Because, when government gets involved, then government gets to make really good decisions about your own healthcare, just like this one. This is why healthcare reform should involve withdrawing government involvement from your healthcare choices, not adding more of it.

I think that what you are describing as "anxiety induced by a social threat" is nothing more that envy, plain and simple. You seem to be saying that women who pose for Playboy have something - sexual power - that other women don't believe that they have in the same measure, and that they want. Hence, the animosity that women feel for other women who do take advantage of opportunities to pose for those publications.

You've got. I want. Hence, I don't like you. Is this not the very definition of envy?

I would also like to refute your contention that virtually all women have some sort of dislike for what you call "beauty porn" with some anecdotal evidence of my own, so long as we are citing anecdotes on this thread. My father has subscribed to Playboy since 1970. Its presence was a regular feature of my house all while I was growing up. My father looked at the pictures, read the interviews, and read the jokes. My mother read most of the rest of the magazine. Occasionally, she tells me, she would look at the pictures out of curiosity. Never has she expressed to me anything even remotely resembling animosity, anxiety, or resentment at the magazine, or at my father for subscribing to it. She had no problem with it being an open presence in our house.

Aside from the fact that any sentence that includes the phrase "virtually all women" is usually pretty far from true, my own experience of Playboy's envy-free presence in my house while I was growing up is a pretty clear indication to me, at least, that "beauty porn" and female envy are not of necessity a pair.

You make some interesting points that I would like to respond to.

First of all, irregardless of how it may broadly impact the condition of black people in America, nobody would ever think to deny a talented young black athlete the opportunity to play his or her sport professionally, or to speak ill of him or her for taking the opportunity when given. This is because everyone assumes that the game is his passion and that he is pursuing this career path out of genuine love, and not just as a cold economic calculation. Thus, to deny him that opportunity, or speak out against him for taking it, would ultimately amount to the group - society and community - making a claim on his true happiness and fulfillment, and most people, be they liberal or communitarian, want to live in a society where everyone fits in and can be themselves.

Yet people - feminists in particular - have a very hard time applying that same logic to nude modeling and pornography. The assumption in that case is that power is all that played into the decision of the women to enter that industry, and that authentic enjoyment of the work itself was not part of the equation. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine that nude modeling and sex work can actually be enjoyable? Nobody has a problem with the idea that being a judge at the Cannabis Cup is a pothead's dream job. Once again, why would that logic not apply also to sex work?

Second of all, I think that the assumption that sex work and nude modeling, in and of themselves, perpetuates negative stereotypes about women is also a fallacy. Sex and nudity can be depicted in any number of ways. The only message common to all depictions of sex and nudity aimed at men is that women enjoy being beautiful and that women enjoy sex. So to answer your final question about whether or not women can make porn that empowers both them and others: if by "others" you mean women collectively, the answer is no, because each sex scene is judged subjectively, and there is no image anywhere that can be deemed universally empowering to all people. However, if by "others," you are simply referring to the other people, be they male or female, who respond positively to that scene, and for whom the imagery in question resonantes, the answer is resoundingly yes.

How does Joanna Krupa in Playboy decrease the power of the mass of ordinary women? Simple. Because she devalues their sexual power as a matter of comparison. Sexual attractiveness is one form of power in our society. A woman’s attractiveness is also subjectively determined by frames of reference.

If this is true, than Joanna Krupa, and every other woman that looks similar to her, disempower women collectively by their mere existence, irregardless of what magazine they do or don't choose to pose for. Beautiful women like her exist in Milwaukee as well as Los Angeles, and if beauty really is something that can be objectively determined and graded on a curve, as you seem to be suggesting, then there will always be someone, in every town, city and community, who will screw up the curve for everyone else.

For evidence that it isn't true anywhere but in the minds of the women who insist that it is, all you need to look to is, as I have previously mentioned in this thread, the diversity of niches in pornography today.

If, by equality, you are speaking of equality of opportunity, and not equality of outcome, than this, my dear, is a completely apples-to-oranges comparison

I just read over my previous post, and it occurred to me that my use of the words "my dear" in the sentence above, is quite condescending, and one can argue, sexist. Wish I had noticed that before I hit the publish button. At any rate, Mrs. Harding, my apologies for addressing you in that fashion.