Convent pornography

During the Enlightenment, many of the French free-thinkers began to exploit pornography as a medium of social criticism and satire.

Libertine pornography was a subversive social commentary and often targeted the Catholic Church and general attitudes of sexual repression.

The stories and illustrations (sold in the galleries of the Palais Royal, along with the services of prostitutes) were often anti-clerical and full of misbehaving priests, monks and nuns, a tradition that in French pornography continued into the 20th century.

In the period leading up to the French Revolution, pornography was also used as political commentary; Marie Antoinette was often targeted with fantasies involving orgies, lesbian activities and the paternity of her children, and rumours circulated about the supposed sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI.

[3] Filipino historian Ambeth R. Ocampo described that in the 19th-century Philippines the sexually attractive female body parts of the time were the "bare arms, a good neck or nape" and "tiny rosy feet".