Three Columbia Business School students have made a kick-ass feminist parody of Meghan Trainor's catchy hit "All About That Bass" (which I love, by the way). The feminist remake takes the pro-curves, body-positive message of the original and raises it with a message about intellectual and financial equality.
It's a hard-hitting topic, but the lyrics tackle it with playful humour. Bitch in Business is relatable and on-point. I think my favourite line is "a piss is the only thing that I'll take sitting down".
Erica Scott's wooden hairbrush spanking from Paul Kennedy is getting some positive attention. From my vantage point behind the camera, I thought it was super hot.
What does an orgasm look like? Some truly awesome artworks submitted to Girl on the Net's competition (sorry, she just keeps on being interesting!)
You've probably seen it already, but this drone-shot porn is beautiful.
"The plan was to take beautiful landscapes and just put people fucking in them."
Feminist porn director Jennifer Lyon Bell shares six practical tips for shooting porn. I found number five particularly interesting - and something I could do more of.
Some responses to Zoe William's Guardian article on ethical porn (on which more later, but meanwhile you can read my first impressions here). Erotic Scribes: "Porn is here to say 'Your fantasies are OK' when nobody and nothing else is going to say it." Yes = even if those fantasies are totally pervy. And the Telegraph acknowledges that "times are changing" - the radical idea that porn might not all be universally misogynistic and unethical (even though Gail Dines is still claiming women don't watch it). Also, apparently I'm the future of capitalism. Hokay.
I love this new sensual film by Ms Naughty, which screened for the first time in Berlin: Tactile. Watch the full film at Bright Desire.
On Friday I felt much better slept, and I had tickets for five screenings, but I'd already decided that only three of them were ones I really cared about: XConfessions by Erika Lust, LOVE HARD by Sensate Films, and the Female Porn Shorts screening in which Instructed was playing.
The people at Doxy Massager recently invited me to participate in a fun video challenge. The aim is to read a recipe while using a Doxy - but the only thing the camera can see is your face.
I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of vibrating toys, but I was happy to give it a try - and when my very own Doxy arrived and it was purple, I started to feel excited. Before shooting this I did a first take over knickers, just in case it was too intense. It was enjoyable, but I decided to re-record the whole thing and give it a go without knickers. I honestly wasn't prepared for the effect it had.
The Feminist Porn Awards and Feminist Porn Conference in Toronto were an incredible, intense experience for me. In the four days I was there I was challenged and inspired as a filmmaker, turned on by screenings of uber-hot new porn, affirmed in my politics and given a sense of community. I shot a lot of porn and made a lot of friends. I listened, shared ideas and explored areas of difference and common ground. As a producer I felt isolated in some ways and welcomed in others. I was emotionally exhausted every night from judging when I should let myself be critiqued and when I should offer critique of my own. I was invited to speak and I received acceptance, reassurance and validation.
It's a funny marriage - the awards in their ninth year, a Toronto project which has exploded to become an international event; and the conference in its second year, aiming from the start to bring people together from across the world. The two events have different organising committees and aren't particularly cohesive. They sit next to each other but there's no combined schedule of events, no public communal areas, no central hotel where everyone stays. If you want to know what's going on, you have to know the right people.
The awards (over Thursday and Friday) are all about celebrating the best in feminist porn. What with the press conference, brunches, workshops and shoots the days filled up quickly. I saw some amazing, erotic, cinematic films at the Public Provocative Porn screening on Thursday night, which both turned me on and made me think hard about the craft of film-making. It was a brief, horny masterclass in how to make engaging short erotic films. I left feeling inspired and motivated.
The super-lovely Alex Reynolds has staying with me all this week. We've got up to all sorts of spanking-related shenanigans, and I have some awesome photos and stories to share with you when it isn't nearly 1am. I've posted some already in a behind the scenes post on Dreams of Spanking, and I'm planning another post here about our non-professional adventures.
Meanwhile, here's a video blog that we filmed with Nimue Allen halfway through a two day shoot for Dreams of Spanking and Nimue's World. In this video we're all wearing pyjamas, and we're in that post-shoot giggly high. We talk about the shoot and some of the things we've been up to, and play with lots of stuffed animals. It's kind of silly and cute and ridiculous, but we had a lot of fun filming it.
I don't watch the Big Bang Theory, but I still enjoyed watching this snippet of a mainstream TV spanking that seems to understand our kink, as well as playing it for laughs.
Happy birthday to me! Actually it was my birthday last week, and I'm happy to say that I spent it almost entirely away from the computer. The night before I enjoyed playing drinking/forfeit/spanking games with Molly and her friends, and on my birthday morning she treated me to a champagne breakfast in the sunny garden. The day was so warm that Molly, Pilot and I went for a dip in the cold brown river before putting me on a train to visit Tom... where more spankings, good food, good beer, presents and live music awaited me. It was a pretty much perfect day. Then I saw D and Jacq at the weekend for dressing up, debauchery, cuddles and my requested birthday threesome, which was just as much fun as I'd hoped it would be.
I was thoroughly spoiled when it came to presents - and perhaps it's indicative of my life these days that most of them were kinky. Molly gave me a handmade book of 'gift vouchers' allowing me to claim such luxuries as breakfast in bed, and various erotic favours, at times of my choosing. Tom gave me a little gorilla pod for my video camera, ideal for popping on top of bedside furniture to shoot homemade porn. D gave me a strap-on (!!!!!) including a dildo I picked out, and oh wow, I have enjoyed every minute of that these last few days. (Hopefully, so have Jacq and Molly.)
As for the birthday spankings... they all involved my new leather strap which I brought back from Texas, and which is my new favourite toy. I've been looking for something like it for years. It's wide, soft and you can use it full force without doing massive damage. I love it. It hurts, yes, but the pain is thick and warm, a huge thuddy impact that feels like being slammed into the floor. It makes your skin tingle and your gluts ache, and I could take it forever and ever.
I've stumbled across a few unexpected and good public YouTube spankings lately. This one was found by D (we were searching for 'dragon spanking' in the name of Rule #34, believe it or not):
Only one whack with a wooden paddle, but it's a solid one. I was also entertained by the comment accompanying it:
I love the previews from the new Lupus Spanking film, 'The Girl Next Door'. The trailer shows that it includes the excellent cinematography, richly developed settings, intricate plots, edgy punishments and surreal humour for which Lupus are renowned.
The scene that most caught my eye is the one in the shop, where a cane being considered for purchased is tested on a hapless daughter right there and then - with the shopkeeper looking on, and even assisting as the girl starts to struggle too wildly. I love these images not only for the deliciously arbitrary, unfair, publically humiliating scenario, but also for the lavish costumes and attention to detail.
It's a funny marriage - the awards in their ninth year, a Toronto project which has exploded to become an international event; and the conference in its second year, aiming from the start to bring people together from across the world. The two events have different organising committees and aren't particularly cohesive. They sit next to each other but there's no combined schedule of events, no public communal areas, no central hotel where everyone stays. If you want to know what's going on, you have to know the right people.