Sex Is A Consumer Product And That Sucks For Most Of Us
D on’t act like you don’t watch porn. You watch it, the guy sitting next to you on the train watches it, and he’s probably doing it right now. On your way to work, you probably passed five webcam performers.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with watching porn. There is, however, everything wrong with losing the perspective of what porn means. Especially when it starts affecting human dynamics.
Sex as a Marketing Tactic
Sex is one of the few biological functions that feels good. Not many people get a euphoric release from sneezing or vomiting (no kink-shaming implied — you do you). When you’re attempting to successfully market your brand, you want people to associate it with things that make them feel good.
You can’t give them a bite of the cheeseburger through a billboard, so you stuff it between two big ole titties. Inadvertently, you’re sending the message that this cheeseburger is just as good as busting a nut. You try the cheeseburger, and it’s processed garbage. Of course it tastes good — all processed garbage tastes good.
What you failed to consider is that the cheeseburger in the ad is vastly different from the cheeseburger you got. It was lopsided and manufactured by some kid named Mikey saving up to grow pot in his closet. It certainly wasn’t served between the titties from the billboard. It didn’t live up to expectations, but you’re probably going to get it again the next time you drunkenly open Uber Eats at 1 AM.
So what’s the big metaphor here? Hang on — we’re getting there.
The cheeseburger from the ad took thousands of dollars and a team of professionals to manufacture. Teenage Mikey and his dreams of becoming a closet weed dealer would have never been allowed on set. Poor Mikey.
The most important thing to realize is that the same goes for the tits, which will henceforth be the focus and moral of the story.
Sex for Consumers
One seldom has to convince another that sex feels good. Half the time, we all have our hands in our pants. Leave someone unobserved for ten minutes without a distraction, and they’re going to start diddling themselves. It’s positive stimulation. Some people might even consider it a self-soothing mechanism. Certified sex therapist and psychologist Dr. Janet Brito spoke to Oprah Magazine about how sometimes, masturbation is just a thing to do.
“Masturbation can be a form of stress relief or self-intimacy — an escape from the mundane, or a form of self-soothing. It is a perfectly natural and healthy approach to promote emotional regulation, enhance your mood, and be with yourself. After a busy day, masturbation gives you an opportunity to take a break from the pressures of life to reconnect with yourself — to chill, and relax.”
Many people do it, many people like it, and some people have chosen to sell masturbation fodder. It’s a little different from selling horseshoes or green juice, but this is not to say it’s an illegitimate business. It’s a completely functional, profitable, feasible business model. Don’t shame sex workers — they’re probably making better money than you are.
There’s a lot of money in making people feel good, and sex is low hanging fruit.
The people who make money providing consumer sex are real people, even if you don’t ever see them off-screen. They spend a lot of money on props, costumes, film production, toys, accessories, and even surgical cosmetic enhancements to their bodies.
Sex is their job. They do it for 40 hours a week to pay the bills. They’re professionals. They’re experts. They’re held to extremely high standards. They have the time to learn to do what they do because it’s essentially all they ever do. Sex isn’t what they do after work — it’s what they do all damn day. Any sex worker will tell you how consuming and labor-intensive it is to be successful in their industry.
You can’t fault someone for being the best at their job. But that’s exactly what it is — their job. And it’s important to remember that.
It’s hard to know just how much the porn industry is worth, as most adult entertainment companies are privately held and don’t release thorough annual reports. According to Yahoo Finance, estimates range from anywhere between $6 billion a year to $97 billion a year, depending on the scope through which you’re looking. Even at the low end, sex work is highly profitable, and oddly stigmatized given how much money it makes. If you follow the money, a substantial amount of people are spending money on porn.
There is a lot of hypocrisy surrounding sex work (remember when Ted Cruz got a little too titty-happy on Twitter?), and this creates an aura of cognitive dissonance that creates a hellscape for sex workers. They’re often stigmatized for their careers, confronted with people who feel entitled to their bodies, and sometimes placed in unsafe situations without a sense of recourse because law enforcement doesn’t take their claims seriously. Sex work is tough. Stoya, whose allegations against James Deen rocked the industry, can explain that in her own words.
They also spend an inordinate amount of time focused on their bodies. They need to maintain very lean frames. Thrillist asked several popular adult performers about their diets. Out of their sample, every single performer was on some sort of restricted diet. Many of them professed to eating a vegetarian, vegan, or pescatarian diet. One of whom claimed that she only eats unhealthy foods during her birthday week. They don’t get to enjoy the same indulgences that many of us enjoy, as fluctuations in their weight can affect their ability to work.
Sex workers put up with a lot. They deal with the aforementioned hypocritical stigma, their line of work makes their lives tougher, and they don’t get to stumble drunk into a Denny’s after the bar closes to eat a whole plate of mozzarella sticks. Their commitment to their work prevents them from doing a lot of the things that make normal people feel safe, secure, and even happy (ahem — drunk mozzarella sticks).
Because of the sacrifices they make and the changes to their lifestyles, they are both the thousand dollar cheeseburger and the titties it was stuffed between.
You’re probably the cheeseburger Mikey made. And that’s completely fine.
Sex for the Masses
People who don’t work in the sex industry don’t often watch other people like themselves have sex. Their idea of sex is very much a professional demonstration performed by experienced professionals who have dedicated a significant portion of their lives to sex training.
We’ve all tried to learn by watching, and we all have a bunch of other shit to do. It’s difficult to show your buddies how you bang and get pointers. It’s hard to watch two people who are a lot like you have normal, non-professional sex. Sex is a biological function, and much like defecating, the majority of people prefer to do it in private.
Most of us have obtained our ideas about how bodies should look at work and feel and be from people who are complete outliers. We all compare ourselves to people we cannot rightfully compare ourselves to. Some of us are overweight. Some of us are disabled. Some of us have large birthmarks and receding hairlines and visible scars. Many people who find great success in the adult film industry don’t have these visible flaws that a lot of us have. That’s why they’re the experts and the rest of us are casual hobbyists.
The best home cooks don’t have Michelin stars. The best chess players will never have an opportunity to beat Watson. And the best home sexers have little to nothing in common with seasoned professionals.
We’re measuring ourselves against people we’ll never stack up against, and that’s bad for all of us. That’s not what sex workers want us to do. It’s something that is mistranslated from the fact that we have nothing but professional cinematic perfection to shape our reality of what sex should be.
Healthy Men Who Think They Have ED
An increasing number of men under the age of 30 experience difficulty maintaining an erection. Doctors won’t diagnose them with any medical form of erectile dysfunction, because their parts are working right. It’s still a brand new car — they just can’t drive it.
Many of these younger men are told by their doctors that their perceived erectile dysfunction is psychological and to see a therapist. Why should a dude at peak testosterone levels need to talk to a shrink about why his boner isn’t working right?
Sometimes, it’s related to trauma. Other times, it may be a complication of viewing or participating in too much consumer sex. A study conducted in 2004 found that both homosexual and heterosexual men found that watching porn leads to greater levels of body dissatisfaction and even increased the risk factors for the development of eating disorders. When you break down what men see in porn, it starts to make sense.
Men are being held to a standard far from the norm. What they perceive to be normal is twelve inches of meat attached to a six and a half foot tall 190-pound man who essentially butt-chugs whey protein isolate. That guy can go on for hours and contort like a gymnast. They’ve only seen the major league games.
In the United States, the average man will measure about 5.17 inches erect, and last anywhere between 4 and 11 minutes. This leaves men self-conscious and riddled with performance anxiety. About 50% of men will experience some kind of erectile dysfunction in their lives.
One or two fallen little soldiers can leave a permanent impression on a man’s psyche. The Institute for the Study of Urologic Diseases describes the phenomenon as a vicious circle:
“When the next sexual contact comes, the same thoughts [about fear of going soft] will be repeated, but this time he will be even more obsessed with them; there will be more fear and anxiety and, therefore, the possibility for failure will be higher. As a consequence, a whole ‘vicious circle’ starts on, which very often results in avoiding sexual contact and any circumstances that could potentially lead to sexual intercourse.”
Some men prefer casual hookups and one night stands because they’re less nervous about things going awry. Tony Moore of the nonprofit Relationships Ireland has spoken from his experiences providing relationship counseling. He told The Journal: “Men often don’t see the women they are having the one-night stand with as a person, with feelings. They are there to satisfy their gratification.”
They’re less afraid of disappointing the other party or being less than what is desired because they don’t have a bond with that person. It’s someone they’ll never see again or never be vulnerable with. It creates a space where rejection is a non-issue.
There are few support groups for twenty-somethings in every corner of the internet who refer to the phenomenon as “pushing rope” — a metaphor for attempting penetration without a full erection.
Things are different when he really cares about the other person. He’ll feel subpar to the image of the outlier he’s comparing himself to. He’ll get himself nervous. He’ll create a self-fulfilling prophecy that causes him to go soft simply because he was so worried about going soft. He was so anxious that he shot himself in the foot — or missed and blew his dick off. That’s where that “vicious circle” comes back into play.
He’s afraid that he might be Mikey’s cheeseburger. He is Mikey’s cheeseburger. And that’s okay because it still tastes good and people will continue to eat it.
Women with Self Esteem Issues
Women see women in porn. They observe a woman nearly 6 feet in height, coming in at a svelte and toneless 140 pounds. Her tits are twice the size of her head, and her ass went to the same surgeon. She can swallow everything but the balls.
The average woman in the United States weighs about 170 pounds. The average height is about 5 feet and 4 inches, and the average bra size 34DD. And yes, most people have weird nipples.
In the United States, 30 million people, most of them women, are living with some type of eating disorder. About 18 million people went under the knife for a cosmetic procedure last year, with the number increasing by about 2% annually. Diminished sex drive is the number one sexual health complaint among young women.
Glamour magazine polled 300 women about body image. 97% of the women report having a negative body image. That’s almost every woman. The most common complaints related to weight and breast size. A study of over 52,000 adults found that 70% of women were dissatisfied with their breasts.
Women don’t want to be Mikey’s cheeseburger — they want to be the titties it was stuffed between because they believe it’s normal and desirable.
Where Everyone is Completely Wrong
We’ve become so accustomed to cinematic consumer sex that it’s warped our expectations. Not just our expectations about ourselves, but our expectations about others. We want to embody the performers that we watch, and we tend to place that same outlandish expectation on our potential partners. A two-part study conducted with college students and married people found that exposure to pornography made them find other non-porn people less attractive. Alarmingly, married men who viewed Playboy centerfolds ultimately rated themselves as being less in love with their wives.
Abiding by unattainable standards in human relationships only makes us superficial and prone to disappointment. We’re never really satisfied. You won’t get what you want. Everyone you meet is going to have a wealth of perfectly normal qualities and attributes. We need to stop acting like that’s a bad thing.
Porn allows us to have fantasy sex alone. We’re placing ourselves in these situations with these expert performers in our mind’s eye. We’re a part of the action from the bleachers. We’re arguing with the ref with our junk in our hands.
We develop this idea of a type. Everyone has a type. So few people of that type exist. All that personally fulfilling lonely manual sex we had with our electronics gave us a taste for something entirely intangible that almost none of us will ever find. Unless, of course, we become a part of the industry.
All people do it. Men have unrealistic expectations of women. Women have unrealistic expectations of men. And both groups aimlessly swipe on Tinder, looking for a rare and mythical sex beast. We’re only finding each other, and we need to stop treating that like it’s a bad thing.
The overwhelming majority of people are Mikey’s cheeseburger, and the overwhelming majority of us would like it if we ate it. All the ingredients are there, even if they don’t look like the titty sandwich. It’s the same nutritional value, and you can eat it however you’d like.
Nobody Should Hate Themselves
The majority of people are normal. That’s what normal means.
nor·mal /ˈnôrməl/ adjective
1. conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected
If we all became the outliers, normal would change. If the new normal was composed of today’s outliers, sex workers would be out of their jobs. Everyone could have whatever they wanted all the time and there would be no problems. (Isn’t that Bernie’s campaign slogan?)
We all tend to want what we can’t have, both in ourselves and other people. Maybe we should cut that shit out. It’s giving everyone an easily preventable migraine.
There are going to be normal and average things about you. Some of them you can control, and some of them you can’t. You might not even care to try, and fall into the trap of just complaining without action. That’s normal too — a lot of people do that. We step on our dicks and prevent ourselves from just being content. Sometimes, contentment is enough.
Forgive yourself and forgive other people. Watch porn, respect sex workers, but remember that they’re not like everyone else. Don’t let them set the standard you hold for yourself or the people you’re close to. Focus on making meaningful connections with people who make you feel good about yourself, and return the favor.
Eat the Cheeseburger
Most of us are Mikey’s cheeseburger, and we’re going to have a lot more fun if we stop staring at the billboard and start eating each other.
