They’re thinking about sex as an academic life force.” “What these magazines are doing is showing that it’s not just a dirty, fun thing that people do. “It really frustrates me the way people are written off for writing about sex because it’s a really valid, significant, difficult and knotty topic,” she explains. As a journalist Drake often writes about sex, which she sees as an inherently political act. “There’s an explosion of really amazing sex magazines,” says Kitty Drake, the Editor of London-based magazine subscription service Stack. Whereas so called “girly magazines” were garishly designed and cheaply printed-all the better to roll up and slide in your back pocket-these new titles are exquisitely designed and err towards the cerebral, covering topics ranging from the decriminalization of sex work to the connection between sexuality, power, money, and poetry. Now, a new generation of millennial publishers are revisiting the printed page to explore sexuality with a distinctly contemporary feel.
There was just one obvious flaw: the pursuit of pleasure was told from a strictly male point of view. Seen through the lens of today, these publications might seem about as risqué as the tired Playboy brand that pushed the genre into the mainstream, but once upon a time they (and Playboy Magazine) were championed as progressive antidotes to the puritanical attitudes of the mid–twentieth century. When did you see your first “dirty” mag? Was it hidden under an older sibling’s bed? Peeking out from the top shelves at a newsstand? Discovered in the dirt at a nearby park? From seedy sex shops to the thoughtfully curated shelves of independent bookstores, erotica has gone mainstream.