The summer after sixth grade I was 12 years old, and I was attending camp on weekdays while my parents were at work. This was the first time in my life I noticed the sexual features of the female body. Every day I would go to the pool, and I’d see girls wearing skimpy bikinis, outlining their breasts and showing off large patches of skin on their stomachs, legs and backs. It was during this summer that I French-kissed a girl for the first time. She was one year older than me, she had curly blond hair and her cheeks were peppered with acne. We made out by the vending machines at a bowling alley the camp took us to.
Then, some of the older kids at camp started talking to me about it. They called her sexy and asked me when I was going to get to second base, get a blow job or have sex with her. Up until then, I hadn’t thought much about sex, but every day these older boys would talk to me at length about which girls at camp they wanted to screw. They told me about websites they would watch porn on.
Kissing her on the weekdays gave me new and exciting feelings. One Saturday, my parents left me at home alone while they went out to dinner. I took my dad’s laptop into the bathroom and locked the door. I went to one of the websites the older boys at camp mentioned and watched my first-ever pornographic video.
Since then, my relationship with porn has had its ups and downs. I went through a phase of watching porn nightly throughout my high-school years. It wasn’t until I got to college that I considered why I watched porn so frequently and how it affected my perception of real-life sex.
Many would argue porn is a necessary evil, one that allows a person to blow off steam without trying to have sex with a bunch of strangers in real life. Some say it helps them relax — some say it helps inspire their sex life. I have no qualms with people watching porn; that is a personal choice. As I have grown up and given the topic more thought, though, I realize that there is a lot about porn culture that is pretty gross.
From observing popular porn on free streaming websites like PornHub, I have made observations about what viewers crave when watching porn. There is a debasement of the female body in many of these videos. Mainstream porn features unrealistic portrayals of intercourse. Women in these videos achieve orgasm by repetitive penetration. They are treated and perceived as sexual objects the men in these videos verbally harass, throw around and treat like toys rather than human beings.
The female body is idealistically portrayed in popular porn through exaggerated moans, bulbous breasts, flat stomachs and blemish-free skin. Porn gives young people with a budding sense of sexuality the chance to be exposed to intense sexual imagery before they have the chance to have real sexual experiences. This gives them unrealistic ideas of how sex works.
I was lucky enough to enhance my pornographic learning with real-life sexual experience, and I noticed the differences. Not everyone is down to have anal sex with someone they hardly know. Kissing is often a crucial part of sexual encounters that is completely overlooked by mainstream porn.
Not all porn is completely unrealistic and vulgar. There is an entire category of porn deemed “female friendly” by streaming sites. These include kissing and sensual music. But we are left to wonder why this realistic pornography — which still isn’t realistic — is called female friendly. Is it because popular porn is mass-marketed to men to appeal to their pleasure, so they can see the female body as something to masturbate to rather than share an experience with?
Of course, porn has been around forever, and it isn’t going anywhere. But in the same way a Michael Bay movie is loaded with flashy imagery and is obviously not how real life works, we must keep in mind that porn, although an easy way to relieve sexual urges, is not how sex actually works.
Jeremy Haas is a UF English junior. His column appears on Wednesdays.
