I recently made the mistake of watching late-night television with several guy friends. Exhausted with "Seinfeld" reruns and college basketball, they finally settled for a Cinemax showing of "A Tale of Two Titties." An admitted amateur in the late night porn genre, I first feigned vague disinterest, occasionally commenting on how artificial the women's breasts appeared or the grammatical mistakes in poorly written dialogue. Visibly uncomfortable, I was impressed with the level of nonchalance the guys maintained throughout Crystal's seductive dancing and Monique's offensively fake orgasms. Yet, as I nervously watched the delicate romance blossom between Crystal, the sexually frustrated housewife, and Monique, the sultry girl-next-door, in the hot tub, then the kitchen, then the hot tub again, I quickly became intrigued. Cheesy one-liners and improbable plot aside, pornography was actually quite entertaining.
My one night stand with Cinemax got me thinking about the widespread disconnect between women and the pornography industry. Even at Dartmouth, where a liberal climate promulgates the image of the sexually empowered female, it is surprising how unempowered females are when it comes to this billion dollar, male-dominated industry. Why, I wonder, given both the amount of time girls at Dartmouth spend talking and gossiping about sex, or bemoaning their lack thereof, do we spend a disproportionately small amount of time actually watching it (or rather, the airbrushed, silicone version of it)? Imagine replacing girls' "Grey's Anatomy" nights with "Gray's Anal Envy" nights; instead of Blitzing out YouTube videos during finals time, Blitzing out the hottest YouPorn clips of the week. The internet pornography business alone takes in a worldwide revenue larger than that of Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Ebay. Isn't it time we women took our fair share of the carnal pie?
Curious as to the potential potency of pornography, I conducted my own research project on the most Dartmouth-viewed porn network -- the free kind, that is. For an entire afternoon at Collis (and conveniently during prospective students' family weekend,) I perused the top-viewed internet porn sites on an illicit multimedia crusade for that holy grail of female-friendly porn. I began my sexplicit journey at youporn.com, a virtual cornucopia of pornographic cinematography. Unlike more elitist porn sites, youporn.com affords viewers the opportunity to both watch and upload their very own personal theatrical masterpieces. Among the most viewed videos, I witnessed a plethora of felatio, anal and even imported German porn. While as educational as "meine frau blaust" may be, I found myself sorely disappointed with the lackluster quality of the videos. Nowhere in the dimly lit living room studios did I stumble upon the magic first kindled between Crystal and Monique.
Redtube.com had a similar appeal, only more catered towards kinks and fetishes. With titles like "Sexy Milf Lesbians by the Fireside" and "Faceshot Compilation," Redtube unfortunately offered little in terms of good, old fashioned quality porn. While I appreciated the diverse range in cinematographic entertainment for all walks, trots and slithers of life, this excess in the bizarre, to be quite blunt, was just not up my alley.
Spirits dampened but not broken, I finally turned to a campus pornography connoisseur and erotica erudite, Matthew Siegfried '08. His first recommendation was the more tasteful thehun.net, one of original forerunners in free internet porn. He further asserted "I think I was masturbating to thehun.net in like, sixth grade. Seriously. What's this interview for again?"
While I found the content of thehun.net fell a few pubescent years short of sophomoric, I was then redirected to a resource geared more towards the non-mainstream adult website viewers, efukt.com.
"[Efukt.com] is great for finding jarring porn videos," Siegfried said. "The main problem, however, is that their links say the title of the video in the name. No one will open a video that says 'Mutant Vagina' in the title."
Indeed, anything of illicit moral character, general perverseness or completely illegal activity abounded on this site. Efukt.com also happens to be the proud originator of the 1999 "Octupussy clip," featuring a woman giving herself a rather unorthodox gynecological exam. Let's just say after watching this gem, you'll think twice before ordering calamari in the near future.
Four hours later and suffering from a deflated libido, I finally gave up on finding the quintessential female-friendly porn site. While from a strictly educational standpoint it may be beneficial to view a range of different positions or techniques explored in adult websites, such learned insight is devalued by the lack of realism or plausibility attempted throughout the clips. Aesthetically, the leading ladies are by no means an accurate representation of the female form, donning absurdly large breasts, trim waists and airbrushed vaginas; the image they project feeds into an objectified view of women. Until internet pornography can replace crass with class, an estrogen-heavy version of the indulgence remains as improbable as Crystal's perfect nipples.
Sandra is a writer for The Mirror. Her favorite skin flick is "Rochelle, Rochelle."
