Like most males who have grown up with the American sexual yin-yang standard, I am of two minds when I watch a Penthouse video. The first mind is that of the post-Women's Lib era, who wants to believe that he sees women as equals and does not want to regard them solely as sexual objects. The second mind is that of the typical stoop-jawed chauvinist who stares wide-eyed at his TV screen and thinks, "How do they get women to do this?" In particular, there is a woman in this video named Lynn Johnson, a generously endowed blonde who not only shows off her astounding physique, she relishes in it. The way in which she, er, shows appreciation for her ample self is undoubtedly the acid test for any couple watching this video. I'd imagine that most wives would leave the room in disgust, while their husbands were in the middle of giving the video a standing ovation.
I notice that, of the thousands of IMDb ratings of movies and videos, there are nearly no critiques of Penthouse videos. But I'll bet that doesn't mean that lots of Epinions male writers don't watch this stuff. Although it could be that a lot of men are ashamed to admit to that, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that such Epinions ratings are scarce because you can't judge Penthouse videos in the way you can review a movie. For one thing--and I say this to Penthouse's credit--they don't bother with any semblance of plot, unlike the X-rated videos that feel they have to justify their nudity with a pedestrian storyline. They just cut right to the chase--gorgeous women, erotic fantasies, and always a happy ending.
I confess to frequent pangs of guilt when I watch this stuff, because I guarantee that no video camera will ever catch *me* doing stuff like that in the nude. And yet if I'm typical of the millions of people, male and female, who watch these videos, they've certainly tapped into *somebody's* fantasies.
Lastly, there's the old argument that this is very "heightened" reality--that you never see physically ugly people having sex in these videos. Well, of course not--the operative word is "fantasy." Do most couples look like Richard Gere and Debra Winger in "An Officer and a Gentleman"? Of course not. And yet, when we see them acting out on screen, we'd like to *think* that we are those people. So forgive me for enjoying gorgeous women in lushly photographed fantasies. I promise I won't ask you to do the same.
