10 Responses to ““Upskirt” By Calvin Klein”

1. Feministy said (on May 17th, 2016 at 7:18 pm)

   It bugs me partly because there are states where taking an upskirt shot of a woman without her permission is still legal. Taking these sorts of pictures without permission takes away a woman’s agency. If it was recognized as wrong to do without permission, then a woman choosing to do it would be more acceptable to me.

2. Bacchus said (on May 17th, 2016 at 7:32 pm)

   I understand part of what you’re saying, but you lose me completely when you talk about what a woman chooses being “acceptable” to you. There’s a whole crew of people in this country with opinions about what is “accceptable” for women to choose, but they don’t usually use nicknames with “feminist” built into them.

3. KingTaco said (on May 18th, 2016 at 12:02 am)

   There’s kind of a lot to unpack in these photos. First and foremost it bugs me a little that using an upskirt to sell consumer junk is perfectly cool with Instagram when they’re still disabling accounts for having exposed nipples in their photos. I know there are plenty of other upskirts on instagram, because I checked, but I still don’t like that a titillating photo of a woman used to sell a product is A-OK but a shot of a woman breastfeeding or topless horseback riding is right out. It’s a strange place to draw the line of prudishness that kind of enforces the idea that women as titillation for men is perfectly fine but women being women isn’t acceptable. I just don’t like it.

   Making it look like an older photo with the sepia tone filter, along with the hints of innocence (the simple dress and more natural looking hair), I can definitely see why people are thinking they went out of their way to imply the model was underage. Honestly I think they aimed for nostalgia and overshot it, not a crime in and of itself but for me it’s a bit of an unpleasant reminder that youth is such a prized and often fetishized commodity in our media. I guess at least they didn’t put her hair in pigtails, but that may have just been to avoid people assuming the model was intended to be a sexy Pippi Longstocking.

   Feministy kind of hit on the issue of the upskirt angle and some of the problems with it already, but it’s an angle with a fanbase that’s really earned it a bad rap. Like you alluded to this is clearly something that model is doing for fun as she’s obviously looking into the camera but it still feels uncomfortable to think of how many women have their privacy violated via upskirts. I’m open to the idea that this is taking back the angle, but in the context of an advertisement I’m not really feeling it.

   At the end of the day, I don’t mind this ad, I’d have walked past it and never given it much thought just like every other underwear ad I’ve ever seen. Then again I’m a guy who’s lived in and around cities his whole life so seeing attractive women in seductive poses on advertisements is something I’m desensitized to. I didn’t even know this was a matter of any controversy until I saw this post, and the circles I run in tend to be pretty tuned into these sorts of things. I think it’s ever so slightly in the poor taste column but then again that’s what got you posting about it and consequently I’ve spent more time thinking about Calvin Klein just in the time I spent writing this comment than I ever have in the rest of my life combined. So a point for them I suppose. The fashion industry seems to thrive on doing intentionally upsetting things and this seems to be among their more mundane efforts. I’ll take a questionable upskirt photo of a model over almost any of the shit Urban Outfitter delights in pulling like holocaust badge tees or the girl’s shirt with “eat less” on it.

4. Bacchus said (on May 18th, 2016 at 7:44 am)

   Thanks for the thoughtful comments, KingTaco. But I gotta say, I still don’t see how you get to the “questionable” assessment in your last line. Your two points against the photo itself (not counting the Instagram criticism with which I whole-heartedly agree, you’ll notice I did not link to those bastards, not that they need my trickle of traffic) are that it somehow implies stylistically that the model is underage and that it reminds you of different photos that violate privacy.

   The “shot to look underage” seems weak to me mostly because I am not seeing it; 23-year-olds look terribly young to me anyway, but I don’t see her being portrayed as even younger than the ridiculously-young that she already is. But I’m also not sure when our sensible social prohibition against depicting too-young persons in contexts of sexual nudity became such a powerful taboo that we started condemning photos of young people that are no more revealing than the underwear ads in the Sears catalog that used to get mailed to every home in America. (Yes, horny boys were sometimes known to masturbate to those catalogs, but everyone thought that was funny and desperate and pathetic, not that there was anything wrong with the catalog photos.) To be clear I support the social prohibition against public display of nude photos of people below the age of consent, but I despise taboos to the extent that they replace clear thinking. And if this photo doesn’t violate the social prohibition (which to my mind it does not, since there’s no nudity at all) then it bothers me to see sensible people fall under the sway of the broader, thought-destroying taboo, condemning a photo merely because it shares a few stylistic elements with photos that are socially prohibited for all the strong and good reasons.

   Likewise, I find the nexus between “those nasty non-consensual privacy-violating upskirt photos you can find on the internet” and “this consensual photo in which the model is depicted as expressly claiming her agency” to be very distant. I don’t get why the existence of the former makes the latter “questionable” when the thing they have in common is, to boil it down, a camera angle.

   Everybody’s gonna parse these differently and your viewpoint is just as good as mine, I’m not trying to say different. I’m just saying that I don’t get what’s questionable about this from your own assessment of what you’re seeing in the photo. It sorta feels like you are saying “this photo is questionable because of a bunch of other crap that’s out there in society” instead of assessing it on its own merits. Does that make sense, or am I just babbling now?

5. Feministy said (on May 18th, 2016 at 8:49 pm)

   Bacchus, you said you didn’t know why people/the internet was upset by this. I explained my personal negative reaction and I was careful to say “acceptable to me”. (In my mind, the emphasis is on “to me”) I believe that consenting adults have the right to do as they want to each other (consent being maintained, of course). If some woman likes having upskirt shots taken and she knows others who want to take them, hey, go ahead, take a million shots. Use the flash so often that your legs get tan. I was explaining why _I_ don’t like the shot, so I thought it was appropriate to talk about what’s acceptable _to me_.

6. Bacchus said (on May 18th, 2016 at 10:07 pm)

   But that’s not what you said! You brought the woman’s choice to pose for the photo into the conversation, and explicitly said that under different circumstances “a woman choosing to do it would be more acceptable to me” which strongly implies (at a minimum) that under our current circumstances, her choosing to pose is less acceptable to you. You weren’t explaining your negative reaction to a photo, you were explaining your negative reaction to a woman’s behavior.

7. KingTaco said (on May 19th, 2016 at 12:18 am)

   This is a rough issue to discuss on an erotic blog, in part because I’m a little afraid that explaining my thought process might be a little insulting since I know full well you and many of your readers have a very strong grasp of the subject matter I’m about to trundle into. I’m also a little hesitant because in the context of Erosblog or any purveyor of fine erotic material, this image is entirely acceptable to me, but in the context of an advertisement of a mainstream consumer good where it’s going to be viewed by a very different audience I can see why it might present a problem. Also my feelings on how questionable it is aren’t particularly strong, so I feel like I’m making the somewhat… assholish error of arguing a point I’m not committed to. But hey, “make bad choices, have fun and die young” seems like a reasonable motto to live by for me at the moment and I’m intrigued to hear more of your thoughts here if you’ll be so kind as to share them.

   Fair warning, for the sake of an easy comparison this comment contains Breaking Bad season 4 spoilers.

   This photo differs a great deal from the underwear adverts I’m used to seeing, being a child of the internet era I’m not well versed in the contents of Sears underwear catalogs so I’m going off the adverts I see in the windows of Victoria’s Secrets and ads found in subways and on the sides of bus stops. There’s a great deal more artistry at play here than your standard underwear advert. It’s the difference between 100 explosions in a Michael Bay film that are big and flashy but feel inconsequential and, just because it’s a pop culture touchstone, the time Walt blew up Sr. Salamanca to take out Fring in the season 4 finale of Breaking Bad. It’s not as big or flashy as a helicopter crashing into a robot, but it carries a lot more meaning and there are strong implications for the viewer to consider. The photographer has played with the depth of field to put a sharp focus on the model’s face and hair, but the majority of the photo space is taken up by her gently blurry, out of focus crotch. Given the very human propensity for being drawn to that which is elusive it’s very clear to me that the viewer is meant to be mesmerized by the allure of the somewhat obscured and covered pelvis that’s being presented to them. Maybe it was the photographer trying to have a little fun with commentary of “Why are you focusing on her nether region when it’s her face that’s in focus” but the idea is clearly to present an alluring mystery crotch to the viewer. For people who are used to those low stakes but flashy Michael Bay explosions the more visceral and weighty Breaking Bad explosion may be alarming because of the consequences and violence it so heavily implies. Likewise where the more sterile sharply focused busty woman in her knickers I’m used to seeing on underwear adverts isn’t deep enough to dip a french fry in the way this ad toys with the psychology and sexuality of the viewer is bound to be more alarming for a public that just isn’t used to being challenged and turned on in that way. It touches something deeper, more central to that innate human desire to explore the unknown or forbidden.

   The youth angle I agree is quite flimsy and I’m not eager to defend the often puritanical approach people take to youth and erotica. To be extra clear here when this is inevitably pulled up in a google search years later and someone uses it to prove I’m some kind of pedophile defender to get me fired because I said something about a video game that pissed them off, I’m not arguing in favor of anything outside the bounds of what our society deems legal and moral. I personally don’t appreciate the extreme value that is placed upon youth as a commodity and I don’t find it tasteful to fetishize it in the least. I may have miscommunicated my feelings on the youth angle on this photo. I feel they aimed for nostalgia and that’s what I see, she doesn’t look excessively young to me. However in a photo that’s already tapping into the viewers mind more than your average advertisement by a mile the play to nostalgia may also be dragging up their own memories. Add in the appeal to simplicity or innocence in her hair and dress and I can see how people are putting a lot of themselves and their memories into the photo and they’re seeing someone younger than they’d like to see in such a photo.

   I think as people who run/follow an erotic blog and are presumably somewhat tapped into the kink scene, we have a different more sex positive view of the world than your average person. Not to say the masses are innocent novices with no experience or context of their own but by and large they probably have a comparatively narrower view of the human sexual experience. Where you post many wonderful photos of women in situations of bondage they’re very likely enjoying I think a lot of people would look at them and just assume she must be an unwilling participation and not enjoying her predicament. They can only take from their own experience and if they see something that looks uncomfortable or undesirable to them that’s what they assume for the model as well. Given the reputation upskirts have earned as an unwelcome invasion of privacy I can’t blame people for being upset at the angle of this photo when that’s their experience with it.

   But yeah, you’re absolutely right that I’m not entirely critiquing the photo on it’s own merits and kind of just explaining (partially to myself) what people may be thinking when they’re upset about it. I think those same thoughts must have passed through the minds of the photographer and everyone involved in the editing and approval process of this ad. If you take an ad for an art form meant to engage and intrigue the public I think the thought process of both the creator and the mass audience is something worth thinking about. It’s a little different from art that’s not so bound to the audience or with a primary goal of something other than simply engaging the audience. I know I’ve just opened myself up to having someone who actually knows art correcting the crap out of me and that last line in particular is going to bug me to have torn apart so I’ll just add that while the vast majority of art seeks to engage it’s audience it almost always has a message beyond simply “remember me so you’ll remember my brand and buy stuff”.

8. Bacchus said (on May 19th, 2016 at 7:07 am)

   I treasure that sort of thoughtful analysis, and I laughed at the movie comparisons because I seriously and literally fell asleep in the movie theater during one of the “epic” fight scenes in Transformers. So much kinetic violence that meant absolutely nothing!

   I won’t pick on you further for your well-exposited explanation of concerns that animate you only partially. (I hope that’s not a mischaracterization!) At the end of the day your explanation feels to me a bit like “well, it made people uncomfortable and I can sorta see why even though the reasons aren’t all that compelling” which is more empathy than I typically bother to deploy for people who complain about art that makes them uncomfortable.

   I see “art” in all kinds of places that other people dismiss because of erotic context. To me this is photo is art and it’s interesting precisely because of the way it gestures oh-so-faintly at two different sore spots our culture has around sexuality (youth and privacy invasion) without actually transgressing against either taboo in a way that a rational person could or should object to. So when I say “I don’t know why the internet lost its shit” I guess what I’m saying is that I do faintly and vaguely understand the discomforts that caused the internet to lose its shit, but upon logical consideration, I don’t find true cause within the photo for such a strong reaction. People are upset with how the photo makes them feel about those two sore spots, but there’s nothing worthy of condemnation in the photo itself. If a piece of art makes a person uncomfortable and if the person is a grown-up, they should be able to analyze the discomfort, recognize it as coming from within themselves, and acknowledge that it’s not coming from within the photograph and the photograph/photographer/patron is not to blame. Yes, the discomfort is real, and yes, it was triggered by the photograph. But blaming the photograph, blaming the photographer, blaming the model, or blaming the company that commissioned the photograph to bring attention to its brand: all of these seem, to me, to be misdirected. That impulse to complain and blame is the part that, as I originally said, “I don’t quite understand.”

   Sometimes I even feel that the impulse to complain and blame is a deflecting impulse. What does it deflect? The education that otherwise occurs upon looking at art. If there’s a lesson to be learned and that lesson is uncomfortable, much easier to reject the lesson and condemn the art.

9. Dr.Whiplash said (on April 8th, 2018 at 8:00 pm)

   Much ado about nothing…
   I see more on TV every day than is exposed in this photo. I see teen girls dancing in less and with more exposed in clubs. You can see more exposed on probably at least 9 out of 10 beaches on the planet and take all the photos you care to. Girls of all ages. These underpants cover just as well as most any swimwear. Do the networks have to put up with letters from viewers during the Olympic gymnastic events? This photo does not arouse me…

10. Dr.Whiplash said (on September 15th, 2018 at 1:00 am)

    Revisiting this post, I was struck by the thought that a century ago some woman would be complaining that a man had, and without permission, taken a photograph of her ankle as she was tightening the knot on her ankle boots. I’ve never lived as a woman, so granted I don’t have a female’s perspective, but if I were wearing a kilt, and I feared someone might see or photograph my Calvin’s as I rode up an escalator, I’d wear instead one of those diaper-like affairs that sumo wrestlers wear underneath my kilt, or I’d chose to wear pants…

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