A high-profile article appeared in the Sunday Times about
the slew of racy student-produced publications that have been launched in
recent years.
Numerous universities, including Vassar, Columbia, Harvard, and BU, have seen students
found publications, either magazines or online, which feature other students in
erotic and sometimes pornographic photos. This is nothing particularly
novel—college has long been a time of sexual experimentation in the lives of
those privileged enough to have the chance to attend. What’s new is that now
this experimental phase is being documented and disseminated.
One would think that the sober intent to produce and
circulate these images would belie a new generation which flouts sexual mores
and embraces experimentation. Yet what comes across more strongly in these
magazines is evidence that this generation is interested in trying to flout
sexual mores, but can’t quite do it—perhaps for lack of courage, but I would
argue it’s more for lack of awareness and savvy.
The utter naïveté of many of the students interviewed,
including editors of the magazines themselves, struck me most. With the
exception of Boink (Boston University), the founders
of these magazines, which all feature some configuration of erotic photos of
students, articles, and fiction, expressed the desire to limit their audience
to the student body itself:
“We try to limit unwanted exposure as much as we can,” wrote
[Squirm’s] current editor, Sarah Fraser (Vassar), in an e-mail message. “It’s
one thing to know you’re posing nude or writing erotica for an insulated
campus, and understandably quite another to know it’s being disseminated
widely.”
After a brief initial flurry of publicity, Kimi Traube, one of
Outlet’s (Harvard) founders, began declining interviews from noncampus press.
“We’re flattered by all the attention but have decided it’s best for the
magazine to focus our energies on the Columbia community,” she said, also via e-mail. The current editor of H Bomb, Ming
Vandenberg , is especially concerned about the security of the magazine’s
content on the Web.
Imagine this—despite having grown up with the Internet,
television, and IMing, these students imagine that they can take a naked photo
of themselves, publish it in a magazine or online, and expect that it will
only be circulated within their close geographical and demographic vicinity.
Shocking!
That’s what always bothered me about college. It provides an environment in
which one feels like one is doing important, real-world activities—establishing
living quarters, making friends, navigating a town-like environment,
accomplishing piles of work—and yet at the same time it’s all so contrived that
it almost negates these very activities. (Is flopping around in the ball pit at
the McDonald’s Playland really learning to swim?) One starts to feel so safe
and secure in the little collegiate bubble that one forgets that there is a
real world out there with real consequences (not just a C on a paper).
This false security leads to boldness. Students undertake
supposedly risqué projects within this safe, protected environment under the
delusion that they have any control at all over the dissemination of content.
With this, I bestow to the world of ill-prepared fresh-faced
young adults, The Golden Rule of Making Porn: If you’re not ok with the entire
world (including your mom, your dad, your boss and your grandparents) seeing a
particular photo of yourself, don’t publish it anywhere. Anywhere. Not even on
your Facebook profile. (To quote Dan Savage, Once an Internet porn star, always
an Internet porn star.)
Furthermore, I fail to see what’s so liberating about posing
for a naked photo, then giving a shit about who sees said photo. Isn’t the
point that you’re flouting social convention by performing this act? Doing
damage control after performing this act of “liberation” seems to undermine the
entire point.
I have to hand it to Boink, however.
The magazine itself is pretty boring, as was its launch party (according to a
friend who attended). But its founder is putting her money where her mouth is,
posing for the first issue and welcoming any and all media attention. The staff
of Boink is coming out with a book early next year, entitled BOINK: College
Sex by the People Having It (published by Warner Books, a division of
Hachette). I’ll definitely check it out….maybe I can finally learn what sex is
like in college…
