The Russian Penis Quota
I once visited Russia during the late Soviet period, at a time when cheesy propaganda posters were still the second-most prevalent form of public art (after statues of Lenin, of course.) At that time, the Five Year Plan was still an official priority, which means that posters saying “You Need To Fulfill The Plan” could be seen on every wall.
The Communists may be gone, but the bureaucratic Russian soul endures. Evidence? How about this story (sent in by a friend) from the Moscow Times, regarding the publication of the Russian edition of Playgirl? The article devotes most of its ink to a concern about whether Russian women will approve of circumcised American penises. Anyway, down near the end, we get this gem:
Chermenskaya and the publication’s founders, whom she refused to identify, studied Russia’s confusing pornography laws before registering Playgirl as an erotic entertainment magazine. As erotica, Playgirl cannot publish photographs depicting sexual intercourse and has a quota for the number of large pictures of penises in each issue: six, Chermenskaya said.
A penis quota! Only in Russia.
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Considering how Russians used to use creative accounting to “Storm the Plan”, ie, hit the quota in the last few days of the month; this could produce some very interesting discussions at Playgirlsky:
” Only six big penises this month? Hmmm….what if we did 9 merely large ones, or 12 average ones? Or just do 5 for two months so we can save up for that Rasputin spread in August?”
What I like about this is that you know that sometime, somewhere, a russian sat down and tried to figure out how many peni are too many. And he came to ‘anything over 6’. Then I start to wonder… why six? Why not, say… seven? Or five? Five too few, seven too many?