“Part of the fantasy in most heterosexual porn is for the average — looking guy to get the beautiful girl.”
What would the world be like if all women had size DD breasts, bleached-blonde hair, and shaved pubic hair? What if all men had rippling abs, huge penises, and always got the girl? If this sounds just like a fantasyland, then it is. Welcome to the world of pornography, where in movies, books, pictures, and magazines, people look amazingly alike and do amazingly similar things.
Pornography (also known as “porn” or “porno”) is sexually arousing imagery. There are those who prefer to call it “erotica” because they believe that the word “pornography” describes material that they consider offensive and obscene.
Now, if you’re a law-abiding teenager, we can safely say you’ve never even taken a peek at pornographic material — it’s illegal in the U.S. for anyone under the age of 18. However, not everyone follows the rules, and you may run across some porn before you turn 18. There are a few things you should know about the images you might see.
First of all — many people enjoy pornography alone or with a partner as part of sex play. People have different ideas of what is arousing, and there are many different kinds of porn that appeal to people’s different interests.
But for the most part, the models or actors used in porn fulfill certain physical stereotypes. The fantasies they portray are different from the expectations real people have about themselves and their real-life partners. Most people who have real sex don’t look anything like people who have sex in porn, especially the women.
According to Claire Cavanah, co-owner of New York- and Seattle-based sex-toy shops, Toys In Babeland, people who stop by her store to pick up porn movies “look just like you, me, or anyone you’ve ever met.” However, most women who are porn stars have unlikely bodies — breasts enlarged with implants, shaved pubic hair, and super-thin figures are just some of the differences between porn stars and many women in real life.
And what about the porn guys? “A lot of the time, they’re not as stereotypically hot as the women,” said Claire. “Because part of the fantasy in most heterosexual porn is for the average-looking guy to get the beautiful girl.” And most porn is designed with the guy in mind.
As for the sex, don’t count on sex in porn having much in common with real life sex. “Porn shows sex, and sex happens in real life. That’s really the only thing they have in common,” said Claire.
For one thing, intercourse doesn’t always happen every time a real-life couple gets together, but intercourse is the central event for most porn. And although many newer porn videos show the stars using birth control or condoms to protect each other from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, the vast majority of older videos show couples having sex with no protection.
Condoms aren’t the only things most porn characters forget to mention — in fact, they hardly talk at all! While communication is part of a healthy sex life, porn couples usually don’t say much before, during, or after they have sex. Intimacy is important for many real couples, but it is rare in porn.
So don’t worry! If you don’t look anything like a porn star, and your life looks nothing like a porn video, congratulations — we bet that you’ve got more in common with 99.9 percent of us real people.