“Will my sex life be better, post-pornstar?”
2022 campaign image from Black Lines.
A pornstar martini. It curls my lip, despite being totally delicious (although let’s bin off the cheap prosecco chaser). It’s almost too self-aware; what am I supposed to think, sipping it? That I’m pornstar enough to drink it? That the only people who drink it are indeed pornstars? That my sex life is going to be better after drinking it?
According to Black Lines, the cocktail started life as the Maverick Martini but sparked demand in 2002 with its provocative new moniker. As the employee-owned indie pre-batched cocktail brand says:
“No one knew exactly why, but it was the turn of the century and everyone was reasonably bonkers: the Beckhams, Sienna Miller, LimeWire; the Pornstar was in good company.
“What started out life as an elegant and purposeful combination of vodka, vanilla, passion fruit and lime quickly became one of the usual suspects across sticky dives and tacky cocktail bars.”
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? As soon as you start overtly sexualising anything, it leers quickly down a grubby path where it’s not sexy any more. It’s skeevy.
Passion project
I started writing this collection to get away from the gloss and get back to raw. Real people, real stories that don’t shy away from the darker side of human nature.
Black Lines’ shift to rebrand the pornstar martini to passionfruit martini and “reverse the effects of a muddled path to its halcyon days as a classy serve” got me thinking … what else covers up a seedy underbelly with a glossy patina? And what’s a little more sex-positive and forward-thinking?
As they say, form is temporary, class is permanent.
Sexynotsexy
Women’s Halloween costumes. While not everyone takes Samhain as seriously as the Celts (although the underlying charge of danger and supernatural possibilities of 31 October could easily warrant a private threat fantasy) these over-sexualised outfits are peak crass. Sexy witch. Sexy vampire/cat/nurse/axe murderer. Fuck off. I want to look scary, that’s the entire point of it, no?
The first six hits in Ecosia images as I wrote this post and typed in ‘women’s Halloween costumes’
The blank-eyed women in the Addicted to Love music video. I saw this for the first time last Christmas (and only then made the connection between the parody from Love Actually) but shit, it’s aged, hasn’t it? I don’t know. Is Robert Palmer trying to tell us vacant staring is sexy? Grubby AF. Pass the soap.
Nude, bald women. It’s Nice That spotted it first: in 3D design, bare-naked baldies are an artsy trend, also clocking that 85 per cent of women painted in New York’s Met Gallery are nude. The bald thing may be that hair is tricky to make in 3D editing software but I can’t find a good reason for the nakedlaydees. Women have been drawn through the male gaze for generations, so much so that the Guerilla Girls’ website The Male Graze encourages you to share the number of female artists vs the number of naked women you spot on display at art galleries. Well, that’s an afternoon’s entertainment right there.
Illustration from It’s Nice That using Women/Female Body Base. Rigged by camilooh.
Come up and see me sometime …
Sex Education on Netflix. If you haven’t yet watched this glorious romp of a series, give it a whirl. Its sex-positivity has been breaking ground since release (no pun intended) so prepare to feel seen. All walks of life are sensitively portrayed; there’s no shame here. Whatever you’re into, as long as it’s safe, goes.
The ‘growth is a group project’ illustration/photography hybrid promo poster for series three of Sex Education in 2021.
The world has never been closer. This Norwegian Airlines advert walks the line of sexy. It’s risqué enough without being so smug and self-aware that it’s laughing at its own joke. It makes its point. I’m into it.
The Tinder antithesis, Bumble. The app that lets women choose first has been heralded as a dating gamechanger (opinions may vary) and yet this advert shows how it’s stepping into its space and calling out the weird-ass rules of dating. Deeply sexy.
‘The rules of dating are so weird’ Bumble campaign 2022.