Male nudes

Sometimes people wish for a male nude site, and I consider doing one, but then I look at something like playgirl.com, and it just seems subtly wrong...

I am not entirely sure why. But I think it's something about: sure, a man can be decorative, just ask any woman who've walked past fit workers with their shirts off. But a man can't be aware that he is decorative and still stay... manly. So how can he pose for pictures nude.

Also, maybe for the same reason, maybe for another, it seem much more difficult to me to do a male nude site and have it remain largely non-sexual. Heck, it's tricky enough to balance it with Domai, but for males I have the feeling one might have to back off even more, maybe into arty BW pictures. I'm not sure.

The question is, if Playgirl is doing it wrong, how do you do it right, and can it be done?

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Update: there's "fit", and there's "parody of man".

Pascal sed:
PlayGirl is the "modern woman's" Playboy. It's deliberately sexual to the stretched limits of softcore, with the penis being as much as possible a phallus, and the man being as much as possible a heap of steroid-inflated muscles with a sex-object face. I mean, cripes, this site could just as well be called "PlayGay", and there would be nothing to change!

"It just seems subtly wrong", you say? Well, yeah, if your definition of subtle is like a molten iron pizza being "subtly hot".
I'm sorry, but that site is SO remote from a male Domai, that it really rubs my masculinity the wrong way! "Um, let me rephrase that..." - (George W. Bush, World Master & Baiter) ;-)

How to do it right? Peace of beefcake! Do the opposite of the PlayGirl method, just like Domai does the opposite of the Playboy method. The pointers from Alex sound sound (they feel right) for a working basis.

It's pretty simple, really: if it feels like it would perfectly illustrate a Roman sex slave catalogus, then it's done wrong. If it feels like the Garden of Eden, where nudity is supremely natural, people are people, and sex has its own place but you have to do some guessing work to locate it, then it's done right.

Laurie, it's not just that these men are glancing towards the camera, it's the WAY they're glancing. If your experience is lacking in that domai...n, I suggest you invest in a random Playboy issue as educational material. Compare the photos there with what you see on Domai. And then imagine the same kind of difference in male nude photos.

On the International Naturists Association's website, there's a daily photo which I never miss. Be warned, some of the men and women you'll see there are totally un-sexy! And then, some are impeccable. But they'll always be in a non-sexual context, which can give a very proper starting point. They have a TV network, and some of their newscasters do take great care of their body, but it's light-years from PlayGirl.

Today's America-influenced world culture, I feel, is saturated with convoluted ways to intensely focus on sexual while playing innocent. The epitome of this being the clearly satirical visual jokes in the Austin Powers series. They're practically porn that avoids showing genitals. And it IS supremely funny, precisely because the best humour is that which refers to ourselves and the world we live in. (This is why most jokes are about sex, money, politics, driving, and family.) If there wasn't such a huge quantity of torrid innuendo in Hollywood, the Austin Powers series would just be a boring bunch of crude jokes. But in today's rampant hypocrisy? It's a powerful caustic satire. A festival of sexual symbols strictly within the allowed boundaries of cinema. Therefore ridiculing them along the way.

It's mind-boggling, but true: many images from Domai would be far more likely to be labeled as "porn", for the sole reason that they don't titillate by craftily playing hide-and-reveal. They neither flaunt, nor wriggle around to avoid facing you. How DARE they!

Eolake, I think the link to that article on systematic bad taste in porn should be a permanent item on your blog's main page. We keep returning to the same conclusion: the truly taboo thing is nudity when it refuses to be vulgar and squarely pornographic. Because it doen't fit into the neat and simplistic world system of the effed-up sex-obsessed bigots.

Anonymous insisted...
"We only find them beautiful because of sexuality."
Then do you consider that a horse, a dolphin, a swan, a tiger, a sunset... are also sexual to us? Nature's full of things which are very beautiful to us. And even put us in a romantic mood, but not towards THEM.
Sure, a woman is intrinsically sexual to any hetero man... whether she's naked or not! But what makes Domai unique is precisely that it rejects the typical deliberate emphasis on the sexual component of women. Without trying to smother it either. "Simple Nudes" is just that.
One thing that makes those nude women more beautiful to us than the examples I've given, apart from the sexual component which is simply left to be, no-more-no-less, is that they are people, with faces, and souls showing through these faces. While the typical Pamela Anderson (there, I've said it: Miss Playboy par excellence) would be better off being a robot, for such vacuity of soul and total switchability of bodies is just horrible to consider in a human being. Object-women, and God forbids that they ever be more than that, more than the warm flesh equivalent of an inflatable doll.