“So, the times are changing,” he says, looking like he’s dying for something to smoke while talking.
“The truth is, the original Play Boy really exploded because of images of Marylin Monroe that weren’t for him and he didn’t get permission for. Images like that were rare.
These days though, this sex icon Lyric Mariah or Zoe Rose, you can get right to their brain through social media. When they are lonely or horny. Heck, you can flirt and they will respond. Why would you need a middle man for this type of content? Some sexy photos? You can damn near cyber sext with these girls”.
You remember watching Lyric wake up out of bed, so flawless, all streamed online. Heck, and Zoe? Looks like an angelic goddess, but as you learn about her as a person you lost that feeling. Crazy, right? Losing interest in a supermodel because she’s not your type.
You just want to run a sexy “magazine”- magazine is a stretch. It’ just a sexy patron. It feels like so many girls are starting them once they get a lick of fame. Not only that, these photographers who are disinterested in the scene but are addicted to the eyes and the status of shooting these girls. That feeling like they are spending money they didn’t earn just to be on the list of hot photographers.
“Now Playboy’s whole shtick of paying people who wouldn’t be printed nude is being out shadowed by just Twitter. Not a magazine, just the knowledge you can thumb through their profile and find all the nudes you might want. Whose in Playboy now, some Porn Girl? I don’t even know the names, Erica or Riley. Magazines aren’t it because of print- they aren’t it because they are slow and they are middlemen for the people you want to see.”
You’ve got a photographer ex-boyfriend on the ready, you bend and twist for shots. Get the next hot girl lined up for each angle. Your magazine could be the best here, it feels like the best. It feels like you are raising the status of everyone you work with. It’s not selling though. The patron, the magazine. It’s all underwater.
You sit listening to what he says to say, but you half know it all. Not for the reasons he rattled off, but because you can just feel it in the way that people spend money. What some collectors are gonna buy it? There just aren’t enough collectors. A PDF on Patreon? They pass them around free online. So what are you gonna do now? How can this “magazine” ever climb the heights?
Fidgeting with your napkin as you respond, having no real ideas worth mentioning. Your body petite relaxing as you sigh and look past the publisher who you’ve been talking with.
“You do direct marketing long enough, it all just turns into porn”
It’s all already porn is the thing. It’s porn all the way down. Getting men’s neurons activating to get their attention long enough to convince them of a purchase. That was Eats Channel’s trick. Paris Hilton being sexy eating a hamburger- to sell a hamburger. Marrying Monroe being naked to sell magazines. “For the articles”- but they only knew the articles because of the sex. You can buy Pepper Hart’s vagina mold, they use sex to sell masturbation. That’s OnlyFans isn’t it? I can’t figure out what’s next, sex to sell sex?
“Everyone likes selling, that one to one transaction. What they don’t like is building a coherent brand or identity. That’s hard. That’s messaging. Tying people’s identity to products. Tying your company to helping people discover products”
Podcasts are big right now, but is there gonna be another Naked Woman podcast? Talk about sex and do some outrageous things behind the scenes. People multitask, they want to listen to something while they grind away at their day jobs. Who can watch things anymore? You need your eyes to be watching the screen for what you are working on.
The publisher is done with his monologue, the rehearsed speech he’s given to others would-be magazine designers, out trying to get a little money out of their beauty while they have it. I doubt he’s ever really helped anyone, just a bag of ideas with practice printing medical tri-folds.
I go home, look at my body in the mirror, posing, pushing my appeal. I sigh and stress eat something. I check Instagram for some new horny photog offering me my rate to bend over in some lingerie and possibly nude while soaked in oil.
