Summary: The New Face Of Porn

Culture is not static, it changes as people and practices do. To define culture the many ideas and conventions of that constitute culture must be considered. The ideas of place, ideas, and the subcultures that impact contemporary culture are important to consider. Cultural studies takes into account the many facets of culture and utilizes these to answer questions concerning it. Questions can inquire about many aspects of culture. In enquiring about the multitude of ideas that encompass culture, cultural studies questions what culture actually is. Studies of praxis, emotions, sex, and breast cancer are but a few of the themes that are examines in cultural studies. Cultural studies examines the many different aspects of culture that change and

It is a subject that is often considered private, and an inappropriate subject to discuss publicly. Studying sexual habits and depictions of sex, provides insight into a significant characteristic of culture. In studying porn (a consequential aspect of cultural ideologies surrounding sex), as Alison Lee has in her article The New Face of Porn, we can observe how sex is packaged, perceived, and sold, in this culture. Lee describes her experience working in the porn industry and how it changed her, “seeing the world of Big Porn showed me that not only are women left out, but men are presented with an incredibly bland palate to work from and to mold their own sexuality.”(Lee). If the options that heterosexual women have for pornography are limited and the options for men are ‘bland’ then it suggests that sexuality is flat. It suggests that all men will generally enjoy the same thing while all women will not wish to consume porn. This informs the misleading ideologies that are often present in culture about sexuality. In studying the misleading conceptions of sex, often supported and established by the porn industry, a dimension of sexuality can be examined in defining culture. When we dig into what we consider erotic or sexual and our emotion’s impact on that, we are inevitably analyzing culture and what it

In the study of breast cancer culture, we can observe the practices and emotions that occur around this specific illness. Breast cancer culture is composed of pink ribbons, overwhelming media support, and insistent positivity (Ehrenreich, Pezzullo). This culture Ehrenreich observes belittling and ‘infantilizing’ (46 Ehrenreich) aspects of this culture from a patient’s point of view. She attempts to ascertain the reasons behind this in her article, Welcome to