I GET COMMENTS

"'I am a journalist.'

Apparently not. A journalist would have found out how people can become male porn stars for an article called 'How Do I Become a Male Porn Star?' Frankly, you sound like a real whiner, not a journalist. While I agree, leaving aside the whole Boy Name Sue thing, Susannah sounds more likely to be the name of a woman than a man, it seem a quibble at best. In the military and in many places, women are often called 'sir' out of respect for their rank or place in the hierarchy. To quibble that your many correspondence didn't address you precisely in the manner you would have preferred or couldn't even write correct English (a stone I would not through in the glass house of Salon) seems to completely ignore the obvious sincerity of their request. Your response? To belittle and demean their dream and to completely ignore them. 

No, not a journalist."

[Salon]

SO YOU WANT TO BE A MALE PORN STAR

I've got a new piece up on Salon about all the emails I get from men who want to be porn stars.

In 2012, I wrote a post for my Forbes blog about how hard it is to be a male porn star. Since, that post has gotten over 1M views, and every week I receive emails from men who've read it who think I can tell them how to be porn stars.

I post the emails, which I continue to get, here.

"The men who email me do not remind me of male porn stars I have known. I have seen woodsmen work. I have had conversations with men who work in porn during which they were naked, sweaty and dribbling spunk from scenes in which they had just performed. I flirted with them, and I wrote down the things they said in a notebook. I liked them. They were tanned, chiseled, waxed. They were smooth talkers, women worshipers, looking for love. You could describe the feelings I had toward them as a kind of romantic longing, one that is never meant to be realized. They appeared suspended between male adolescence and adulthood, caught in the net of those pubescent days when sex is everything, girls are an obsession, and showing what a stud you are makes you the king of your brethren. As grown-ups, they had enslaved themselves to our collective masculine ideal, forever trying to fulfill it, forever failing to do so. They were at war with themselves, their cocks their weapons, a semen-stained sofa in a rented mansion atop a hill in the San Fernando Valley their chosen battlefield – for reasons that, in the end, escaped me, a woman."

[Salon]

$100 BOXERS

MarketWatch has a report on a new line of men's underwear that retails for $100 a pop.

"But what distinguishes a $100 pair from the kind you purchase in a three-pack at a big-box store for less than 20 bucks? Begin with a high-end microfiber fabric (mainly nylon) and high-tech design that includes 'mesh zones' plus 'laser-cut vents' in the rear. The idea is to keep things, well, cool. 'We made sure that we used the most breathable construction,' says Frigo exec Mathias Ingvarsson, who’s best known as one of the entrepreneurs behind the Tempur-Pedic mattress brand. But also key to the product is an interior mesh pouch that separates a man’s 'package,' as Matthew Butlein, president of underwear retailer Freshpair.com, delicately puts it. (Freshpair is the exclusive online source for the $100 pair.) Not only does that help prevent sweating — by virtue of avoiding 'skin on skin,' says Butlein — it also offers more support. (And it’s adjustable support, too — there’s an elastic band that controls the degree of lift and separation.)"

Apparently, Derek Jeter is a fan.

[MarketWatch]

MORE BUNNY

The rest of the Kate Moss for Playboy spread is online, and it's awesome. [This Isn't Happiness]

FUCK WINTER

Romenesko is getting into meteorology: "Weather forecast is dickish." [Romenesko]

I GET EMAIL

"whatever .any wards u hear about your self thay not can give you the real words about your breaty  and i cant say aword exept you are the sex gades"

PINK AR-15

I had an interesting time doing this post for my Forbes blog on a new pink AR-15. It's made by SIG Sauer. I would like to shoot an AR-15 but haven't had a chance to do so yet.

"More women are taking up arms for a variety of reasons, she says: they’re interested in self-defense, they’re living alone or single mothers, they want to learn how to shoot. Curious to 'see what else is out there,' some women who’ve mastered handguns are buying bigger, badder guns. On the shooting range, an AR-15 can be a 'status symbol.' She owns a purple Bushmaster AR-15. 'It’s my own personal stamp on my gun,' she says. 'It makes it mine.'"

[Forbes]

WORK IT

"I guess it feels like a lot of pressure to be up for anything all the time, like a porn star."

[Refinery 29]

KATE MOSS, PLAYBOY [UPDATED]

Fashion Copious has the first peek I've seen of the Kate Moss-covered January/February 2014 60th anniversary issue of Playboy.

Additional images posted to the Instagram account of photographers Mert and Marcus indicate there's an "Exclusive Marc Jacobs" edition that features a different photo of Moss, this one with more bottom.

Update: Here's a better shot of the cover and some of the pics inside.

[Fashion Copious]

ALL THE NEWS THAT'S UNFIT TO PRINT: 11.30.13

Maybe you did

"How did you first realize that you had a big dick?" [The Hairpin]

The mile-high club comes with a very discreet pilot. [Gizmodo]

Maybe You Touched Your Genitals Hand Sanitizer [PandoDaily]

How a woman in a Nascar pit crew works out. [NYT]

This infomercial isn't selling you a blender. [Twitter]

Tito Ortiz traded in Jenna Jameson for this babe. [Instagram]

Neanderthals were swingers. [New York Post]

Stick out your tongue. [WSJ]

Car porn. [Forbes]

But who will wear the naked Oprah dress to the Oscars? [The Cut]

What condoms and fish skin have in common. [Death and Taxes]

"This is about capitalism." [The Price of Sex]

Git 'er. [GIF]

The MPAA does not like your female sexual pleasure. [Defamer]

Fuck the earth. [Craigslist]

Bands Who Posed Topless Together for Album Covers. [Daze Reader]

This is the dope game. [Newcity]

Chuck Palahniuk is a fan of Sex Criminals. [Twitter]

Japan cannot get enough of your porn. [Mike South]

Nice Face but the Cunt? considered. [Blog]

WHAT'S NOT THERE

Earlier this week, the New York Times had a nip slip on its front page, above the fold. The photo, by Rina Castelnuovo, of a woman's breast, her areola partly exposed, offended some, likely titillated others. The image served as a companion piece to a story on Israel's high breast cancer rate and the complicated question as to what to do about it.

For me, the image may as well have been a selfie. From November 2011 to April 2013, I underwent treatment for early-stage breast cancer. Today, I'm cancer-free and not expected to recur. (Knock on wood.)

During my treatment, I took my camera with me often. Anyone undergoing protracted medical treatment knows intimately the copious amounts of time one spends in between places: waiting rooms carpeted in odd patterns, examining rooms hung with limp blood pressure cuffs, mechanical beds preparing to feed you into doughnut-shaped devices that scan you from stem to stern. 

I used my camera to preoccupy, distract, relax myself. The medical industrial complex is a system in which things are done to you. I suppose raising the camera was my way of feeling like I was in control. Which, of course, I wasn't.

There is nothing less erotic than the announcement of a personal malignancy. Suddenly, it occurs to you that the two flesh pads affixed to your front are not what you thought they were. They are trying to kill you.

Your breasts are debated by two people in white coats standing in front of you as you watch in silence. Your breasts are punctured by needles and the tissue cored like apple flesh as you lay face-down on a cold metal table. Your breasts are sliced open on an operating table so a surgeon can peer inside and extract what's gone wrong with you. Your breasts are sutured, bandaged, and sent home, where they inflame, ooze fluids, and take on shapes not found in nature. Your breasts reveal to you a great irony: what makes you female could be what exterminates you.

Today, I've formed a tentative alliance with my breasts. In bed, late at night, I wonder, Can I trust you? Mammograms provide an answer. So far, Yes.

Discussing the Times photo, I asked my husband if my breast cancer had changed his relationship to my breasts.

"It's just some cells," he said. "It's not all of you."

TEACHING SEX

Dr. Jason Winters, a professor at the University of British Columbia, teaches the very popular, sex-focused PSYCH 350: "The Psychological Aspects of Human Sexuality."

The course has a companion blog, which mentions several projects I've done, Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls.

His past research includes a "'boner-measuring' phase," during which "[I measured] sex response in sex offenders." 

[The Ubyssey]

FREE WHAT?

The Busy Body

When you run a strip club, signage is everything.

"A Southern Indiana strip club is getting a pretty sweet amount of publicity thanks to some creative wordplay and an angry response from locals. The Busybody Lounge in Evansville, Ind. was ordered by local police to take down a sign displaying 'free blow job with private dance.'"

[Chicagoist]

SHE'S A ROBOT

Porn stars Charlotte Stokely and Xander Corvus star in Destructo's "Technology." [YouTube]

CHINA'S LONELY MEN

The New York Times has a report on the rise and increased openness of sex culture in China. The Guangzhou National Sex Culture Festival was overrun by men in a country that makes over 3/4ths of the world's sex toys.

I went to China three times in the last year, and I wouldn't say sex is exactly high-visibility there. You do find shops selling adult toys not infrequently, but the stores are more like the sex version of a head shop: random items on shelves manned by bored salespeople.

It's a far cry from the marriage market in Shanghai's People's Park, where I wandered amidst parents camped out with folding chairs and umbrellas to find the perfect mate for their unwed offspring.

[NYT]

SHE BLUNTED

I had a lot of fun doing this piece for my Forbes blog: "For Marijuana Smokers, A Weed Manicure Is High Fashion." Kat was my gateway drug to what she's deemed a "weedicure." That's a manicure with real ganja in it.

Kat's shows off her "weedicure"

"'I told her I wanted to do that, and she told me, "Bring your own green,"' Kat explains. 'We just took a bud, and broke it up small enough that it wouldn’t be too lumpy, and then mixed it with acrylic powder and green, gold, and orange glitter. It’s the same process as getting an acrylic set with glitter tips, except with pot. I wanted to add orange and gold glitter, and I love how it looks like kief.'"

I spent quite a bit of time searching Instagram for chicks with #weednails, talked to a guy who lobbies for pot in DC, and checked out Dzine's bootleg nail salon.

Nope, I didn't get a dope set -- yet.

[Forbes]