DormAngels in the Press (whoo hoo)

[BrettJ]

We got our first little bit of written press today. And i'm out Telling the WHOLE world about it.

This was in the UW - Daily - which is the student paper for the school that we get our girls =)

~BrettJ
99463509

Selling fantasy

http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/i...e=8651&-search


Blythe Lawrence
2004-03-04


Call it exhibitionism. Call it empowerment. Call it cause for lust. But mention DormAngels.com to five assorted coeds sitting around a dinner table and the name may be greeted with blank stares.

But whether they have heard of DormAngels.com or not, most UW students are certainly aware of similar Web sites that offer pornographic videos of college students "experimenting with themselves" available for Web-crawlers to download for a fee.

The going rate at DormAngels.com -- a Web site created and built by two UW graduates featuring UW students -- is $30 for 30 days of access.

According to Brett Jennings, co-founder of DormAngels.com, almost all the women on the site are students at the UW.

"Seattle is a great city and the UW is a huge campus with something like 40,000 students, about half of which are female. Besides the fact that all college girls need money, the UW being as big as it is makes finding girls to pose nude relatively easy," Jennings wrote in the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the Web site.

Nearly two generations after the women's liberation movement went radical, the new "liberated" woman finds she can be a feminist and still take off her clothes for a photographer, said Jacqueline Cox, president and founder of the UW Women's Feminist Alliance.

Although some maintain that posing on DormAngels.com is reverting to the world's oldest profession, Cox defends the woman's right to choose.

"It's a personal choice," she said. "If a woman wants to experiment with her sexuality and she feels that it empowers her, that's her decision and it's fine. If a woman is coerced into doing something she doesn't want to do, then it's not OK."

Jennings insisted that the women who pose nude on DormAngels.com want to do it. "None of the girls are coerced into doing anything they don't want to do," he said. "I tell every girl at the initial meeting and before the shoot that there is a chance that somebody they know will find out about it, eventually. If the girls don't seem comfortable with it, we go with someone else."

Jennings said he likes to think of his work as selling fantasy.

"DormAngels.com is an outlet for the girls' fantasies -- shower scenes, exhibitionism, making out with another girl, etc. For guys, it obviously lets them see these girls pose naked for their first time."t

Many view pornography as exploitation, but what they may not understand is the women are being paid well for their time, said Jennings. A model can make between $100 and $125 an hour posing for DormAngels.com, with a minimum of three hours of work per month.

"It's a nice supplemental income," he said. "They make in three hours what they would clear in two weeks at a part-time job elsewhere."

Cox worried that online pornography is catering to a double standard about the roles of men and women in society.

"We've seen it basically since junior high -- if a guy can get a girl to sleep with him, then he's a stud. If a woman sleeps around then she's a slut, a whore or any other derogatory term you can think of," she said. "The only men on this site are basically used as props. It's not about the man, it's about his penis."

One woman uses the name Midwest Mandy as her DormAngel alias.

"I initially became involved to seek revenge on a boyfriend who would not stop looking at porn on my computer and then lying about it," 20-year-old Mandy said in an e-mail to The Daily. "This made it more gratifying for me. I love that I can lead two lives at once -- honors student by day, porn star by night."

Today, Mandy has her own section of the DormAngels Web site, called MidwestMandy.com, that she launched in December 2003. Mandy has become something of a partner at DormAngels.com and receives a percentage of the MidwestMandy site's income, she said.

But DormAngels.com's administrators are right about one thing -- it isn't difficult to find women who are willing to disrobe before a photographer. Typing the words "nude modeling, Seattle," into a Google search engine brings up a plethora of Web sites. This includes onemodelplace.com, which consists of more than 200 resumes and photos from registered models in the Seattle area -- some of the women are in casual wear, some wear lingerie and others are completely naked.

Many models seem to know what they're getting into when they go to a shoot. Those who are willing to pose nude generally include a disclaimer in their personal statements about the conditions under which they will pose nude.

"I may consider doing implied nudes or artistic nudes with the right photographer, but it is something that needs to be discussed and probably will only be considered after I have worked with a photographer at least once," wrote Seattle-based model Jeannie, 24, in her online resume. "I also always bring an escort with me to the shoot for safety purposes."

Perhaps the greatest example of sex on display is the Sex Museum, which opened in New York City the summer of 2002. The museum houses sexual artifacts and exhibits.

Museum curators see the museum as less of a shrine to lust than an outlet for the history of sex -- a topic rarely discussed around the dinner table, but one that weighs heavily on the mind, if one believes Freudian theory.

Lust already seems a part of American culture, said Jennings. He sees DormAngels.com as a way to make money from people's preoccupation with sex.

"We are sexual beings, biologically programmed with a natural drive to have sex," he said bluntly. "Once you've enjoyed the pleasures of an orgasm, you want another. That same sexual hunger that drives women to read romance novels drives boys to look at Victoria's Secret catalogs and men to other erotic materials."

Just as Marilyn Monroe and Madonna were sex symbols in their time, the burgeoning world of online pornography has outpaced magazines like Penthouse as the standard fare, hidden in computer files as magazines were once hidden under mattresses.

But while Marilyn and Madonna were big celebrities, the sex symbols of today can be anyone. Amateurs can star in their own videos and become widely accessible, a fact that entices college students to take it all off and post the photos on the Internet, said Jennings.

"Sure, there are people who feel sex is taboo and shouldn't be discussed in polite society," Jennings said. "But sex sells. Hollywood feeds off of it. Obviously, producers realize that overall, people enjoy sexually charged entertainment. If that weren't true it wouldn't be as pervasive as it is."