Girl News - Girls and Porn

This is a historic week for pornography because men in the industry in Los Angeles are now required by law to wear condoms while they fuck. As of Monday, a cold, dumb wind blew through the San Fernando Valley, guaranteeing that all the good porn from now on is European or amateur (or from Beverly Hills, where apparently there is no such condom law? I get my eyebrows done in Beverly Hills. If this no-dome thing is true and the industry moves there it would feel very completest).

Anyway, it’s stupid because while wearing condoms is what we (I mean, some of us) do in the real world before sticking it in some strange hole, pornography is entertainment and watching a fog-hatted cock is an immediate Zzz/ turnoff/ dealbreaker. It’s very difficult to get pornography right and yet it is a pretty constant girl-need, so in that way it is like… Salad. Shoes? Bags. Lipstick? Men. Wait a minute, you guys: Is the girl economy the same as a fifth-world nation’s wherein every staple is scarce and balloonishly overpriced and bad for you anyway compared to what the rich countries have on every corner? OH SHIT!

A PRELUDE
“Closer” by Nine Inch Nails was playing on the radio when I tore out of a parking lot under a sleazy-hot sun after buying actual, physical porno this afternoon. (And some mid-range toys, but that’s not what this is about.) Perfect, right? Anyway, “that was just a little sample, that was just a little hors d'oeuvres, a little amuse bouche. Feel me.”

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF GIRLS AND PORN
The fundamental problem of girls and porn is that nothing is good. All of it is gross (assne) or annoying (when they talk) or sexist (like, inherently) or not sexist enough (you know how it be) or a bummer (exempli gratia, sexual slavery, statutory rape, general exploitation), and then the porno that gets made for women YES EVEN THE COOL KINDS, I’VE SEEN IT, KTHX, isn’t remotely hardcore enough. The one time I thought I was in for a twist-coney-summer-treat was when I was sent a feminist porno about skateboards (yes, sent, at my job! I’m the king!) and was imagining the 18-year-old hardcore kid of my gets-me, gets-my-brain dreams… Instead it was an S/M-y thing where the skateboard was part of the bondage equipment. It was rilly, rilly sad.

SWALLOWING
“Freshie” actually refers to the orange drink supplied to children at the half-time of soccer games, and/ or is the name of the worst fast-health-food chain in Canada ($8 for a litre of cold rice, really) and it’s what I call the little cup of ice water you bring with you into Sex Chambers to have sips of when you know you’re about to have sex. Anyway, whenever I see girls swallowing a bunch of jizz in a porno and then smiling while they sort of pat each other for a few seconds while the camera pulls back I’m always going “She really needs a freshie.”

REAL LIFE
Pornography is the most successful simulacrum, as far as I can tell. Like aside from the balls-deep camera angles (not into that). Performing what can only be essential human realness is the Disney World of representation, commentary, reproduction. I guess that kind of falls apart when you consider amateur porn but still. The grotesquerie and sadness and very, very conservative aspects of porn (shot for shot, it speaks to a kind of defined, replicable sex that I hope nobody is actually having) are so farcical that it really makes stuff like this, stuff like the internet, seem clearly and utterly dishonest as anything about being human.

STYLING
This is where porn falls apart immediately for some girls, but girls aren’t paying for it, so… I like these newer HD efforts but the girls still have French manicures and greasy, stringy extensions and frosted-ass lipstick and are pretending to have fun on a printed, poly-blend comforter that no girl who is out of her parents' house would (OR SHOULD) decide is acceptable. This is when you know they are slaves. Also, sneakers and shoes and wedding rings on dudes? All of this is pretty well established as vile, I thought, so, explain to me? Also, if even once the porn girls were fucking with those next-lev $1500 Louboutins instead of ghetto-playground-platforms I would ejaculate. Not “female ejaculate” but come like a fucking rainbow, all over the windshield of the red convertible I’m driving down the Autobahn in this scenario with a couple wiggly gonzo-girls in the backseat.

EYE CONTACT
How do we feel about eye contact in porno? I say, NAY.

THE RULES
In a brilliant, monster-y story she wrote for the Atlantic about internet porn, my friend made the point that total access to every kind of sex did things to norms and expectations that included doggy-style as a totally regular first-date way to fuck. (Since I believe in porn and all consensual sex, but also in feelings, this is basically why it has to be, like, don’t fuck on the first date, dummies.) And even though that is the best and cosiest way to do it if you are a little sleepy or drunk, it’s also really sinister, because the idea that porn is so average and always means that girls who aren’t hard into it have to be, anyway. Not watching porn or not wanting your boyf to watch porn is a Little House on the Prairie sin, and yet, relying on porn in any constant way is dysfunctional. How do we get to a place where everyone is super-romantic and attentive but also comfortable with fucking you weird?

PERSONAL SOUNDTRACKS
Obviously porn music and most porn dialogue is the worst (and oft-listed as a porno dealbreaker when I asked on Twitter) so you best be muting it and playing your own soundtrack. I have a few playlists for just this: One is new wave, one is shoegazey (a tweet: “One of the best songs on my shoegaze porno-watching playlist ended right as the dude popped on the girl's face, it was beautiful.” It was.), and also some Wavves and Warpaint and the Drums and Ty Segall and whatever. If you can be stoned to smudge the lines even more, it’s even better.

HILARIOUS PORN STARS
The best thing to happen to porno girls is a) that they got Twitter accounts and while I know it sounds like something a total sexist hater nard would say, some of them are breathtakingly what-the-actual-fuck. (SAMPLE TWEET: “Why is NY so crowded” !!!???) And b) there is this thing where instead of a personal website porno girls link to their Amazon Wishlist which will have lingerie and stripping shoes (fair enough, girl) but also, sometimes, they want sweatsuits and housewares and stuffed animals. Actually the best thing to happen to porno girls is that they have to get fucked with condoms now (bad for my entertainment value, good for their physical health), but you know what I mean, right? This is really the first time I’ve related to every straight guy on the internet who wants to talk about “dumb bitches”. Guuuh.

MEMS FOREV
The first-ever porno I saw was a VHS belonging to the underbed-galaxy of this girl’s brother, that we watched in the living room blockaded with her mom’s Louis XIV chair, and it had one scene where two girls went at it on the side of a bathtub. I haven’t seen that move ever since.

GIRLS IN PORN VS GUYS IN PORN
Women out-earn men in porn and stripping and that’s it. So let’s keep a Cunt Eye on how quickly James Deen gets to be a Normal after starring in Bret Easton Ellis’s new movie and how Sasha Grey did that one thing and then sort of another thing and then nothing at all.

BEST FRIENDS
This is how you know you’re platonic friends with a boy, is when you press your petal-pink finger on your lips and go “Hmmm, maybe some good amateur hardcore?” and inside of six minutes your savviest, most desensitised bud has hooked your pussy up with like ten links.

AN IDEA
Listen to the whole thing first before you make up your mind: Combine one of those shopping haul videos with porno. RIGHT? Fashion advertising and music videos do a better job at porn than porn so it seems pah-retty obvious to me. Related: Choose your own adventure porn. Maybe this exists? Mine would go, like, two girls kiss and make out for like two hours and then Rocco Siffredi comes over, throws one out the front door and goes to work on the other one. It ends by him coming inside her and then there’s a baby and he’s a really good dad who is concerned about the kid’s schoolwork and never looks at another girl except during sanctioned threeways because “that’s gross”. And then later there’s a naked girl smoking beside a pool and a silent assassin walks over with a bag of fresh juice and magazines, eats her out for an hour and then walks away and leaves her alone. Then she swan dives into the pool. fin.

Follow Kate on Twitter: @KateCarraway

Previously: Girl News - Girls and Danger