Pornland (16 page)

RAPE MYTH: Women are sluts who get what they deserve.

PORN EXAMPLE: “Gia is a nasty little whore that can’t seem to get enough cock. We make sure this slut gets what she deserves and more!”
19

RAPE MYTH: All women are whores at heart and want to be fucked by any available man.

PORN EXAMPLE: “Vanessa might seem like a sweet girl, but deep inside, she’s a whore wanting big white dick.”
20

Not every man who uses porn will swallow these rape myths whole. To argue such a point does not account for the variations that exist among users and would reduce the effects debate to one effect—rape. But what anti-porn feminists are saying is that such myths promote a culture that will affect men in myriad ways: some will rape but many more will beg, nag, and cajole their partners into sex or certain sex acts, and more still will lose interest in sex with other human beings. Some will use women and disregard them when done, some will be critical of their partner’s looks and performance, and many will see women as one-dimensional sex objects who are less deserving of respect and dignity than men, both in and out of the bedroom. Whatever the effect, men cannot walk away from these images unchanged.

One way to think about effects is to turn the question around; rather than asking how porn affects users, we could ask, Under what conditions would the images in porn not have an effect? In other words, what do men need to be exposed to in order to counter the stories in porn? In media studies we ask similar questions when discussing how to immunize people to the constant flow of consumerist ideology that is paired with capitalism. Often the answer lies in providing people with a counter-ideology that both reveals the fabricated nature of consumer ideology and offers an alternative vision of the world. A counter-ideology to porn would similarly need to disrupt and interrupt its messages, and it would have to be as powerful and as pleasurable as porn, telling men that porn’s image of women is a lie, fabricated to sell a particular version of sex. This alternative ideology would also need to present a different vision of heterosexual sex, one built on gender equality and justice. Few men are exposed to such a feminist ideology; rather, most men (and women) are fed the dominant sexist ideology on a daily basis to such a degree that gender inequality seems a natural and biologically determined reality. Porn not only milks this ideology for all its worth, it also wraps it up and hands it back to men in a highly sexualized form. In the absence of a counter-ideology, this pleasurable sexist ideology becomes the dominant way of thinking and making sense of the world. While porn is by no means the only socializing agent, thanks to its intense imagery and effect on the body, it is a powerful persuader that erodes men’s ability to see women as equal and as deserving of the same human rights that they themselves take for granted.

Chapter 6. Visible or Invisible

Growing Up Female in a Porn Culture

Women are much more understanding and aware of their true purpose in life than ever before. That purpose, of course, is to be receptacles of love; in other words, fuck dolls.

—Max Hardcore, pornographer

Fashion also is taking more aesthetic cues from porn, including the growing popularity of genital piercing and shaving, which was popularized by adult film actors.

—Reed Johnson

At a lecture I was giving at a large West Coast university in the spring of 2008, the female students talked extensively about how much they preferred to have a completely waxed pubic area as it made them feel “clean,” “hot,” and “well groomed.” As they excitedly insisted that they themselves chose to have a Brazilian wax, one student let slip that her boyfriend had complained when she decided to give up on waxing. Then there was silence. I asked the student to say more about her boyfriend’s preferences and how she felt about his criticism. After she spoke, other students joined in, only now the conversation took a very different turn. The excitement in the room gave way to a subdued discussion of how some boyfriends had even refused to have sex with nonwaxed girlfriends, saying they “looked gross.” One student told the group that her boyfriend bought her a waxing kit for Valentine’s Day, while yet another sent out an e-mail to his friends joking about his girlfriend’s “hairy beaver.” No, she did not break up with him; she got waxed instead.

Two weeks after the waxing discussion, I was at an East Coast Ivy League school, where some female students became increasingly angry during my presentation. They accused me of denying them the free choice to embrace our hypersexualized porn culture, an idea that was especially repugnant because, as rising members of the next generation’s elite, they saw no limits or constraints on them as women. Then one student made a joke about the “trick” that many of them employ as a way to avoid hookup sex. What is this trick? These women purposely don’t shave or wax as they are getting ready to go out that night so they will feel too embarrassed to participate in hookup sex. As she spoke, I watched as others nodded their heads in agreement. When I asked why they couldn’t just say no to sex, they informed me that once you have a few drinks in you and are at a party or a bar, it is too hard to say no. I was speechless—these women, who had just been arguing that I had denied them agency in my discussion of porn culture, saw no contradiction in telling me that they couldn’t say no to sex. The next day I flew to Utah to give a lecture in a small college which, although not a religious college, had a good percentage of Mormons and Catholics. I told them about the lecture the previous night and asked them if they knew what the trick was. It turns out that trick is everywhere.

I tell this story because it neatly captures on many levels how the porn culture is affecting young women’s lives. The reality is that women don’t need to look at porn to be profoundly affected by it because images, representations, and messages of porn are now delivered to women via pop culture. Women today are still not major consumers of hard-core porn; they are, however, whether they know or it or not, internalizing porn ideology, an ideology that often masquerades as advice on how to be hot, rebellious, and cool in order to attract (and hopefully keep) a man. An excellent example is genital waxing, which first became popular in porn and then filtered down into women’s media such as
Cosmopolitan,
a magazine that regularly features stories and tips on what “grooming” methods women should adopt to attract a man.
Sex and the City,
that hugely successful show with an almost cult following, also used waxing as a story line. For instance, in the movie, Miranda is chastised by Samantha for “letting herself go” by having pubic hair.

What my conversations with college students reveal is how conformity to porn culture is defined by young women as a free choice. I hear this mantra everywhere, yet when one digs deeper, it is clear that the idea of choice is more complicated than originally thought. To talk about women’s free choice is to enter into the tricky terrain of how much free will we really have as human beings. While we all have some power to act as the author of our own lives, we are not free-floating individuals who come into the world with a ready-made set of identities; rather, to paraphrase Karl Marx, we are social beings who construct our identities within a particular set of social, economic, and political conditions, which are often not of our own making. This is especially true of our gender identity, as gender is a social invention and hence our notion of what is “normal” feminine behavior is shaped by external forces.

To illustrate this point, we can look at women’s “choices” in the post–Second World War era. At first glance, it looked like women were eagerly giving up their wartime jobs to go home and look after their husbands and kids; it appeared that women as a group suddenly and collectively chose to return to being housewives and mothers. It was only after that period, thanks to feminist historians and writers, that we found out that what drove them home was a complex set of circumstances that included women being fired or demoted to make room for men, the inability of married women to find employment, the growth of suburbia, and the lack of child care. What, then, appeared as free will were actually economic and social forces that cohered to limit women’s life choices. Not least of these were the media images and sitcoms such as
Ozzie and Harriet
and
Leave It to Beaver,
which depicted the housewife as the idealized woman: feminine, nurturing, and blissful in her role as cleaner, caretaker, nanny, chauffeur, and nurse. This was the dominant image of femininity that was celebrated and perpetuated by the media. The only problem was that the image was a lie. As Betty Friedan revealed in
The Feminine Mystique,
many real women were miserable, lonely, and overburdened with the daily duties of holding the family together.
1
But media images do not have to tell the truth to be believed or internalized as many women of that era compared themselves to Harriet Nelson or June Cleaver—and found themselves deficient.

Today’s women are not being forced back to the home, but that does not mean that they are not similarly affected by cultural constructions of idealized femininity. In her book on women and pop culture, Ariel Levy asks why women are still conforming to mainstream images of women since, she argues, “Women today have staggeringly different opportunities and expectations than our mothers did.”
2
This is true, especially for white middle-class women, but we are still cultural beings who develop our identities out of the dominant images that surround us. The Stepford Wife image, which drove previous generations of women crazy with its insistence on sparkling floors and perfectly orchestrated meals, has all but disappeared, and in its place we now have the Stepford Slut: a hypersexualized, young, thin, toned, hairless, and, in many cases, surgically enhanced woman with a come-hither look on her face. Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver have morphed into Britney, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Paris, Lindsay, and so on. They represent images of contemporary idealized femininity—in a word, hot—that are held up for women, especially young women, to emulate. Women today are still held captive by images that ultimately tell lies about women. The biggest lie is that conforming to this hypersexualized image will give women real power in the world, since in a porn culture, our power rests, we are told, not in our ability to shape the institutions that determine our life chances but in having a hot body that men desire and women envy.

In today’s image-based culture, there is no escaping the image and no respite from its power when it is relentless in its visibility. If you think that I am exaggerating, then flip through a magazine at the supermarket checkout, channel surf, take a drive to look at billboards, or watch TV ads. Many of these images are of celebrities—women who have fast become the role models of today. With their wealth, designer clothes, expensive homes, and flashy lifestyles, these women do seem enviable to girls and young women since they appear to embody a type of power that demands attention and visibility.

For us noncelebrities who can’t afford a personal stylist, the magazines dissect the “look,” giving us tips on how to craft the image at a fraction of the price. They instruct us on what clothes to buy, what shoes to wear, how to do our hair and makeup, and what behavior to adopt to look as hot as our favorite celebrity. The low-slung jeans, the short skirt that rides up our legs as we sit down, the thong, the tattoo on the lower back, the pierced belly button, the low-cut top that shows cleavage, the high heels that contort our calves, and the pouting glossed lips all conspire to make us look like a bargain-basement version of the real thing. To get anywhere close to achieving the “look,” we, of course, need to spend money—lots of it—as today femininity comes in the form of consumer products that reshape the body and face. The magazines that instruct us in the latest “must-have” fashions have no shortage of ads that depict, in excruciating detail, what it means to be feminine in today’s porn culture.

While the fashion industry has always pushed clothes that sexualize women’s bodies, the difference today is that the “look” is, in part, inspired by the sex industry. We are now expected to wear this attire everywhere: in school, on the street, and at work. Teachers, including elementary school teachers, often complain that their female students look more like they are going to a party than coming to school. It is as if we females now have to carry the marker of sex on us all the time, less we forget (or men forget) what our real role is in this society.

Among hypersexualized celebrities, Paris Hilton ranks high. The story of how she was catapulted to the A-list is one all about porn culture. Once a minor-league celebrity known mainly for her vast bank account, in 2004, her then-boyfriend, Rick Salomon—thirteen years her senior—released a videotape of them having sex, called
1 Night in Paris,
and she instantly became a household name. Thanks to that tape, Hilton is now talked about all over the porn discussion boards as “a filthy slut” who got what she deserved. The fact that Salomon was the one who orchestrated the whole thing (she sued him over the release) does not prevent her from being mocked and derided by porn users and pop culture commentators alike. Over the years, Hilton has been labeled a kind of super “slut”—a term used to demarcate the supposed good girls from the bad. Her antics have garnered a devoted following among girls and young women, as well as massive visibility as one of the most photographed women in the world. Hilton gets away with being anointed as a “slut” because she is fabulously rich; the wealth acts as a kind of upmarket cleansing cream that instantly rubs off the dirt. For most girls and women, however, especially those from the working class, the dirt sticks like mud.

Take, for example, Britney Spears. At seventeen Spears released her debut single, called “. . . Baby One More Time,” which became an instant international success. In the accompanying video, Spears is dressed in a school uniform with a knotted shirt that reveals a bare midriff, socks, and braided hair as she writhes around asking her ex-boyfriend to “hit me, baby, one more time.” Spears later went on to employ Gregory Dark to direct her videos; Dark is a longtime porn director whose films include
The
Devil in Miss Jones,
New Wave Hookers,
and
Let Me Tell Ya ’Bout Black Chicks.
Her meltdowns in public, together with the famous image of her sans underwear, have contributed to a kind of public humiliation: we collectively flog her for her trashy ways, yet we put her on a pedestal for embodying a kind of uncouth hot sexiness. Unlike Hilton, Spears was not born into great wealth, so the attacks on her mothering, appearance, and partying tend to carry a subtext of classism in which Spears is described as a trailer-trash slut who, despite her millions, can’t escape her roots.

Another celebrity who was similarly loved and hated for her so-called slutty behavior was Anna Nicole Smith, a woman whose life was filled with sexual exploitation yet one who was elevated in pop culture to the status of a kind of iconic slut who was willing and happy to sleep, strip, and marry her way to the top. Even in death this woman was trashed, consistently referred to as an “ex–porn star” rather than a woman dogged by poverty and abuse who suffered the terrible tragedy of losing a child. A few months after the overdose death of Smith’s son,
Hustler
magazine ran a cartoon under the title “Anna Nicole Smith’s Son’s Autopsy.” Two doctors, both wearing white coats splashed with blood, stand in front of a shrouded dead body. One says to the other, “We’ll have to invent a cover story. All the tests conclude he died of embarrassment.” What is startling about this cartoon is not only the contempt it shows for both Smith’s son’s death and Smith’s pain at burying her son, but the way in which the cartoonist understood the degree to which the porn industry turned Smith into the laughingstock of America and how this must have affected her son.

People not immersed in pop culture tend to assume that what we see today is just more of the same stuff that previous generations grew up on. After all, every generation has had its hot and sultry stars who led expensive and wild lives compared to the rest of us. But what is different about today is not only the hypersexualization of mass-produced images but also the degree to which such images have overwhelmed and crowded out any alternative images of being female. Today’s tidal wave of soft-core porn images has normalized the porn star look in everyday culture to such a degree that anything less looks dowdy, prim, and downright boring. Today, a girl or young woman looking for an alternative to the Britney, Paris, Lindsay look will soon come to the grim realization that the only alternative to looking fuckable is to be invisible.