Sex with Sutton: Porn appeal

by Madelyn Sutton '08

Tuesday January 22, 2008

The word on the street about porn, from New York Magazine to Bowling Green State University’s online newspaper to Psychology Today, is that women don’t like it. According to articles in these publications, it’s not that women are frustrated with the poor quality of pornography or that it doesn’t turn them on; rather, they feel porn sets up a standard that they can’t compete with and distracts their boyfriends and husbands. So, this standard. It must stem from the fact that the women in the videos are available to perform, on screen, whenever hubby wants it. Or perhaps it’s the porn star’s “skill,” creativity in bed, or apparent comfort in her own body. Nope! “Studies show” women complain that the unrealistic bodies of porn stars create impossible images for their men-folk to lust after, and therefore, lowers women’s self-esteem, and is the reason for the growing proliferation of plastic surgery in this country. Because so many sources say this is so, I find myself forced to conclude that this may actually represent the position of the majority of American women. But how can this be? I thought the days of Freud’s “hysterical” female patients and concepts like “frigidity” were long behind us! Of course, as soon as my initial shock and frustration wore off, I realized the serious problems with these articles and/or the research behind them. For example, each failed to address a significant percentage of the female population – that is, women who do not categorize themselves as heterosexual. Beyond that, the most obvious and alarming omission in these studies is that each completely eliminated women’s sexuality and desire. I want to reach out to the women who wrote these articles (yes, they were written by women) and tell them about the surge in amateur porn (read: plastic surgery free, unflattering angles, poor lighting, etc.), or the websites devoted to, for example, women who wear glasses, or women by themselves, or companies like “Film Fatale,” devoted to the production of porn by women, for women; but can all these fantastic internet options teach a woman to own her sexuality, to explore her own desires? And at an institution like Sarah Lawrence, what does it take to de-intellectualize sex? I’m not arguing that porn is perfect; like most economically dependent industries, it has serious flaws and historical problems of inequality and degradation; but I want to know when what women actually want will matter to the media – and, most importantly, to women themselves.