters who say th tea image is hilarious. I love it!

Want to find me some examples of Jezebel being a) pro-porn and b) supportive of female sexual submissive fantasies?

What I see when I look at these pics (ads) are glimpses in the lives of some highly sensual people who are in their prime. I don’t see how anyone would have a problem with these ads, they are gorgeous eye candy (but am I the only one who likes the guy with long hair?) If people are going to call all pictures of (semi)-naked people porn then they should be trying to ban art museums and figure drawing classes.

Besides where is the “fun” in sex if there is no power transfer?

By way of contributing further to the thread, I just found an interesting fashion photo featuring a non-fetishy woman in a very dominant pose over four huge muscular men. Possibly of interest:

http://www.erosblog.com/2010/11/17/the-modern-empress/

Thank you, Violet, for critiquing ‘pseudo-feminists’ (ie, sex-negative puritans?) who are seemingly trying to constantly shame those of us who are apparently more sexually adventurous … not afraid to explore D/s … and currently feeling/being ‘shamed’ for this, especially by other women …

Also, very much like Sir Jaeris’ comment above …

Overall I find them pretty hot, but I look at a lot of European fashion photography and the details here are fairly standard. I too would really LOVE to see a CFNM version of this — that is something that not only floats my boat, but would balance out the bias toward women on the bottom. Though I don’t know if I entirely agree that the women here are all on the bottom, yet I know that is my read on the images.

There is a subtext of a fetish at work here I initially saw but didn’t include in my post. With other educators, especially at SFSI.org I’ve gotten into deep discussions about the element of “not caring” rife in a number of fetishes — this here is seen as “cool” and perceived as self-absorption. It’s strong in fetishes like smoking: when smoking is the core exchange in sex work, for instance. There is a lot of agreement, among professionals and sex workers, that the turn-on for the non-smoker is that the girl is ignoring them.

Fascinating, no?

At any rate, my main issue was that Jezebel was so reactionary and judgmental, and damn anti-porn about the whole thing. It really struck me that this should be called into question and I wanted to see us decide for ourselves. I wanted to measure Jezebel. Turns out they don’t speak for a lot of us.

As for the marketing ploy of racy ads and creating drama for blog posts, I see it here and I see it all the time. I weigh that every time I send someone traffic. There was a bigger issue here, and I also thought the work was good fantasy material, worthy of a post.

Personally, I am hugely turned off by the guy with the beard, his facial expressions are not hot either, but I recognize that he is a Continental European “type.” Me want John Hamm! I think the biggest drawback, for me, besides the beard guy, is the fur coat. Fur is not hot for me, anyway.

I myself identify as a largely submissive polysexual woman (in a relationship with a dominant guy at the moment), so I do like these on a personal level, but at the same time I do find it problematic that popular depictions of dominance/submission tend towards male dominant/female submissive. The few times a woman is shown dominant, it is in a highly fetishized “dominatrix” style, not, like this, a confident, business-like, woman in charge. It’s as if, for a woman to be shown dominant, she must be obviously different, fetishized, othered. And often played up for laughs or shock value.

It is not the ads out of context that are problematic, but the context wherein male dom/female sub -and pretty much only that combination – is portrayed as expected.

That being said, do you ever see like a Chanel ad with a gang of besuited women and a half naked man in distress? Not that there has to be a gender reversed version for an ad to be ethical, but I can see how if you’re not inclined to ID with the submissive it could be annoying how it’s always the men wearing the suits in fetishy advertising. (Unless there actually is a women in Chanel suits ad that I haven’t seen.)

I disagree that women in submissive, sexualized roles in media inherently means something different now than it did 20 years ago. Sexism looks a hell of a lot different today than it did in 1965 or 1990, thank god, but it and its sex-negative influence on when and how women must be sexualized unfortunately haven’t gone anywhere. A lot of women have “taken the power as their own,” but I think we’ have a long way to go before that’s universal or even necessarily the norm. We’re not there yet. We shouldn’t pretend that’s not happening and that that’s not where things are heading (I’m looking at you, Jezebel), but I don’t think we should pretend we’re there yet.

So I disagree with that, but I disagree SO MUCH HARDER with Jezebel’s take that women being sexual in media is inherently negative, or that porn=bad. That’s just puritanical, anti-woman sex-negativism in feminist sheep’s clothing, and it’s not cool.

For those who don’t know Suitsupply; they successfully sell Italian styled and tailored suits for a decent price. They are a known brand to business professionals in Holland.

I think it’s a lot like looking at photos from Kink.com – where an alternate universe exists, with fantasy for men and women becoming explicit in images.

I guess my typical male-ness is taking me over, because I don’t agree with Jezebel, but I also don’t read them because anything by gawker media these days is just crap to get page views.

Personally these don’t look all that dominant/submissive to me, looks more like ‘fun’

The images would make great paid display advertising in fashion magazines or on blogs.

But I’ve grown weary of publishing this sort of thing on my own blog as part of manufactured controversy. I HAZ IDEA! says the viral marketing guy at the agency. “We’ll shoot some edgy shit or other, we won’t actually place it anywhere that costs money, but we’ll leak it or put it on our facebook. Then when people start complaining about how transgressive it is all over the internet, we’ll pull it again and make some lame apology, which will trigger another wave of reposts. It will be everywhere and it will be awesome and best of all, it won’t cost us hardly anything except the cost of the photoshoot!”

I’ve fallen for it many a time; I still fall for it from time to time when the images are tasty enough. But increasingly, I resent the manipulation, and have come to feel that I we should withhold our attention until these marketers grow desperate enough to come to us like grownups and place these images with us on a paid basis as advertisements.

None of this pics are overtly offensive to me. It’s the dark haired man’s facial expressions that ruin the dom/submissive vibe for me–for example, in the first picture he looks like he’s never seen a naked woman before! I can see why Jezebel was annoyed because the stuff they have him doing is rude and/or silly: why is he just looking up her skirt? The one where we see the reflection of her naked in the window could be a great scenario, but she looks *way* more in control of the situation than he does!

The dude with the ponytail looks like he might actually understand a little bit about how to be toppy, especially in the picture where he’s considering the woman’s ass. He could be thinking, “The crop? Or maybe a nice piece of ginger…”

I’m not sure what to make of these pics. I think the issue is that a suit is associated with work and business so there’s a “boss” implication. Yet none of the scenes are located in an office, except perhaps the first one – but she’s in distinctly sexual clothing there.

I’m not sure whether I like them or not. I suspect the ones where the guy looks bored are the less appealing ones. The one with the fur coat and the one with the g-string do have a certain frission that is nice.

On a side note, I’m rather partial to beards and ponytails.