I recently had this theory that shoes feature so much in pornography because of stupid old ordinances relating to obscenity.

My basic premise was that the reason that shoe wearing is so prevalent in pornography is because at some point during the Victorian or Edwardian periods, pornographic material was considered obscene, and being caught with photographs of nude subjects could land you in a particularly large amount of trouble as you were handling or dealing in obscenities. Oddly enough, this lead to people figuring out ways to hide their porn on teeny-tiny little slides and led to the invention of micro-fiche. True story! Anyway, I figured that pornographers, when busted, would attempt to get out of it on the legal technicality that the models weren’t actually nude because they were wearing shoes – and as this went on for some time, it became to be perceived as normal (at least in pornography).

Thank god that cock is blurred! Now there's nothing obscene or degrading about this picture!

This was based on the same logical stupidity that brings us tentacle porn courtesy of Japan. Because they’re not allowed to show you a penis in Japanese pornography (possibly because of the hideous shame it would bring to the populace as a whole if gaijin ever saw it unblurred). So it’s perfectly cool to have a chick being shafted by eight or 23 tentacles at a time, gagging, bleeding, eye-balls exploding… so long as it’s not a cock, because someone might find that a bit obscene. WTF Japan? Seriously!

So you can see that the logic is somewhat consistent with the logic of officialdom. Because, y’know, fuck common sense so long as they’re obeying the letter of the law. Shoes = foot clothing = not totally nude = no obscenity.

"We didn't have dental floss back in the 70s. We just didn't see the need!"

A lot of my Facebook friends disagreed with me, pointing out that it was merely an aesthetic. I countered with the fact that so were obviously fake tits in the 80s, amazingly hairy thatch in the 70s, and really fat girls in the Renaissance. There was something of the era which created these aesthetics in the first place. After all, why is it that all porno has waxed lips and anal bleaching nowadays?

I decided to do research.

… and have so far come up with nothing other than a whole bunch of oooolllllldddd laws I’m going to have to read through at some point soon. And Victori Porn.

It’s what you’d get if you let 4chan loose on antique smut.

Yes, the entire purpose of this post was to get to that link.

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1. The line between B-Grade and Arthouse should be thicker (NSFW)

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