Here’s part of a brilliant article by Jon Bershad for Mediaite.com about Playboy TV’s new “Porn Women Will Actually Watch” show:

“Many, including my mother, have tried to explain to me how Playboy is insulting to women. I’ve never really understood it. Then, a month ago, Playboy TV announced it was developing a new series that was specifically designed to increase their female demographic. Today, the first ad for one such show, Brooklyn Kinda Love, appeared and we can now see what Playboy TV thinks women like: inane, reality television. Oh, now I get it. That is insulting.

Yeah, for everyone who watches reality shows like Jersey Shore and thinks to themselves, “Man, this is a totally good way for me to spend my time on Earth but I sure wish I could see the genitals of these walking disasters,” Playboy TV has the show for you. It’s a series that follows four typical Brooklyn couples. You know the type: young, tattooed, and willing to have sex on camera for the financial gain of a giant corporation. Basically, you could have scooped any of them off the L Train and they’d be like that. However, most importantly, in between all that uncensored sex, they’ll be talking about relationships and feelings and stuff for all the ladies in the audience…”

Full article and trailer for “Brooklyn Kinda Love” here.

It’s official. Burlesque has become mainstream.

Christina Aguilera and Cher now star in a film called “Burlesque” that looks both titillating and deeply depressing in equal measure. As with Pro-Domming and any other industry that walks a difficult tightrope between exploitation and empowerment, modern burlesque can veer between the genuinely brilliant performances of those who remain true to its intended spirit, and the distasteful, degrading nonsense that often trades under its name.

The Channel 4 comedy “PhoneShop” captured this perfectly in one episode when the chaps were attempting to invite a woman to join them at the “chicken and tits for three quid” night  –

“Now it seems like a wet t-shirt contest, yeah, but to be truthful with you, it’s more like a… a… burlesque type thing,” says Jerwayne, staring down her top.

Ashley agrees.“It’s… like… your opportunity to advance positive perceptions of female empowerment in… like… a bi-gender context, you get me? Plus, there’s chicken.”

“And a free dildo,” adds Jerwayne.

Quite. Laurie Penny wrote an excellent and provocative article for the Graun this week, headed “This jiggle-fest has nothing to do with sex or power”. I’d recommend giving it a read before making your mind up either way.

In the meantime, here’s the trailer:

What do you think?

From Expatica.com – ‘Archaeologist of erotica’ revives lost world of brothels:

‘The sign hung at 12, rue Chabanais, in the days when the building housed the most prestigious of Paris’ infamous bordellos, read “Welcome to the Chabanais: The House of All Nations”

PARIS – With the brothels closed down 60 years ago, nowadays the skinny eight-storey building on a tiny street near the Louvre houses an employment agency and a bunch of flats. But right across the road, at number 11, a gallery is keeping its memories alive.

Nicole Canet, who runs a gallery-cum-boutique of erotic pictures and historic sex toys, is holding an exhibition there on the heyday of France’s legendary “maisons closes”, or authorised brothels.

“I love going back in time, playing detective,” Canet, a 50-something former dancer, told AFP.

Along with a selection of whips in rhino-horn and other suggestive bits and pieces, the show revisits the life of the brothels from 1860 to their forced closure in 1946 in some 400 old photographs, etchings and books.

The Chabanais, for one, was a routine stopover for foreign dignitaries, who would be sneaked in secretly by French government officials. One of its most distinguished visitors was Britain’s “Bertie”, then Prince of Wales and soon to become King Edward VII.

“Bertie” had his own room there, as well as a giant copper bath — with a half-woman half-swan figurehead — that he liked to fill with champagne before jumping in, and a so-called “love-seat”, a weird contraption said to be for threesomes.

Worlds apart from sordid back-rooms in cheap hotels, the high society brothels evoked in the show were luxury palaces with sumptuous decors designed to cater to any fantasy.

Old photographs of Le Chabanais show the entrance hall decked out like a primitive cave in bare stone. But inside, each room and parlour came with its own plush decor, from 18th century splendour to Moorish or Japanese overtones.

“The Indian room was for the Prince of Wales,” Canet said. “The Chabanais was practically a national monument, it was listed as a site to see by the travel agencies.”

The brothels combined the lure of private pleasures with chic bars and restaurants for party-goers, attracting stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Mae West and Marlene Dietrich — whose favourite was the One Two Two, named after its address at 122 rue de Provence.

Photographer Robert Doisneau shot a series of elegant bedrooms and four-posters in the “One Two Two”, which offered couples a musketeers’ room, an African room, a pirate’s room, a chamber of mirrors, and, like most of the high-end brothels, a torture chamber.

Writer Marcel Proust, whose tastes were male-inclined, joined other financiers in investing in two of the city’s specialist brothels for men. The houses generally turned a good profit and some of its owners were creme de la creme society people.

On the cultural front, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who spent much of his time and drew much of his inspiration in the Paris brothels, offered Le Chabanais 16 paintings depicting male and female centaurs for the Pompeii room.

Along with crops for spanking and erotic door-knockers, a large old-fashioned wooden box fitted with lenses known as a stereoscope is on show. It enabled patrons to view pictures of the girls on offer.

In most houses, tokens rather than cash were used to avoid problems.

With almost scientific rigour, Canet has meticulously scoured the lost world of the brothels for the show and for a book, from its lingerie, to its tokens, literature and specialist painters and photographers.

“I can tell from the backdrop now which photographer took which picture, even when there is no name,” she said. “And I’ve discovered there were probably only five men in Paris who posed for photographers specialising in men.”

After collecting old erotica photos and selling them at a Paris flea market stand when she gave up life as a cabaret artiste a decade ago , Canet — “by chance”, she says — opened her gallery opposite the site of Le Chabanais.

“I love going back in time, discovering the stories behind the pictures,” said Canet, who has walked the city checking addresses on old documents.

“It is the work of an archaeologist,” she said

Regretfully, the one item missing in her collection is a copy of the famed “Guide Rose”, or Pink Guide, a slim pocket-size list of establishments of pleasure “in Paris, the Provinces, the Colonies”.

“I know two old grandfathers who have copies, but they won’t sell. They’re rare and people just won’t part with them.”‘

Original article here.