The writer and philosopher Alain de Botton’s magnificent brain has laid yet another egg. He has decided to create a new kind of erotica, called Better Porn.
According to de Botton, regular porn is “stupid, brutish, earnest and exploitative”; his porn would be noble and virtuous, based on “wit, intelligence and kindness”, and streamed through a website with precisely three ashen subscribers.
Of course, I am secretly hoping he has already completed his first feature — In Plato’s Ass — a high-brow ontological thriller, complete with bisexual librarians, squeaky bookcases and one-liners such as “Is that a dictionary in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” and “Let’s Foucault”.
But I’m not sure that’s what he has in mind. His sort of porn, he explains, would be tasteful and “curated”, allowing sexual excitement to “bleed” — bad word — into other areas of life.
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Being witty or working hard or simply knowing your restaurants would be turn-ons, whereas the shaved, thrusting, grunting, gelled, turkey flesh of mainstream smut would be banished. The only snag is that I always thought pornography was meant to be stupid and brutish, the sexual equivalent of eating a McDonald’s. Porn isn’t porn unless there are pizza boys and plumbers, dicky pipework and lesbian landladies breaking their fridges.
Porn is about filth, anger, secrecy and shame, not light titillation and paddling “fit for thoughtful, good human beings”.
In fact, I’ve always felt there is something rather off-putting about erotica — all tears and sighs and drenched antimacassars, desperate Notting Hill housewives taking their buzzing love beads down aisle number nine.
I once read a book about a woman who made it her mission to become an “ethical sexual adventuress”, visiting erotic masseurs and learning “c*** shiatsu” and having “prayers whispered” into her la-la. She went to a French nudist colony and made out with a vegan. The whole thing was so Trudie and Sting. In fact, I can just imagine de Botton sitting in Trudie’s kitchen now, with Bono and Gwyneth and Chris, in a quilted velvet jacket like some halitotic Edwardian “etchings collector”, discussing the distinction between Eros and love, or how Hitler Sucks is totally flawed in terms of characterisation and plot.
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Of course, I understand and support his mission to make things nicer and less frightening and even less squeaky, but if you want better dialogue, more convincing actors, great hair, costumes and higher production values, why not watch David Attenborough instead?
Just spray no
AeroShot is a drug Alan Partridge would love — a lime-flavoured shot of caffeine that is sprayed on the tongue from a lipstick-type dispenser, which can be kept in one’s blazer or the pocket of one’s slacks, and is referred to, cheesily, as “breathable energy”. It’s a mix between Pro-Plus and a breath freshener, and it sounds disgusting. In spite of this, the “drug” is a hit with club kids in New York and even facing review as an uncontrolled substance, and will therefore dominate the scene when it comes here next month. I can only conclude that clubbing is now more dull than ever, that “crazy” club trends such as laughing gas — “hippie crack” — are getting even less crazy, and that our only hope is that a batch will be dropped on South Kensington, where it will be abused by bored, affluent teenagers just ahead of exam time.
The squeezed middle
Hurrah for Marks & Spencer, which has brought out Waist Sculpt, a range of “wearable” corsets and waist cinchers that are as comfortable as they are foxy. I applaud this, as the owner of three extremely tight corsets that have left me unable to sit down or stand up, bend over or even get undressed without revealing acres of red, striated flesh. This is a pity, as there’s nothing quite as delicious as marching out in a sockingly sexy bodice-gripper, with big, flammable hair and indecent lips. People are always telling me corsets are symbols of subservience and oppression, of pain, breathlessness and hate — and I say, yes, I love them as well! It’s just nice to be able to take them off in less than five minutes.