As someone mentioned race above I just had to comment, could Kiera and Scarlett look any whiter? I'll get back around to race in a second, but really the excessive whitening - an effect of I suspect both lighting and makeup - heightens the women's object-ification in the most literal sense. To me, their skin literally looked less human and more object-like (stone, porcelain, paint). They were also quite clearly posed in interaction with the viewer alone - they don't even seem to notice Ford in all his muddled, half-clothed, desiring humanity. It seems to me very much in the tradition of Western painters depicting a harem with all the attendant fear/attraction toward white slavery and sex trafficking. It would be different if the women were interacting with each other or with Ford - if there was some sense of personal desire and agency expressed by Kiera and Scarlett. Instead they are powerless objects of exchange which Ford appears to own but more literally whose image he manipulated and which will be bought and sold by the public.
As for what I find sexy, I think I implied it above - intimacy. I like pictures that express emotion between two subjects - whether they be clothed or not (or even at times that express emotion between te subject and viewer, but I think that can be more difficult to convey). My feeling is that the porn industry as currently configured works through archetypes - the naughty nurse, the repairman, the cheerleader - wherein individual eccentricity and identity get in the way of the fantasy. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that, but personally I find detail and idiosyncrasy more satisfying. On a purely visual level, show me a scar or blemish, not an evenly powdered and concealer-laden canvas.
As for my body, I love it lots, but don't necessarily expect other people to share that opinion. And generally, I'd much rather be thought of in professional terms at this point of my life than in sexual terms, so I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that actresses shouldn't have to appear nude or even particularly sexual/sexually available to be taken seriously as practitioners of their craft.
no subject
As someone mentioned race above I just had to comment, could Kiera and Scarlett look any whiter? I'll get back around to race in a second, but really the excessive whitening - an effect of I suspect both lighting and makeup - heightens the women's object-ification in the most literal sense. To me, their skin literally looked less human and more object-like (stone, porcelain, paint). They were also quite clearly posed in interaction with the viewer alone - they don't even seem to notice Ford in all his muddled, half-clothed, desiring humanity. It seems to me very much in the tradition of Western painters depicting a harem with all the attendant fear/attraction toward white slavery and sex trafficking. It would be different if the women were interacting with each other or with Ford - if there was some sense of personal desire and agency expressed by Kiera and Scarlett. Instead they are powerless objects of exchange which Ford appears to own but more literally whose image he manipulated and which will be bought and sold by the public.
As for what I find sexy, I think I implied it above - intimacy. I like pictures that express emotion between two subjects - whether they be clothed or not (or even at times that express emotion between te subject and viewer, but I think that can be more difficult to convey). My feeling is that the porn industry as currently configured works through archetypes - the naughty nurse, the repairman, the cheerleader - wherein individual eccentricity and identity get in the way of the fantasy. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that, but personally I find detail and idiosyncrasy more satisfying. On a purely visual level, show me a scar or blemish, not an evenly powdered and concealer-laden canvas.
As for my body, I love it lots, but don't necessarily expect other people to share that opinion. And generally, I'd much rather be thought of in professional terms at this point of my life than in sexual terms, so I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that actresses shouldn't have to appear nude or even particularly sexual/sexually available to be taken seriously as practitioners of their craft.