Thoughts on women and pornography

In the last few years a new generation of women have begun to make themselves felt. Women who have grown up with another attitude to their own bodies and sexuality than used to be the norm. Advertising agencies have been using the male body as a sex symbol along the same lines as the female body for ages, and male striptease acts playing to packed houses emphasise that there are women with the courage to say out loud that they enjoy looking at a beautiful man’s body. This tendency has not yet seriously made its mark in the arts or the pornographic movie.

Traditionally, the blue movie has always been directed exclusively at male wishes and fantasies. So traditional productions tend to be played out in a world that represses women, where the male is all-dominant, drags the woman round by the hair and subjects her to one degrading act after another. Indications are that the general lack of interest shown by women in sexually explicit movies is not so much because they are put off by seeing sex depicted graphically, but by the degrading situations that are inevitably associated with pornography.

The time has come to recognise that women can do and want to do more than has been acknowledged hitherto, and that women can do more and want to do more as regards pornography. There is an increasing tendency for couples to watch sexually explicit material together as a source of mutual inspiration, and it has become completely acceptable to say out loud that women can be sexually stimulated by watching sex depicted in ways that make room for their own kinds of fantasies. But there aren’t really any products on the market that consider the woman’s point of view as regards these areas.

To meet this need we intend to produce a series of films that present sensuality (or sexually explicit material, if you like) in a way that appeals to women. To serve this end, a group of women have drawn up a statement (see below) on what women would like to see and what they would not like to see in sensual/pornographic movies. This statement is intended to be the “dogma” for Puzzy Power’s productions.

Other characteristic traits of our output will be proper plots and artistic content, featuring three-dimensional characters. The whole film unit will be made up of “real” filmmakers who are used to working on fiction for the cinema.

Our films will primarily be produced with a view to video and television distribution. They will not initially be aimed at cinema audiences, but each will be made so that a decision on cinema release may be taken when the time is ripe.

The films will be marketed as trendy and “in”, a product you’ll be happy to have on your coffee table or video shelf.

Puzzy Power, July 1998