No money shot?: commerce, pornography and new sex taste cultures

This paper examines two Internet websites – Nerve, a magazine devoted to ‘smart smut’ and SuicideGirls, an ‘altporn’ site where softcore sexual display is a major component of a participatory taste culture. Through a consideration of the ways such sites present their commercial and community elements as part of a shared taste and aesthetic, the paper investigates how some new forms of pornography are developing to construct sexual display as a form of recreation, self-presentation and community building.