Published Print Words – SNAP Magazine Montreal – Aryan Ideals & Hardcore Porn (unedited)

(check the edited version here. http://issuu.com/snapmagazine/docs/issue17 page 37 )

Aryan Ideals and Hardcore Porn

Ben Wannamaker

For SNAP Magazine – Montreal

Ah, the slippery slope and the wet wick of an article with the words ‘Aryan’ and ‘hardcore porn’ in the title. But what do they have in common with one another? Simply, they both produce unrealistic ideals.  During WWII, Adolf Hitler hijacked the racially charged idea of an ethnicity that was of ‘pure stock’ and Aryans became his ideal ‘master race,’ with distinctly blond hair and caricature cold blue eyes. This poster-child of autocratically endorsed racism fueled the atrocious “Aryanization” programs of Nazi Germany in which the classification of people as “Aryan” and “non-Aryan” was clearly directed towards the exclusion of Jews from German society. ‘Aryanization’ loosely veiled mass genocide, child relocation and strategic breeding; sickly, in ‘maternity homes’ across Europe called ‘Lebensborn,’ only those women deemed ‘racially pure’ and German soldiers were allowed and hopefully produce ‘ideal’ kids (8,000 in Germany alone) not to mention, Lebensborn were places used to ‘adopt’ and ‘Germanize’ Polish and Norwegian children before relocating them to Germany.

Issuing ‘Handbook’s for the German family’, Hitler and his appointed Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels felt that young couples in Nazi Germany would find benefit from these ‘Ten Commandments for Choosing a Spouse’

1. Remember that you are German
2. If of sound stock, do not remain unwed.
3. Keep your body pure
4. Keep spirit and soul pure
5. As a German, choose someone of German or
Nordic blood for your partner
6. When choosing your spouse, look into their
lineage
7. Health is a precondition of external beauty
8. Marry only out of love.
9. Seek not a playmate but a partner in marriage.
10. Wish for as many children as possible.

(Number 8 is a little thin, eh?)

So basically, they of 1930’s Nazi Germany had ‘racial health,’ an unquestionably archaic idea
to our ears in North America 2012, right? But we have our own ‘ideals’, ‘standards of beauty’ and
opinions about ‘communal purity’ – and we have our own ‘propaganda’ that enforces it. To think that we don’t live inside a society which in one way shape or form can be seen as a ‘vacuum’ that motivates those within it to act according to it’s ideals, standards of beauty and considerations of communal purity could be a result of being so involved in the society that what maneuvers it is deemed nearly unrecognizable.
What Mark Mowzer, author of ‘Dark Continent’ claimed – in his historical vision of Europe in WWII – a clear  ‘seedling’ for Hitler’s atrocities to take place was the “struggle to define the relationship between the community as a whole, the individual citizen and social policy.”

In our modern day capitalist society, where it’s all for one, but certainly not one for all, the struggle that today’s individual faces within the community when confronted by a) having the biology of a herd animal but also b) existing in an environment which tells the individual that they are constantly not good enough while offering them a dizzying number of solutions – that they can buy for a discount or sell at a profit to regain this phantom confidence – can very easily paint our culture as one that is presently
struggling to define ‘the relationship between the individual citizen and the community as a whole.’

Take the popularity of online pornography and especially hardcore pornography as of late, which has created an unrealistic set of ideals for “an entire generation” says writer and consultant Cindy Gallop.
At her famous TedTalks speech: ‘Make Love Not Porn,’ Gallop goes onto to outline the real ramifications of the increasing ubiquity of hardcore pornography in our culture – an industry that is more freely, readily available and therefore more frequented than ever before. Gallop describes a generation of young men believing that what you see in hardcore porn is how you have sex and too, due to an education system that is scared of political incorrectness, that the unrealistic ideals that hardcore porn produces have become, in her opinion: ‘defacto sex education’.

The unrealistic becomes the ideal.

“It’s an industry that is driven by men, funded by men, managed by men, directed by men and targeted at men, so it provides one world view,” Gallop says, worrying about unrealistic ideals being socialized into that girl as well, who “lets her boyfriend cum on her face and pretends to like it, even though she doesn’t because she thinks that all men like cumming on women’s faces.”
(www.makelovenotporn.com)

Countless ramifications of women being socialized into an ‘ideal’ standard of beauty can be traced to: the use of makeup at a young age, gender-socialization via fashion and the media, cosmetic surgery, hair colouring and coloured contact lenses in North America. In Asia: whitening lotions, whitening facial masks, whitening facial cleanser, whitening foundation and even vagina bleaching products are found in
many Asian make up stores.

“Popularized by porn stars, vaginal bleaching is nothing more than taking the dark pigmented areas in the “private” places and evening the color out between the two,” writes Dr. Alex from Nashville on www.dralex.hubpages.com.  “The trend started a few years back and although most of the “clients” that
get this done are in the adult film industry, the general public has showed a rising interest in anal and vaginal bleaching. The reason? Not only could it be more aesthetically pleasing with flawless skin, many
believe that it makes you cleaner, although that is debatable.”

Debatable? Or a flat out lie? This is what conflates and confuses the ideal with the insane.

So, our apparently ‘developed world’ vacuum arguably ‘bastardizes’ the nature of how we procreate and motivates us to tailor ourselves to look and act like an unrealistic ‘ideal’ that we see in the popular male-dominated industry of porn. What about the greater and even more unrealistic idea of communal purity? Certainly we’re more developed than to overlook the benefits and nuances of a naturally diverse social landscape.
The Western world’s bullying and ostracism in the media, a ‘you aren’t good enough’ kind of socialization, takes on many forms and also unveils some unsettling questions: from cheering along with Donald Trump when he tells people ‘You’re fired’, hanging on the edge of your seat when people get ‘voted off the island’, calling in your choice for American Idol and laughing at the episodes where poor singers and untalented dancers get rejected: all plant the seeds for those within a social group to perceive this type of behavior as normal and develop a non-consensual tendency toward ‘communal purity’.
But without anyone to bully, where are the bullies? Without the ‘ideal’ Aryan can there even be a ‘Non-Aryan’? Without ‘ideal’ men and women to look to for direction in the bedroom or for fashion advice are we truly passionate or original enough to consciously formulate our own ideals as a reaction to the world around us? Still further: if we banish ‘ideals’ all together, does ‘the other’ become banished right along with it?
It’s a far cry to connect the ideals within our society today directly with the ideals of Nazi Germany, of course – especially because of the freedoms we have to communicate, share ideas and explore our vast, socially diverse landscape: regardless of committing social ‘suicide’ or even signing your death warrant in the process.  The constant consideration, curiosity and questioning of one’s ideals, as small as why you find this person attractive, or why you chose that outfit this morning is nevertheless beneficial because we live in times that require our whole-hearted participation.