1. How does Mark Hay’s article in Vice “How and Why Pubic Hair is Back and Porn” (https://www.vice.com/en/article/xw8dzn/bush-is-back-in-porn-baby) provide an example of how pornography is saying something to us. What, might you hypothesize, can the disappearance and reappearance of pubic hair in pornography tell us about our shifting understandings of gender, aesthetic form, and/or sexuality? For example, think about what Hay says about the symbols attached to body hair in the 70s. What kinds of symbols might be attached to pubic hair, or its lack, now?
2. Kipnis writes that “a culture’s pornography [acts as] a very precise map of that culture’s borders” (120). If that is true, then what borders, would you say, does the pornography popular today map? In other words, if pornography shows us where decorum ends and taboo starts, what does popular pornography tell us about what is and isn’t taboo in our culture? Use specific examples, either from prior knowledge, or by simply browsing popular categories online. What about those categories or popular tropes that you have identified marks the border of what is considered normal vs. taboo?