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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Scarlet Letters 
Scarlet Letters aims to "address sex from a feminine perspective" and focus on the "art and craft of erotica". Its credentials are impressive — one of the only sexual publications owned, operated and edited entirely by women, and, with a 65% female readership, they lay claim to the highest percentage of female readers of any sexual site online. Theme issues come out four times a year — upcoming topics include Rites of Passage and Sexual Humour. I've been thinking a lot about what it is that gives Scarlet Letters that certain redeeming 'something' despite its obvious downfalls — tiny fonts, bad poetry, bad fiction, bad design — areas where my co-reviewer Tom Hartman and I are in agreement. In terms of literary content, yes, this 'zine is pretty much a write-off. But it's the fact that I kept looking even when I knew the 'literary' stuff was no good that makes me think there's a worthwhile element to this site. It is not that it was titillating. Consider the staff portraits - you have to admire women with the gall to lay everything on the line like that. And the cheeky sense of humor. And the fact that this site is a venue for photography and art (and, yes, spectacularly bad writing) that is unlike anything I've seen before on the Web. It isn't pornography (a note on the cover informs us that if we're looking for that we've come to the wrong place), but there are some fascinating and unusual glimpses of female sexuality here that somehow wouldn't be appropriate anywhere else. I liked Charles Gatewood's photographs. (Scarlet Letters "editrix" Heather Corinna describes his ability to come up with 'an image so telling that it reaches down to the core of something deep and 'complex.') Clumsy sexual metaphors aside, I loved the image of a woman tenderly sliding acupuncture needles through her lover's nipple, and the two muscular male torsos locked in a lover's embrace. I winced at the image of a rotating spiky thing drawing beads of blood from skin. Of course, there's some bad photography - Isabella's "original and brave erotic performances" looked to me like nothing more than standard photo-paint manipulations of nude self-portraits. I preferred Michelle Serchuck's "Solo Sex" photographs, and finding them genuinely erotic, as were Adrian Welch's theatrical shots of couples. After all the visuals, I was ready for some words and there are plenty of them, scattered through a mass of categories - perhaps too many - such as Features, Fiction, Columns, Reviews, Weekly, Lounge. I enjoyed the reviews of porn movies from a reviewer who revels in the depiction of 'real' bodies and 'real' facial expressions during orgasm. I did not like the reviews of makeup freebies sent to the Scarlet Letters office, though I guess this is standard 'women's magazine' fare that must appeal to some. It would be easy to dislike this 'zine. Let's face it, we're not dealing with high literature. Yet I think in the case of much of the 'bad' poetry and fiction that this is the point - personal musings on sex and lust and love just wouldn't get a look in elsewhere. Still, Scarlet Letters is good fun, and I learned a few things along the way (including masturbation tips I had never even contemplated). This 'zine deals openly with issues about female sexual pleasure that I wish I had been able to access years ago, and its down-to-earth, guilt-free approach to sex is a rare treat. For me, this makes Scarlet Letters a site worth a look. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Want Pif to review your zine? Ingrid Woodrow is a writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Her first novel, Goddess and the Galaxy Boy, will be published in early 2001. She is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland and working on a new novel.She is also the founding editor of the online writing journal Mangrove, which is listed as a "Site of National Significance" in the National Library of Australia's PANDORA archive. Further information and samples of her work can be obtained by visiting www.uq.edu.au/~eniwoodr
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