DIY-ography

I have been thinking lately about porn. About what makes something pornographic. Is it content? Is it the consumer's response?
Though the roots of pornography are Greek (porn being related to the purchase of a female slave), I am convinced that this concept extends beyond the sex market. To facilitate this argument, I assume that pornography creates a visual concept of the ideal, arouses the viewer, and creates an impulse to attempt recreation of this ideal. By this definition, pornography, the sensual hawking of pleasure extends beyond sex into other visceral and fundamental desires. I am intrigued at how the idea of pornography is reassigned, as was pointed out to me (strangely enough)in a Facebook posting (true. Many people are posting about last night's raging kegger and my nerdy friends and I are posting about this stuff). In the October, 2005 episode of Harper's Magazine, Frederick Kaufman's article, "Debbie Does Salad" explores The Food Network and the parallels between sexual pornography taped in the studio next door, and the food porn taped at TFN studios. In that article, the author watches footage of a food preparation show with a pornographic film editor. Indeed, this turns out to be a fruitful exercise. An interesting comparison--the pornographer had explicit descriptors for the ample chicken breasts being prepped on the counter. Additionally, the article identifies pornography archetypes: the innocent girl next door, the seductress, the unsuspecting man ravished by the horny pizza orderer. The author offers us TFN parallels: Sara Moulton, homey and sweet, Giadi DiLarentiis voluptuous and sensual. He discusses the camera techniques and lighting of flesh (edible and human), the massaging of textures and luscious sampling and tasting of finished products. All of this suggests that part of what defines pornography is the psychic satisfying of primitive urges--those urges that drive us to shelter, sexual satisfaction, food.
While I found this article compelling, I had been considering yet another variant of pornography: homeimprovementporn. I am thinking of the glossy magazines near the cashiers at Lowe's. The magazines, glossy and thick and overpriced, fill the displays near the cashiers. They are the last thing you see as you leave the store with your meager package of light bulbs and perhaps soil or a mop. They are there to remind you of the inadequacy of your own home, the drabness and ordinary waiting for you there. Here, in these magazines is paradise. Homes bordering lakes and cliffs, sculptural examples of perfect form and architecture. Pools that gleam and ripple in perfectly photographed and edited images. Walkways, wet and lit professionally to conceal any flaw beckoning you to follow them through manicured gardens into hospitable front doors.
Inside these magazines, simplistic photos illustrate the process by which you could theoretically obtain similar results. A perfectly manicured hand with skin as soft as a baby's gingerly, easily grasps a nail. Of course, the target of the nail is perfectly smooth, level, primed, and new grade wood. There is no discomfort of leaning under aged cabinets, or struggling to grip the flashlight as you hammer. There are no dirty, broken fingernails and hands chapped from all the demolition work in Step 1. Step 2, a brief paragraph under a sharp image would take the average home owner 3 or 4 hours to undertake, with results crooked and rough, amateurish at best. A brief scan of the page reveals 35 steps--months' worth of weekends slavishly laboring on the house.
Just as the photo subjects in skin magazines wake from their beds with perfect hair and lipstick, drink martinis gingerly and elegantly, disrobe without stumbling or bending awkwardly, these photos show us home improvement at its idealized best. It offers us a false sense of ease, a false sense of what we may achieve, a false sense of the ease of accomplishment. We, the amateur homeowner, are unable to achieve such professional quality. We have skin blemishes, and reveal cellulite as we undress; we wake up with halitosis and bed head.
As the advertisements in skin mags offer us enhancements, tools, and props that promise us the idealized results in the photos, the ads in the home improvement mags offer tools to simplify. Tools to achieve professional results. Stores to purchase these materials. And, like in some very sketchy skin mags, the phone numbers of professionals who will actually come into your house and deliver the results you desire.
These, the Ty Penningtons, the Mike Rowes, the HGTV, TLC, Discovery Channel gurus, have a cult following. These are the men, capable and strong, who could swoop into our homes and easily complete all the home improvement tasks we long for our husbands to do. Those tasks that pile up on the honey-do list, that our husband cannot do, don't want to pay some one to do, or simply don't think need to be done--these are the jobs that our cable TV hosts will expertly succeed at--better, faster, more beautifully--where our inept husbands bungle and curse and fail. They will encounter no unforeseen obstacle in laying the patio, but each step will proceed in TV speed, smoothly, in a single half hour viewing. The stars' leather tool belts, clean and pristine dangle easily around their trim waists and falsely lure us into the idea that the projects are easy, affordable, brisk endeavors. The home owner's problems are solved, the adored rescuers are worshipped and waved off the screen to save the next damsel in distress.
Certainly, I do not speak for every married stay at home mom. But, I suspect that this fantasy, this ideal man who fixes, beautifies, improves our homes, might be the ultimate married woman's fantasy. We, of the tired uteri, the exhausting children, the waning sexuality, dream not of Fabio. We don't long to be swept off our feet for nights of sleepless lovemaking. We don't yearn for well-endowed studs delivering pizza (and so much more) at all hours of the night. We have surrendered these fantasies with the frivolity of youth. We fantasize about utilitarian kitchens, fashionable window treatments, au courant architectural touches. We have yielded (and understand our spouses have yielded) to jobs, and needy children, and laundry, and traffic, and car payments. We have abandoned semi-famous underwear models and TV stars as our heroes. We understand the tremendous pressures on our spouses to be the "New Dads," involved and active in child rearing, as well as stepping up to traditional breadwinning roles. We accept the demanding expectations of our peers to have brilliant children who can read, write, and play Mozart by the age of 5. In order to have these things, this ideal husband, this perfect child, the organic dinner on the table, we have lost. And what we have lost, we now try to recapture through cable: not through traditional porn, but through the "budget," the "contest-winner," the "heartwarming story" renovations that we all covet.
The new pornography for women is not Levi Johnson's teen near nudity in Playgirl. We are beyond this. We want more. We want Bob Vila to install solid Oak floors, hand carved moulding, custom sinks. We want Norm Abrams, canvas apron and all, to fashion us gorgeous, hand-tooled furniture. We want Ty Pennington to rebuild our homes.
I want wood. I want tools. I want caulk. I want hardware. It makes me hot.