Porn for Women review

Porn for Women should be called Good Housekeeping Stock Photography for Cartoon Characters Named Cathy...

If tired cliches about traditional gender imbalance make you laugh, and Everybody Loves Raymond stroked your buttonthis is the book for you!...

Need a bridal shower gift for a co-worker you don't really like?...

I blame this review-writer's block on my mother's advice about keeping my mouth shut when I have nothing kind to say. I truly and honestly can't imagine who would find the Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative's tiny volume of Porn for Women clever, let alone arousing.

Of course arousing isn't the point, and to get too worked up about that would be to miss the shtick. Ostensibly created in response to serious research about what really turns women on (where "women" equals straight, married, home-owning mothers, and what gets them hot are husbands who are attentive, well-groomed, and equally involved in domestic responsibilities) the book features G-rated photos of men vacuuming, lowering the toilet seat, and shoe shopping while thought bubbles above their heads ask things like, "Want to snuggle?"

Funny, right? I guess?

Despite the bait and switch, I don't really mind their titillating title, except that CWPC's mission "to recover the term 'pornography' from the gold-chained, leisure-suit-wearing, mouth-breathing knuckleheads" makes me wonder whether they've encountered anything truly pornographic since the Carter administration. Leisure-suited knuckleheads aren't the modern woman's nemesis when it comes to finding good jilling off material. People who think there's no female market for it-those are the people I want to reclaim pornography from. It's not about watering down the word (pornography) by applying it arbitrarily, but about continuing to expand the options so there's no one stereotype of what pornography is or who it's for. But that argument couldn't be farther the premise of Porn for Women; which is nothing more than a lukewarm joke stretched on way too long.

If the idea of a man saying, "Have another piece of cake. I don't like you looking so thin," has you cracking even the slightest smile right now, then maybe this book has a place on the top of your toilet next to your husband's copy of Truly Tasteless Jokes. As for me, I need a handful of Tums and a Dana DeArmond video.