What do I do when I get the latest issue of Thrasher? I go through it and tear out all the porn and throw it away. I throw away the porn, not the Thrasher, that is.
You and I may have different ideas of what “porn” is. To me, porn is, at a minimum, any media designed to cause sexual arousal. That means porn doesn’t just mean naked people, because anyone who’s looked at a National Geographic knows there are naked people out there who you’d prefer put some clothes on.
Speaking of National Geographic, there was this kid I knew in sixth grade named Keith Barry. His nickname was “nature bear” for some reason. One day another kid said “Hey Keith! Didn’t I see you on the cover of National Geographic naked catching a salmon or something?” I thought that was pretty clever for a sixth grader.
I’ve been skating since the mid to late 80s. In the 80s it was all about skulls. Then it was other stuff. Then in the early 90s World Industries started it all with the Randy Colvin deck that had some full-on porn on it. I mean stuff that nobody would say isn’t porn. At my local shop which doubled as a toy store they sold the deck but only inside black trash bags. You could buy it, but they wouldn’t even let you look at it until you bought it and left the store.
After that porn became pretty common in skateboarding, mostly among the World Industries family of companies, and especially when Big Brother magazine was in force. Then it sort of died down and you didn’t see much of it. I still don’t think it’s nearly at the level it was around ‘93, although you see it from time to time here and there. Or in the case of the last Thrasher there were about 3-4 pages that included what some would consider pornographic.
So what’s with skateboarding and porn? It seems the way it goes is that you get sponsored, then you go on tour and with no adult supervision you turn into a dirt, soaking up all the alcohol and hotel porn a 14-year old can handle. Then you start wearing tight pants and get on Pig Wood. Then you grow up a little, ditch the porn and drinking, get on Baker, and grow a mustache. I don’t know, I’m just calling it as I see it.
Well, I’m against porn. There are the scientific, statistical reasons. Studies show it affects the brain much the way drugs do, but that it’s more addictive than heroin, meth, or crack. It destroys marriages by creating false expectations that lead to marital discord, it gets people fired from jobs, and it encourages sexual promiscuity which has the potential for leading to disease, unwanted pregnancy, children without fathers, abortion en masse, etc. All in all it leads to death and destruction. Some people point to porn as being what started them on the path to prison or becoming a mass murderer. Of course some of those guys never run out of things to blame other than themselves, but there’s other evidence to back of those claims.
The porn industry brings in around $10B per year. By contrast, skateboarding brings in about $1.6B per year. It’s a big industry, and the people in it are always trying to figure out ways to get you hooked.
You could say that it’s society’s problem, right? I mean, if my wife could just embrace porn the way I have then it wouldn’t hurt our marriage, right? She just needs to be more open-minded and tolerant about it. Which brings up the topic of wife-swapping. I’ve brought it up with my wife but she just has this old-fashioned perspective on it. For those of you who are idiots I’m being facetious, of course. Did I spell that right?
But I guess if you believe we descended from green algae and there’s no God or higher power then porn makes at least some sort of sense, because nothing really matters. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If we die and that’s the end of everything, then we might as well do whatever we want, right? If there’s nothing after death, then there’s nothing wrong with murder, rape, or child molestation either, right? I mean, if the person is dead and there’s no life after death then they don’t care that they’re dead, right? And if I molest a child, well, they’re going to die someday anyway and then they won’t care, right?
That’s the thing though. Even if you don’t believe in God, or life after death with varying levels of living based on who you become in this life, porn still doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing to win except a short-term high, but you could potentially lose a lot. Why would you risk a happy marriage with someone you love for the rush of looking at some porn? Now in your mind, you’re throwing up a wall and making excuses. Don’t lie, you can feel it happening. Your mind is searching for reasons why what I’m saying is stupid.
That’s the other thing about it, you get desensitized to it. Everyone who’s addicted to something thinks they’re normal. They find all sorts of ways to justify and rationalize their behavior. Curt Cobain did heroin because he had stomach pain, right? Yeah, it was just a pain killer, he wasn’t addicted.
Like any addiction, you can never get enough of what you don’t need. Not everyone become destructively addicted to porn, the same way some people drink but don’t become alcoholics, or do drugs but don’t become drug addicts. But plenty of people do become alcoholics, addicted to drugs, and addicted to porn. But we don’t understand as much about mental addictions as we do about physical addictions yet. But porn is as addictive or more so than drugs, and possibly more destructive.
Here’s a test to see if you’re addicted. Do you look at porn at least once a week? Then try going for a month without looking at it. If you start feeling like you’re having withdrawals then congrats, you’re an addict. If you look at it once a month then try going a year without looking at it.
I love skateboarding. But skateboarding to me doesn’t have anything to do with porn, and I wish porn had nothing to do with skateboarding. In some ways I wish we could go back to the days when skateboarding was about skulls and rebellion against jocks. Times were easier then. I’d like to see skateboarders who respect women, rather than seeing them as objects. I’d like to see skateboarders who control their minds and themselves as well as they control their boards. In command.
Maybe nobody agrees with me. Maybe everyone dreams of having a mansion where behind every door there are two whores and a pound of weed. That’s not my dream, but you know what, that’s part of what’s great about skateboarding, especially these days. There are choices. You want tight pants? You got it, go watch the Slaughterhouse vid. You want baggy pants? Go watch Stevie Williams. You want porn? You got it. You want no porn, you got that too. Today, skateboarding offers more choices than ever before, rather than a mold that creates a bunch of identical sheeple. That’s not to say I think porn is ok for some, I don’t think it’s ok for anyone anymore then I think crack is ok for some people. I’m just glad that it’s not the status quo like it almost was in skateboarding once.
If I can ever get my shop up and running we’re not going to carry anything remotely pornographic. It’s a decision I made a long time ago. We’re going to keep it pretty clean. I know I can’t force people to not get porn any more than the government can force people to not do drugs. The only solution is to invite, to educate, to inform, and to win the war of logic. Pornography and its effects won’t be gone until people choose to not buy it or look at it, the same way drugs won’t be gone until people stop wanting them. But that doesn’t mean I have to make it any easier for people to get the stuff.
Some people might call it censorship. That’s fine, I think certain things should be censored. I think kids should be protected from seeing or hearing certain things. I think there should be a shop where kids aren’t embarassed to bring their parents. Where parents know their kid can go by themselves and not be exposed to anything they don’t like. Where’s it just about skating, and not all the other stuff that seeps into the skateboarding culture but doesn’t really have anything to do with skating.
Just skateboarding, and nothing else.
Loading ...
“Some people might call it censorship. That’s fine, I think certain things should be censored. I think kids should be protected from seeing or hearing certain things. I think there should be a shop where kids aren’t embarassed to bring their parents. Where parents know their kid can go by themselves and not be exposed to anything they don’t like. Where’s it just about skating, and not all the other stuff that seeps into the skateboarding culture but doesn’t really have anything to do with skating.”
I’ve been lurking for awhile and thought I’d post. As a fellow thirtysomthin’ skater with a wife and 3 young boys, I would have to agree. My wife and I are currently getting a shop ready to open in our community and plan on censoring our inventory as well. There is so much out there trying to sway our youth that I don’t want to participate in exposing them. And yes, it is a good business decision as well. Happy parents make great customers. You have to give them a reason to trust you and “questionable” decks or such will be all they need to go somewhere else. Look at CSS. Read the first page and it says “Content Shock?”. Little Billy’s not paying for that new board, Mommy is. Just skateboarding, and nothing else. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I bought a number 2 issue of BIGBROTHER magazine when I was 17. I was shocked by the porn but I bought it because that issue had a cupon for a free deck if you subscribed to BIGBROTHER. So I paid the 20 dollar subscription fee, and to my surprise a few weeks later my box from WORLD came in with a full top to bottom graphic of that NATAS logo with the goat, pentagram and dead babies. My parents hated it, but it was a deal! A free deck and a magazine subscription! When I showed them the deck, they were cool because it was a 101 deck with a different logo than the box.
All innocent right? The box was loaded with all kinds of goodies, stickers, mad circle stencils, and whatever product may have been laying around the warehouse that packed my box. This made me an instant fan. Every other month my mag would come in the mail, packaged and unviewable by my parents. It would always have some cool stuff. Even a FOUNDATION condom and a mexican finger trap inside a box of PENIS POPS that looked just like a corn pops box. It was funny at the time and rebelious etc.
But what BIGBROTHER brought into my life that really wasn’t there before was PORN. I remember just about every pornographic image from that magazine subscription over 10 years later. Porn is a powerful thing, and I try to avoid it, as I have a daughter and 3 sons. Even though I make an effort to stay clear of the stuff, it has affected me and stayed with me. So it’s a little scary to think about how this has affected other young people. Perhaps it didn’t phase some, but I am sure it got to others.
Hey, I subscribed with the same offer! I got a free deck as well, the Mike Carroll Nirvana one. I didn’t get the cereal box or the condom, but there sure was a lot of other stuff inside the magazines that I didn’t need to see.