My Network:

 

a 21st century guide of enlightenment



Is she my porn star?


Apparently she is not allowed to have pubic hair anymore (even in Playboy, no one under 30 has it, and that magazine has to be the most sweetly old-fashioned of all the skin magazines). In fact, she should only have hair on her head (and maybe her eyebrows, though they must be perfectly plucked). She also need to fret about the size and symmetry of my labia and the pigmentation of the skin around her anus (ass bleaching kit, anyone?).

Sexual intercourse in the missionary position is hopelessly provincial, and since oral sex is now regularly practiced by 12-year-olds, that is sooo first-date. Anal sex, however, is now a permanent part of the menu (just bite on something, darling, she'll get more lube!). Multiple orgasms are so '80s, so she really should achieve that illusive female ejaculation. And after she is done, I must be up for having ejaculate all over her. And let's not forget bringing someone else into our relationship for the all-important threesome.

Wow. So much to keep track of. It exhausts me just thinking about it.

I blame the mainstreaming of porn. Porn has become so pervasive in the past few years (thanks, Internet!) that what used to make it so titillating (experimental sex, obsession with how intimate body parts look in close-ups) has become our standard. And if we refuse to live up to it, we are labeled uncool and prudish.

And let me just say this now: I don't have anything against any of the practices I have described above. I have experimented with a few. I say if you're into it, great. What two consenting adults do is fine, as long as they clean up after themselves and don't hurt or inconvenience anyone else.

And I love sex. It is one of life's great pleasures, and I have been lucky to have many great experiences with it.

What I resent, though, is that any of this stuff should be required of me.

It makes me feel like I am back in middle school, with bad 80s cloths.

In short, I feel like sex is becoming yet another way to keep up with the Joneses—these days, it’s all about keeping up with the Jenna Jamesons (who, by the way, took her craft to the masses with her book “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star”).

I don't remember things being this way a decade ago, back in the good old days when bandwidths were small and streaming video was just a far-off dream.

I still recall the first real porno film I ever saw. I was in school, and some friends and I decided to venture behind the curtain at the video store. After much waffling and mocking and giggling, we chose a film. It was a parody of “The Terminator,” and the big blond stud (complete with atrocious Ah-nuld accent) in question's catchphrase was “I'll come again.”

It also starred porn superstar Ron Jeremy, and the big joke in the movie was that he never actually saw any action.

We watched it in our living room, fast-forwarding through the parts that didn't appeal to us (mostly the girl-on-girl stuff, laughing hysterically.

It was one of those weird school bonding moments, and I will always look back on it fondly.

This wasn't my first exposure to erotica, of course. I'd read plenty of Playboys, and, Penthouses. But it was definitely the most, er, gynecological thing I had ever seen. And had I wanted to check out more like it, I would have had to brave the curtain again (which my friends and I did a few more times before pressure of finals and impending graduation hit) or the local sex shop, which was seedy and full of furtive older men.

Since I left school, however, dodgy sex shops and video stores were rendered nearly obsolete. Most of us can now get any kind of porn we like with just one click. Heck, we can get even the kind we don't want. I have already had several offers from teenage “fuck sluts” via e-mail today, and the sun has yet to go down. The Internet has become the place for people to share and enact their wildest sex fantasies, legal or not.

All this makes me wonder if the bases have changed. Is first base these days oral sex, second intercourse, third anal, and home a threesome?

What will the bases look like in a few years? Orgies? Animals?

What worries me most, though, is that all this will make us so jaded about sex that it won't even be that fun anymore. That it will be like drugs, where you need harder stuff just to get high. Sports aren't enough these days; we have extreme sports. And now we also have extreme sex.

And if we're not into it, we're coital dinosaurs, waiting for the meteor to strike, unable to please the average man. For those who think I need to lighten up, maybe you're right. None of us need to do any of this stuff. None of us have to keep up with the Jennas. It's all strictly voluntary. It's all avoidable. No one really cares what I do and don't do in bed, right? But the pressure is hard to ignore—if we couldn’t even resist legwarmers back in the day, imagine what a constant barrage of porn is doing to our psyches.

posted by LeBlues @ 2:08 PM, ,