Today's Porn magazine vs. Vintage Porn of yesteryear. A comparison.

[Tucsoncoyote]

Well I've decided to start this thread to discuss the major differences between today's porn magazines and those of days gone by. And I'm talking both about Main Stream magazines along with those that are 'backlot' as well.

And looking at both, there is about as much difference as night is from day.

If you ever cross compare a magazine of today with one fom say 20 or even 30 years ago, there's a striking difference. And it shows in a variety of magazines.

First up are of course, the pictorials.. Now excluding Playboy and maybe Penhouse of pre 2000 era, most magzines are about "Showing us the goods, as well as the cumshots, the facials, and all the other stuff.. Granted Hustler started off the whole "Show me to goods" thing with their "Come and get it, flash me some pink" kind of thinking. but now it seems that the pictures today are a bit more raunchier than those of say 30 years ago. I mean you got girls not only showing you Pink and givein you a hot scene of them maybe masterbating a little (with or without a sex toy), but their facial expressions have changed as well. Gone are the "you want me real bad don't you?" kind of look to today's "I'm such a F-in' Slut" Look that literally screams "Yeah you idiot look at me! Can't you see that I'm a Slut?!!!!"

And that's just the single models.. when it comes to couples.. Things really start to go downhill. Gone afe the motiffs, the ideas that give most ffolks a fantasy feeling at looking at a porn mag.. I mean the hottest motiff between a man/woman couple was perhaps the Michael Jackson/Ola Ray parody of Thriller back in one of the Oui Magazines back in the 1980's.. The best and hottest Female pictorial I saw was perhaps a hot "Native American Female/Pilgrim Woman" Lesbian scene using a piece of corn and of course their tongues. Most of these fantasy scenes you had were based around a certain theme. And usually they dealt with some rather tasteful poses, and of course ending up with the man/woman or woman/woman couple ending up cuddling, their desires satiated..

But that was then.. This is now...

Now is more laong the lines of "You're both naked, just get down an dirty!" kind of thinking.. There's very little playfulness or teasing the audience as we get to disrobe (in our mind) the participants, They're just naked or nearly naked, and they're already halfway into the nasty.. whatever it is..

And that comes ever further when you see some girl trying to do deepthroat on a guy or two girls literally looking like they're wrestling for each others pubes... I mean where's the imagination to that? (Heck some of the Penthouse Lesbian pictorals were hotter than sin with their mood lighting and their "fuzzy lens" looks... But today it's more "Hard Sharp and just downright dirty..." You get to see the pink, the tongue dipping in and doing it, and of course the dirty looks the girls give as they either take the schlong in or they even muff munch on someone elses box.

And the look after the fact? Well granted the look of "I'm satisfied " is there but sometimes the looks can be deceiving.. It's almost like.. Well how can I describe it? "We're just taking a breather, then we're going to do it again in 30 seconds! Wanna watch?"

But that's just one angle to the magazine issue. Another aspect is the fact that some of the magazines had a one time readable articles (yes, some of us used to read! ) but the thing is that today's magazines are in fact packed to gills.. with nothing but phone sex numbers, and internet URL's. I mean graned back then people wrote articles to fill pages.. But now? it's almost like we're looking at one big advertisment for Porn sites that are even rauchier than the magazine itself.

The bottom line is this.. And this is just my personal opinion. Magazines post 1997 have taken a hard tumble. and I don't mean tripped over your two feet and spilled your milk kind of hard.." I'm talking taking a tumble headfirst into a bus stand support pole kind of tumble. I mean sometimes I never wish I had gotten rid of the classics.. I mean back then I used to fantasize a lot..

Today's magzines? Well they just say and literally scream to me.. Screw the fantasies, crew the tender love making look, We're doing it like the Bloodhound Gang says.. "Like Animals on the Discovery Channel" kind of way..

I mean are there any other tasteful, yet truly erotic magazines out there that give us that "I want to go to b ed every night and fantasize about me in this situation with this hot woman" kind of feeliing?

So let's discuss this shall we? What are magazines doing right now compared to say the vintage papers of 30 years ago.. What are they doing wrong? And what needs to be changed so that maybe more people will go out and get a few more of these mags?

I mean the floor is open for discussion..

Tucsoncoyote

[billybunter]

Porn mags today are full of porn stars. In the past they generally weren't. A lot of UK page 3 models posed nude in mags years ago.

[PHcoupleFan]

I agree with you, TuscanCoyote. My interest is in couples and trios photographed erotically and artistically. PH was clearly the best at that. Their couples pictorials in the 1970s were often very erotic and some of them tried hard to push the envelope. In the 1980s and into the 1990s the PH photographers did an excellent job of photographing couples having fun without explicit closeups. PH went hardcore in July 1997 and they managed a few hot pictorials after that. Unfortunately going hardcore ruined the erotic and artsy tone of the pictorials and they went downhill. PH used amateur male models who were very hot but once they started using pornstars the quality went downhill. It's a shame. The closest to erotic porn now is no longer in magazines but on late night cable instead, and it's hardly as good as the PH pictorials of the past.

[Historian]

I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but another big difference is the physical quality of the mags themselves has gone downhill.

Funnily enough I was discussing this elsewhere recently, and comparing a recent issue of one of the well-known British top-shelf mags with some of the equivalents I've still got from the 90's, and the actual mag itself is clearly much more cheaply produced- poorer quality paper, less pages, less 'in-house' editorial and pic content, and photosets that are clearly produced with a much lower budget for studio costs, set, props etc.

The fellow VEF member I was discussing this with said that circulation figures for some titles are down to about a tenth of what they were 20-or-so years back- so it's hardly surprising the whole thing looks as if it's run on a wing and a prayer.

He reckoned it wouldn't long before some of them go under altogether, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's right

[ArseWorshiper]

For me porn and nudity were much more taboo in my teens in the pre-internet days. These days it seems every teen girl in the world has done a few nude pics on her phone or web cam. Back in the days there was such a feel of naughtiness to the girls who posed nude or did porn, it was much more of a socially shocking thing for a girl to do. The girls in those days seemed to revel in the naughtiness of it and there was such a greater sense of fun to the modeling or porn back then.

I also feel that nudity and sex tapes are used as a vehicle to push on a girls career, in my younger days most of the girls who posed fully nude and especially hardcore films there wasn't really the career development available so the girls knew that is where they would remain and took greater pride in their work and enjoyed it more.

[barryjoel]

No comparison, as far as I'm concerned. Vintage wins hands down!

[magsnapper]

The cut backs started around 1996 for us at Gold Star.
They deciced to 'do away' with the in-house photographer and buy in very cheap photo sets from America.
Thus putting me out of work,and the models too.
I was up for retirement from the business in anycase so it really did bother me-I was total fed-up with the way the business was going,same old poses,same this,same that and my fees never grew.

The great days of production value was the late 1960s to around the early 90s for own mags.We were producing title as we had no tomorrow.

What I really am surprised about is the fact NONE of these titles ever appear here-yet these are the REAL Vintage Erotica.Sex scenes without the pubics...Im afraid you guys don't understand the history of how we got to this position we are in today.

The art has gone out of Erotica...you have only to see the boring old scans produced on these forums.Same old poses-dicks,fannies.A standard 7 poses as we knew them in the business,the models done them,jumped off got the kit back on,and waited to be payed.

[dbailey]

I have been spending much happy time in the various Hustler threads and the Chic thread and I cant believe the erotisism of those shots from 20 years ago. They may actually be formulaic but the lighting coupled with the leaning back poses and some of the best faked orgasmic delight that I have ever seen on the face of a lady couple with lots of stockings or failing that oiled bodies and am I right in thinking that in some of them the flap shots seem to be artificially coloured pink or red.

Its not real I know, but as a fantasy it beats the pants off the highly lit shots of bored looking models covered in atttos and piercings.

Nope, I get more pleasure from some of these actuallt tame shots by todays comparsions than i do from new stuff.....and now gentleman...be warned...my next sentence may be giving too much information.

If a set gives me the involuntary sensation of my scrotum tightening then I know it has hit the spot and these names threads and perhaps old Men Only, Club and the Leg World and Leg Sex do the same.

[Sirch]

You hear it all the time. Its Photoshopped. A friend of mine gave me his stash of PB magazines from the last 10 years. I don't think Ive seen a PB magazine since the 80's. So I was quite shocked at what I saw.

The pictorials are horribly photoshopped. I'm not just talking about making an arm or waist slimmer. They completely "blur" the skin so its one uniform color and texture. Then they sharpen the edges. These women like like cartoons. Seriously! This is no muscle definition what so ever.

The beauty of the female form is rather complex. Lighting is important as well. There is nothing erotic or sensual in a current PB magazine.

I also think a magazine like PB should photograph "natural" models only. Their roots are in celebrating the beauty of the female form. Not the fake plastic female form.

[oldster]

whether comparing soft porn from years ago to soft today, or hard porn images from years ago to those of today there are really big differences
------
---todays is simply camera taking pic of the action
---porn images from the 60's thru 70's did the same but also did creative images using black and white instead of color, creative use of shadows, angles, tint, etc giving a lot more variety of presentation of the pics
-------
porn from yester-year had a much greater variety of story lines and scenarios. Lending itself to the viewer of the images having a greater variety of situations to picture themself being in. For example the old Swedish Erotica loops, catalogs,etc had sex scenes in elevator, bars, apartments, hot tubs, classroom, doctors office, orgy, romantic settings, shower, etc. Todays scenes are pretty standard in terms of setting for the sex
------

porn mags(hardcore) and men's magazines(playboy, penthouse, hustler, etc) had a wider variety of story lines, articles, satire, comedy, short stories, cartoons, reader contributions(ie penthouse having letters in magazie from people sending in their own experiences--penthouse letters)...While mags today have advertisemnents, 800 umbers, etc....
Still wank to some of the letters in penthouse letters and to short stories that were rather vivid