Sexually explicit representations and their significance in late modern Western culture: A critical appraisal.

This work examines soft-core pornography, pornographic conventions in advertising, the representation of male sexuality in men's magazines and of female sexuality in popular media and subcultural forms. Specific instances are taken to investigate the applicability of widely used concepts such as 'transgression', 'objectification' and 'pornography' itself, and to pursue a more contextualized discussion of particular types of texts and their aesthetic, generic, cultural and social characteristics. Broader issues of consumption are examined in work on the marketing of sex products to women and on the development of online sex 'taste cultures'. This charts some current developments in sexual representation and consumption such as sex toy manufacturing and online alternative pornographies in order to investigate the development of commodified and recreational forms of sexual pleasure and display which are increasingly important in constructing identity and social networks. The work also addresses existing research on audiences of sexually explicit media and the representation of pornography consumption in public debates and in academia. Here, issues of methodology, institutional framing and the socio-historical context of research are brought into sharper focus. Finally, the work considers how the examination of texts, discourses, practices, identities and ethics might be integrated in the development of this area of study; particularly in relation to pornography research, approaches to online pornography and understandings of the contemporary sexualization of mainstream media. This aspect of the work identifies some of the major shifts in the production and consumption of sexually explicit materials along with some of the emerging and key issues in the field and suggests ways of developing the area of study.