Meredith, so much of your criticism of AW sounds like after-the-fact regret and bitterness to me, rather than a genuine negative experience. When you describe your actual experience with the company and the staff, you say you were treated with respect and made to feel comfortable, and that you “believed the company acted in an honourable way”. If you are the person who is listed as Meredith on the site, you very clearly were not pressured to do anything you weren’t totally comfortable with at the time, because the shots are all very innocent nude shots of a girl undressing in an open field with a big smile on her face, no sexual tone whatsoever – and this is what you signed up for in the first place: “tasteful nude photographic work.” It seems there are a few reasons you no longer believe the company to have acted honourably (i.e. true to their pro-female, self-expression manifesto). –If you’re not the same Meredith please say so, because as it is this is all we readers have to go on.–

(1) You decided after the fact that you weren’t comfortable having posed for nude shots. Either this alone made you decide you had been exploited, or you wanted AW to remove your shoot and weren’t happy with the conditions of this (paying a lot of money).

(2) You think it dishonourable that AW advertise for models in a way that targets 18-year-olds, 18-to-24-year-olds, and young women for whom the money that AW pay is a lot. This is kind of ridiculous. The niche that this porn company occupies is one where the models are women in this age range. In and of itself this is not exploitative or unethical. Being young and not having a lot of financial security sort of go hand in hand. Just because the money is an influential factor for a lot of the models does not make their decision any less autonomous or real.

(3) I see the following stance in practically all of the posts objecting to AW, not just Meredith’s: “Garion Hall deceives his staff and customers about the existence of Abby and is generally not a likeable or honest person, therefore Abby Winters as a company has deceived its models about being pro-female etc.” But if the staff, the women – largely ex-models – who interact with the models and film and photograph them make them feel comfortable, dignified, beautiful, and in control of their own bodies… well… isn’t that what’s important? That the experience of being a model is one that makes you feel good about yourself? Sure, some people like Meredith might later decide they regret their decision, but even she readily admits that the experience itself was positive. And if the staff themselves (people like Marigold, Suzie, Chloe B, Sue-Ann) are genuinely passionate and respectful and pro-woman, does it really make a huge difference that the CEO is a sleazy, dishonest piece of work? A little thought experiment: imagine a porn company that produced totally conventional, photoshopped, plastic girl-on-girl porn. The orgasms seem fake, the idea that the women are genuinely into each other seems fake. What is known of the staff is that they are pushy, sleazy men. But the company is owned by a woman, a woman who for all intents and purposes is pro-woman, pro-self expression etc etc. Do you think this would mitigate the sleazy exploitative nature of the interaction between staff and models? I don’t, and nor do I think that Garion Hall’s questionable personal ethics mean that Abby Winters the company is not what it claims to be. The facts that there so many (as in dozens and dozens) return models, that a large proportion of these seem to be lesbian or genuinely bisexual, and that quite a few have gone on to become staff members just bolsters my position.

http://forums.abbywinters.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=12642&p=349955#post349955

This is in no way a judgement of either models or members, but to say that a close up of a spread vulva and anus is celebrating the female body is fairly rich. While some may see such images as things of beauty (and a woman’s body is nothing to be ashamed of), it’s a safe bet that most of the male viewers will be whacking off to them.

If we can all agree it’s pornography and not such grand feminist statement, this debate might start becoming a little more rational.

I admire Larry Flynt because he has never pretended to be anything he’s not. He’s about tits and ass, peddler of smut, whatever you want to call it. As this was in a much more conservative era he copped hell for his business dealings and copped it on the chin, unrelenting.

Not the Abby Winters site. They have decided their girls are natural, happy, healthy, clean living and intrinsically motivated (correspondingly, models for the rival sites must all be unhappy cokeheads). Their models come complete with (assumed) identities and (invented) personalities, eager to share their lives and thoughts. And, apparently, it’s all the models doing. What the site claims to do is simply, innocently provide a self-help service for these girls to feel good about themselves. Thank heavens then for Abby Winters, beacon in the night and social worker to women in need of self expression.

It’s called marketing. Some very popular colas have been marketing fizzy sugared water as a different kind of “experience” for decades. Most consumers are a little more savvy.

What an incredible misogynist view of women you have.

Woman (and less, men) have been modelling nude for millennia. Thankfully it is only a minority who judge then all negatively.