As we all know, pornographic magazines, movies and websites cater, for the most part, to men. We hear all the time that men are visual creatures, while women are romance junkies. (Someone once argued that romance novels were a woman's pornography.) Although women aren't quite as easily stimulated by visual material as men, some women do like porn — not all of it soft core. But no mainstream nudie mag, comparable to Playboy, exists for women.

Filament, an erotic magazine for women launching this month, bills itself as "a new concept in magazines for women: intelligence, inspiration and images of men designed for the female gaze." Sorry, Filament, this doesn't sound promising to me. To find out why, read more

First off, there's something too fussy about it. The "female gaze" is an offshoot of "the male gaze," a feminist film theory term that describes the way in which Hollywood films make the male protagonist the subject of most films, mainly through making women the object of their gaze. It also describes the general culture of men's objectification of women. The idea of creating a magazine that will turn women on built on this overly theoretical premise already has my libido wilting. And according to one reviewer, the images of the men in odd poses are anything but sexy.

I wonder if the reason there aren't any mainstream erotic magazines for women is mostly because no one's hit on the right formula. (Playgirl, which was around for 35 years, doesn't count according to some because it was really for gay men.) I once bought the short-lived, straight-outta-Brooklyn porno mag for women Sweet Action, filled with naked pics of skinny, tattooed hipster boys. It was interesting, and I loved the photography, but it didn't do anything for me.

Would you ever buy a magazine with erotic or pornographic photos of men? If so, what, ideally, would the men and the images look like?

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