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A very British carnival: women, sex and transgression in Fiesta magazine
Published in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 5 (1). 2002.pp.91-105.

This article addresses the claim that pornography’s theme is ‘male power’ and the
recent counter-claim that pornography may embody transgressive potential. It pursues
the apparent contradictions in these claims by focussing on a specific pornographic
text, the British downmarket softcore magazine, Fiesta, and locating it in relation to
other forms of sexual and non-sexual representation. In considering the text’s relation
to other ‘mass’ and ‘low’ texts, ‘bawdy’ and ‘carnivalesque’ sensibilities, it becomes
possible to establish its particularly British and vulgar representation of sexuality which
relies not only on its sexual content, but on a ‘dirty style’ in which notions of sexual
propriety are self-consciously transgressed. The analysis of Fiesta plays particular
attention to the role of women’s bodies and a mode of ‘dirty talk’ as key elements in
its representation of sexuality which illuminate the rather abstract claims made about
pornography’s structures of dominance and transgression.

Fashion and passion: Marketing sex to women
Published in Sexualities, Vol. 8(4). 2005. pp.395-409.

Against a backdrop of a ‘pornographication’ of mainstream media and the emergence
of a more heavily sexualized culture, women are increasingly targeted as sexual
consumers. In the UK, the success of TV shows like Sex and the City and the ‘fashion
‘n’ passion’ of sex emporia like Ann Summers suggests that late twentieth century
discourses which foregrounded female pleasure have crystallised in a new form of
sexual address to women. This article examines how sex products are being marketed
for female consumers, focussing on the websites of sex businesses such as Myla, Babes
n Horny, Beecourse, tabooboo and Ann Summers. It asks how a variety of existing
discourses – of fashion, consumerism, bodily pleasure and sexuality - are drawn on in
the construction of this new market, how they negotiate the dangers and pleasures of
sexuality for women, and what they show about the construction of ‘new’ female
sexualities.

No Money Shot?: Commerce, Pornography and New Sex Taste Cultures
Published in Laura Agustin (ed.) Special Cultural Study of
Commercial Sex Issue, Sexualities. 10(4). 2007. pp. 441-456.

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.

Pornography and Objectification: Re-reading “the picture that divided Britain”
Published in Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 4(1). 2004. pp.7-19.

This paper examines the significance of the terms objectification and pornography in
three key approaches to analysing pornographic texts; an anti-pornography feminist
approach, an historical approach focused on pornography and regulation, and an
approach which details pornography’s aesthetic transgressiveness. It suggests that
while all three approaches continue to be productive for the analysis of sexual
representations, their usefulness is limited by a tendency towards essentialism. A
discussion of the public controversy around an advert for Opium perfume in 2000 is
used to argue that an attentiveness to the context of particular images, and to the
variety of reactions they provoke, provides a useful way of developing the analysis of
sexual representations and their contemporary significance.

Reading Porn: the paradigm shift in pornography research
Published in Sexualities, Vol. 5(1). 2002. pp.91-105.

This paper examines the paradigm shift in pornography theory and research from a
focus on 'texts and effects' through to work emerging from the late 1980's onwards.
The paper considers the reconceptualisation of pornography as a category, the
location of pornography in relation to cultural hierarchy and form, the changing status
of pornography in relation to mainstream representations, the significance of
developing technologies and the movement towards more situated accounts of
pornographic texts and their audiences as a series of attempts to contextualise the
question 'what is pornography?'

Sexed up: Theorizing the Sexualization of Culture
Published in Sexualities, Vol. 9(1). 2006. pp.77-94.

This paper reviews and examines emerging academic approaches to the study of
‘sexualized culture’; an examination made necessary by contemporary preoccupations
with sexual values, practices and identities, the emergence of new forms of sexual
experience and the apparent breakdown of rules, categories and regulations designed
to keep the obscene at bay. The paper maps out some key themes and preoccupations
in recent academic writing on sex and sexuality, especially those relating to the
contemporary or emerging characteristics of sexual discourse. The key issues of
pornographication and democratization, taste formations, postmodern sex and
intimacy, and sexual citizenship are explored in detail.

Sluts and riot grrrls: female identity and sexual agency
Published in Journal of Gender Studies 16(3). 2007. pp. 231-245.

This article examines some contemporary presentations of female sexuality in subcultural
and mainstream popular culture. The article begins with a consideration of the
ways in which a ‘slut’ persona has been appropriated in various print and Internet texts
and within sub-cultural practices and musical performances. It is argued that this
strategy of appropriation is characteristic of third wave and post-feminist interventions
in the struggle over female sexuality. A similar process can be discerned in more
mainstream representations of female sexuality that depend on the mobilization of a
‘goddess’ persona that makes it possible to present women’s sexual activity as
desirable. However, that this is achieved through the repression of the low
characteristics associated with the slut, and through the construction of a ‘classy’
sexuality makes it necessary to examine the ways in which sexual personae are built
around signifiers of race and class, as well as those of gender.

‘tits and ass and porn and fighting’1: male heterosexuality in magazines for men
Published in International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8(1). 2005. pp.87-104.

This paper examines the presentation of male heterosexuality in British soft core
pornographic and men’s lifestyle magazines, looking across these formats at the range
of conventions and discourses they share. It maps out the key features of male
heterosexuality in these publications, focusing on a sample of British magazines
collected in June 2003 across both soft core and lifestyle formats, and on the new
men’s weeklies, Nuts and Zoo Weekly, launched in January 2004. The depiction of the
male body and its relation to sexual pleasure and the presentation and investigation of
heterosexual activity are set in the broader historical context of men’s print media and
the current socio-cultural context of sex and gender representation.

What do people do with porn? Qualitative research into the consumption, use and experience of pornography and other sexually explicit media
Published in Sexuality and Culture, Vol. 9(2). 2005. pp.65-86.

This article reviews qualitative research into the consumption of pornography and
other sexually explicit media emerging from a range of subject areas. Taking a critique
of quantitative methods and a focus on measuring sexual effects and attitudes as a
starting point, it considers the proposition that qualitative work is more suited to an
examination of the complex social, cultural and political constructions of sexuality.
Examining studies into the way men, women and young people see, experience, and
use explicit media texts, the article identifies the key findings that have emerged.
Qualitative work shows that sexuality explicit media texts are experienced and
understood in a variety of ways and evoke strong and often contradictory reactions,
not all of which are represented in public debates about pornography. These texts
function in a range of different ways, depending on context; as a source of knowledge,
a resource for intimate practices, a site for identity construction, and an occasion for
performing gender and sexuality. The article reviews these studies and their findings,
identifying what they suggest about directions for future research, both in terms of
developing methodology and refining approaches to sexuality and media consumption.