Mediated Intimacy

Mediated Intimacy looks at contemporary sex and relationship advice, exploring how our intimate lives are shaped through different media, from manuals and magazines to television and Twitter. By exploring how intimacy is constructed through different media texts, the authors consider which ideas and practices these changing forms of 'sexpertise' open up, and which they close down. The book reveals the intimate operation of power in mediated advice, how words and images, stories and sound can work to shore up social injustice. It critically engages with the ideas of choice and responsibility in sex self-help, arguing that these can obscure and/or justify oppression, even if they're sometimes experienced as empowering and/or pleasurable. This bold and incisive book provides a radical challenge to the assumptions underlying the sex advice industry, and presents a critical, collaborative and consensual vision for sex advice of the future.

Acknowledgements vi 1 Mediated Intimacy: Sex Advice in Media Culture 1 2 History of Mediated Sex Advice 30 3 Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Media 51 4 Being Normal 83 5 Work and Entrepreneurship 107 6 Pleasure 132 7 Safety and Risk 153 8 Communication and Consent 176 9 Conclusions 202 References 226 Index 261