I’m hestitant to wade into the pornography wars, but this article should give all of us more than a little bit to cringe about.
Yes, it’s about the latest “fetish” — women over the age of 40, doin’ it on camera. And, from the way the article reads, doing it for male viewers and to make a whole lot of money for male directors and male-owned production companies. All to the shock and dismay of the people who believe “female” to be synonymous with white, blonde, thin and young.
“It was weird to me,” he said. “She could be my mom. At first I thought it would blow over and that maybe no one would hire her. But then people started hiring her, and then they wanted her for magazines. It’s crazy. This is supposed to be an industry with the youngest, newest, most beautiful girls in the world. Isn’t youth what everyone wants?”
Emphasis on the word “newest.”
I’m willing to respect the experiences and beliefs of the many women who believe that creating and watching porn can be empowering, and the many more who argue that it isn’t an either-or decision between “empowering” and “disempowering” — that it can just be, or that it can take on different meanings in different contexts. But I’m not willing to disregard the pervasive misogyny of many of the straight dudes who create, profit from, and watch porn. That misogyny is presented pretty starkly in this quote — the industry wants the “newest” women, the way that people want the newest model car. Sure, there may be a market for used objects, but they’re never as ideal or as desirable. It’s weird to prefer them. And while some people may read this article and think, “Hey, great, older women are sexy too!,” there’s no reason to cheer about the fact that older women are now as consumable as sub-human sexual objects as younger women are. There’s no reason to cheer about a trend story which is aghast at the idea that someone, somewhere, wants to fuck someone in the 40-plus category — you know, the women who were previous enuchs as far as the mainstream portayal of “sexy” women goes.
I’m all for expanding beauty standards, and for getting away from the idea that beauty requires youth. But that’s not really what this is about at all.
The pornography industry, that multibillion-dollar-a-year symbol of airbrushed American carnality, is aging. The advent of Viagra, the maturing of sexually aware baby boomers and overall improved health and beauty are all contributing to the graying of naughty.
The biggest change is in the sexual desirability of women old enough to be the viewer’s mother.
As opposed to the desirability of women young enough to be the viewer’s daughter. But that’s normal.
The idea that this phenomenon has anything to do with “improved health and beauty” is laughable too. “Beauty” is not an immutible, neutral standard. You can’t measure “improved beauty” the way that you can measure things like increased life expectancy or maternal mortality rates. But when women are obects to be viewed, I suppose one can obectively determine that, with increased beauty technology (i.e., plastic surgery and airbrushing) and increased wealth, their beauty is indeed improving. Kind of like the body design of the latest Mercedes.
The director, Urbano Martin, points his camera strategically, scarcely disguising his boredom. “I shoot specialty films,” he explains during a break in filming, adding that he has been in the business for 17 years. “Fat women, old women, hairy girls — all kinds. We feed the niche.”
Fat women, old women, hairy girls — you know, “niche” interests. Not at all what the majority of women in this country look like naked.
WHO watches this stuff? By far the most avid consumers of older-woman pornography, producers say, are young men fulfilling boyhood fantasies of teacher lust or yearning for the attractive mothers of their friends. Some, it has been suggested, may be tired of what one producer, Oren Cohen, has called, in a recent AVN article, “the young, helpless teen thing.”
What I’m wondering is how the producers have any clue as to the motives of the men consuming their product. Seems to me that the big boys in charge are busy assigning motives to explain for this freakish trend of anyone finding “older” women attractive (excuse the scare quotes, I’m just having kind of a hard time considering 35-year-old women “old”).
David Joseph, 38, De’Bella’s boss and the president of Platinum X, said: “It’s totally an erotic thing people are attracted to. There’s a huge market out there for older women. I’m trying to understand it myself.”
Yes, the complete freakishness of being attracted to women your own age. I too am trying to understand it. It’s a wonder that anyone over the age of 18 has ever gotten pregnant.
The article falls into all the old sexist traps — describing what the woman in question is wearing and even eating as if it’s at all relevant, and pretending that the issue is gender-neutral by tagging on at the end, “look, it happens to men, too!”
Yes, there are older male porn stars. But that’s always been the case, and beauty standards don’t apply quite as firmly to men as to women — just ask Ron Jeremy. And older men in porn are presented a little… differently:
Like a lot of experienced actors in the business, Mr. Cummings directs as well as acts in his movies (don’t ask: mirrors are involved), and they frequently play on dirty old man fantasies, with titles like “It’s a Daddy Thing,” “Sugar Daddy” and one just three months ago featuring a 19-year-old woman and a group of older sex-film stars. Mr. Cummings is on the cover of the DVD, leaning on a walker.
So by “dirty old man fantasies” you actually mean “eroticizing incest.” Perhaps I’m being prudish, and please call me out if I am, but “It’s a Daddy Thing”? I’m not going to get on people for what they personally get off on. But I am going to get on the guys who create, market and make money off of things like incest and rape porn. And I’ll get on the New York Times reporter who thinks that “It’s a Daddy Thing” is equivalent to a 35-year-old woman having sex with a 25-year-old man on camera.
Bottom line: My feelings on porn aside*, this article is disturbing on a number of levels. And I just can’t bring myself to get excited about the fact that the “used” models are selling nearly as well as the new ones.
*My feelings in a nut shell, for anyone who’s curious: Porn makes me uncomfortable, but I think it’s complicated, and that it can take on different meanings in different contexts. I generally don’t like it, but I also don’t think that it should be banned. I do think it’s fair to regulate it. I don’t think it’s always anti-feminist, but I don’t think it’s feminist either — and I think that more often then not, hetero porn is misogynist and hateful toward women. That said, people get off on different things, and I don’t think it makes someone self-hating or anti-feminist to get off on porn, or even to get off on participating in it. Like I said: complicated.