Page 28 - Seniors Today Febuary 2020

Cover Feature | First Person V
The lowdown on the P word
Good, bad or just ugly? Opinions on porn are divided, but that doesn’t stop the market
flourishing. Sandeep Suri takes a look at the role of porn in one’s love life
It all had to start somewhere, but the ‘Venus
of Willendorf’ from Austria – the 28,000 year
old sculpture of a nude woman – is one of the
most well-known early erotic depictions. This
find is perhaps the most famous example of
so-called Venus figurines, followed by the
‘Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs’ from north west
China, arguably the oldest piece of art in what
is dubbed as pornography in today’s modern
world. The art work displays an explicitly wild
orgy. As porn gradually evolved, came our own
Kamasutra, this time it was more explicit and
expressive. Through this book for the first time
in the history of mankind, someone took a shot
at what I call solving the ‘unique challenges’ of
our bedrooms .However, it wasn’t until the 19th
century that the concept of pornography as we
know it today was understood.
Stark contrast
Through this brief article, I am making an
attempt to give you a sense of the stark contrast
between how open things of a sexual nature were
for the longest time, and how things have moved
from the prehistoric era to the modern times.
What used to be taboo and sinful is becoming
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more natural. The idea is to bring the facts into
the light for building an informed viewpoint on
the subject of porn.
Back to our evolution story... with time, people’s
taste on porn continued to evolve and to much
surprise, the world also continued to express it in
different shapes and forms. As the accompanying
images show, ancient natural art that looked like
genitals have become big attractions for tourists.
As the taste of porn changed gradually, so was
the depiction...fast forward-1951, the first X rated
movie was released and in 1953 the print media
revolutionized the Porn market with the launch
of American magazine-Playboy and in its first
publication, it was none other than Hollywood
queen- Marilyn Monroe on the magazine cover
that was aimed at men with the publication on
female nudity. The pictures in Playboy didn’t
leave anything to the imagination!
Making it legal
Did you know-Denmark was the first country,
way back in 1969 to legalise visual pornography,
followed by world’s first adult industry trade
show, ‘Sex 69’, which drew an impressive crowd
of 50,000 people.