So my flying monkeys brought in this article about Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki in the Huffington Post's Arts & Culture section. Apparently, he's a bad boy in Japanese photography circles, doing lots of nudity and bondage. In fact, we've covered him before on Bondagerotica, for doing a nude bondage photoshoot of Lady Gaga for the September 2009 issue of Vogue Hommes Japan.
But the point of this post is not Mr. Araki, it's the Huffington Post. Just a few days ago I noted in an earlier post regarding an article on IO9, Why Do Geeks Like Kink?, that big sites on the Web that copy mainstream media have also copied the uneasy relationship that mainstream media have with sexuality and sexy imagery. That is, they don't show explicit sexual images, or any nudity at all, as a general rule. When they do cover stories involving nudity and sex, they tend to write about it in a coy, adolescent manner that's distinctly off-putting to those who are used to the direct, adult (in the "mature" sense of the word) manner that websites that deal directly with sexual issues use. Like this one! (OK, keeping it real, I am quite capable of being coy and adolescent if I think it will get a laugh. See: cough! But I'm kidding when I do that, the "mainstream" websites are for real about it, sadly so.)
So, it's kind of AMAZING to see a raunchy pic of a Japanese woman stark naked in full suspension with her labia lips sticking out from a nest of pubic hair for all to see, on the Huffington Post.
I can't help but think that the Huffington Post editors may be taking a cue from Fifty Shades of Grey and getting jiggy with the kinky nudity because, hey, people seem to be ready for that sort of thing. Or they may have just now realized that they are publishing on the Web, and the rules are different here.
Will this become a trend at HuffPo? Among "mainstream" sites? Time will tell, I got NO idea on this one!
