Op-Ed
Porn in the U.S.A.
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Cornell Unzipped
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Spring Break is officially over for Cornellians. While students at other schools went home to warm, spring weather, ideal for revealing outfits and all sorts of spring feverish activities, we returned to our beloved cold winds, snowy skies and puffy, unflattering parkas. There aren’t any overblown holidays coming up to celebrate with scandalous costumes, excusing any less-than-chaste behavior. Nope, if we Cornellians want to see any nearly naked bronzed babes, all we have is our porn.
I won’t pretend to be a porn expert. The experience I have with porn is basically limited to what I’ve encountered in my guy friends’ extensive collections and those annoying pop-up ads that miraculously manage to seep through my spam blocker.
Luckily, when I asked my friends if they would enlighten me about the wonder that is porn, they were more than happy to oblige. They told me about all of the different kinds of porn, their favorite websites, showed me some videos, some magazines and even showed me how to upload my own home-made porn (“if I ever feel the urge”).
As they lectured me on the complex components of a good porn flick (i.e. naked girl plus long, rod-like object), I flipped through a copy of Playboy with a rather suspicious photograph of Jessica Alba on the cover.
What I found left me both shocked and confused. There was not a single photograph of a naked woman until after the 60th page and the whole magazine featured maybe 10 pictures of nude women — at most. The rest of the magazine consisted of cheesy comics, descriptions of cool new gadgets only a guy could appreciate and long articles with tiny, practically unreadable text — yes, I know, “you only read it for the articles.” I had discovered that Playboy was merely the male equivalent of Cosmopolitan, with half-naked women instead of half-naked guys and useless electronics in the place of make-up.
I began to ask myself, what is the difference between the pictures of two “lesbians” making out in the latest issue of Hustler and those that supposedly straight girls post of themselves making out with each other on Facebook? Is there a difference between watching a porn video on Pornotube.com and watching the sex scene with the God-like Sebastian and, um, whatever-her-name-is in a chick flick like Cruel Intentions ? And is there really a difference at all?
Then, it hit me. As much as we’d hate to admit it, girls love watching porn just as much as guys do. The difference is that we don’t call it porn. We call it Sex and the City .
The truth is that at least one of the ladies of the City is shown naked or topless in almost every episode. There’s always a sex scene — some more graphic than others — but I find it hard to believe that anyone could put the scene with Samantha having sex on a swing suspended from the ceiling in any category other than porn. Each episode is really just a high budget porn video — sex with all the bells and whistles.
The reason that boys and girls need their respective forms of porn is that both serve two important purposes. Porn is, first and foremost, a teaching tool. For any of the girls out there who are upset by the fact that their boyfriends watch porn, wouldn’t you be more upset if your partner’s knowledge of sex was limited to what he’d learned about the birds and the bees from his fourth grade health teacher (gender: questionable)? And to all the guys who complain about their girlfriends’ obsession with Sex and the City , doesn’t it pay off when you suggest a position and they actually know what it is?
The other, less socially acceptable reason that people like to watch others have sex is that it’s erotic. Watching porn is exciting because it makes you imagine that you too are having sex. In fact, the reason that porn flicks have any plot at all (“did someone order a pizza?”) is that they make it easier for the viewer to get involved in the story and, therefore, to experience what the characters in the films experience.
The reason that girl porn, a.k.a Sex and the City , has to involve so much more of an elaborate setup than guy porn, with complex plotlines, dialogue and “realistic” characters (Samantha Jones vs. Jenna Jameson), is that the societal stigmas associated with women watching porn keep them from enjoying “regular” guy porn.
Society doesn’t exactly encourage women to watch porn, but the media practically demands that they watch television sitcoms. So, they get all that porn has to offer from shows like Sex and the City or The L Word , as opposed to movies like Snow White and the Seven Inches or Charlie’s Anal .
Everyone needs sexual satisfaction. Whether we get it from conventional porn or porn disguised as sitcoms, we can learn a lot from it. And, for all those Cornellians looking for hot sex, it’s never too cold for porn.
Nikki Nussbaum is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at opinion@cornellsun.com. Cornell Unzipped appears alternate Tuesdays.
US Women and Porn Stats
Dear Nikki
I am Jenna Jameson's publicist - thought you/your readers may interested in the following. Two of the biggest cultural changes in the United States over the past 10 years have been the Internet and the widespread acceptance of sexually explicit material – pornography. Today, adult entertainment is more acceptable than ever, and the medium’s newest and most visible consumer and user group is – American women.
For a long time, everyone has assumed online surfing for sexually explict images and video was a male phenomenon; however, statistics are telling us that women have begun to view cyber porn in far more increasing numbers.
According to Adult Video News (AVN) the “CNN.com” of the adult film industry, in 2006, the adult entertainment industry took in nearly $13 billion last year, exceeding the U.S. revenues of ABC, NBC and CBS combined, with roughly one-third of this figure coming from online sales. Over the past decade, as a direct result of easy accessibility and the “anonymity factor,” women are heavily contributing to adult Internet sales and quickly becoming a porn using force on an unprecedented scale:
Women and Pornography
2006 Statistics
Women keeping cyber porn viewing activities a secret 70%
Women struggling with pornography addiction 17%
Ratio of women to men favoring chat rooms 2X
Percentage of visitors to adult websites who are women 1 in 3 visitors
Women accessing adult websites each month 9.4 million
Women admitting to accessing pornography at work 13%
2006 Top Adult Search Requests
Search Term
2006 Search Requests 2006 % Change 2005 % Change Web Pages Containing Keyword (Millions) Female <18 18-24 25-34 35-49 50+
75,608,612 7% 40% 414.00 50% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%
30,288,325 622% 80% 1.40 64% 20% 20% 21% 20% 19%
13,684,718 53% 21% 1.82 42% 20% 19% 23% 21% 17%
23,629,211 -3% 29% 88.80 4% 23% 14% 10% 36% 17%
15,955,566 4% 1% 2.65 42% 20% 16% 19% 19% 26%
13,982,729 36% 25% 2.10 56% 22% 19% 19% 22% 18%
13,484,769 0% 20% 2.42 56% 22% 19% 19% 22% 18%
13,362,995 301% 51% 1.58 64% 19% 21% 21% 20% 19%
13,230,137 382% 40% 0.28 50% 20% 20% 19% 20% 21%
12,964,651 88% 33% 2.07 50% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%
12,964,651 -10% 54% 2.74 3% 22% 14% 10% 35% 19%
12,065,000 25% 14% 181.00 50% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%
11,861,035 97% 36% 2.21 50% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%
9,960,074 76% 21% 2.95 33% 19% 19% 16% 28% 19%
8,502,524 -20% 3% 1.24 59% 23% 25% 14% 30% 8%
7,411,220 71% 40% 1.44 37% 17% 19% 26% 27% 11%
6,641,209 -6% 24% 43.20 14% 10% 33% 25% 25% 7%
6,130,065 7% 38% 1.97 18% 23% 17% 14% 28% 18%
5,487,925 -26% 14% 71.30 23% 33% 14% 10% 17% 26%
4,344,924 21% 33% 198.00 50% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%
Source: http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html
Curt Flood, Jr. or Kelly Taylor
curt@leebarrettpr.com/kelly@leebarrettpr.com
(310) 785 – 0515 ext. 232, 207
You're kidding.
I have discovered some factual errors and also hold a few general complaints.
1. You state, “Porn is, first and foremost, a teaching tool.” After taking a straw poll yesterday walking home to college town, I’ve concluded that porn is, first and foremost, a tool to aid in masturbation. If I ever mimicked half of the activities during sex that I’ve witnessed in porn, I believe some girl would have already chopped my nuts off.
2. You state, “Watching porn is exciting because it makes you imagine that you too are having sex.” Males think about sex, on average, every few minutes. We don’t need porn to get us to imagine having sex. Besides, the reason we’re watching porn in the first place is because we are imagining having sex. We would not watch porn if we were in the process of actually having sex.
3. You state,” In fact, the reason that porn flicks have any plot at all (“did someone order a pizza?”) is that they make it easier for the viewer to get involved in the story and, therefore, to experience what the characters in the films experience.” A plot does not help me imagine an orgasm, which is what the characters in the film are experiencing. My right hand helps, a little.
4. Factual error: “And, for all those Cornellians looking for hot sex, it’s never too cold for porn.” Try getting an erection when it’s minus 20 outside. Physically impossible.