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Criticism of the proposed .xxx top-level domain is coming from the top, but it's individual voices that will determine the future of sex on the internet.
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Amazon is selling sex toys. KY has expanded beyond its pharmaceutical niche to launch a line of massage oils that double as lube. And Bush and the porn industry are united against the proposed .xxx top-level domain.
Have I entered an alternate sex-tech reality?
I don't know whether to be amazed or scared that the adult industry and the Bush administration agree about something . When the extremes come together, where's the middle ground for the rest of us to stand on?
I used to think a .xxx domain was a no-brainer. I envisioned it as an indicator that a site contained sexually explicit material intended for adults. That way we could put all the porn in one convenient place for fans while making it easier for others to block it out.
In my world, porn companies could keep their .com addresses for branding and trademark purposes. But the .com URL would redirect to the .xxx homepage.
And that page would not have any pornographic content on it. Not even a pert bottom in lacy hot pants, even though you might come across such a picture in an ad in any mainstream fashion magazine.
This splash page is important in preventing accidental exposure to boobies. It would contain a standard text warning that you're about to enter a site containing erotic, indelicate or downright salacious content.
(Text, because you want browsers to be able to interpret the message for people with visual impairments. But you could also include an MP3 of a nice lady reading it aloud, using Very Simple Words and in multiple languages, to make sure users really understand what they're on the verge of getting into.)
Anyone who made a typo when entering a .com URL into the address bar, or who clicked a .xxx link by mistake, would immediately realize his or her error when faced with this ADULTS ONLY notice.
And when you do click Enter, you can't blame anyone but yourself for your exposure to the full monty.
Naturally, all interior .xxx pages would redirect to the platonic homepage until you click Enter and accept the cookie. After that, it's smut galore.
Maybe someone would develop a special adult browser with porn-specific features: sexy skins, a media player that looks more like a peep show and less like Windows, embedded chat and webcam support, open-source teledildonics code, a boss button.
Perhaps the browser itself could act as a declaration that you're of age and willing to peruse the prurient -- the old "gold key" method -- and let you skip the warning pages.
But from a mainstream browser, you wouldn't get to porn unless you wanted to. You could set your browser and search-engine preferences to avoid .xxx domains, and the family computer's filters would block everything in the .xxx realm.
It wouldn't be a perfect system. And it would exist mainly to pacify anti-porn activist groups, even the ones who won't appreciate it because they're too busy trying to eradicate adult content in toto.
All we have to do to get from here to there is force an entire business sector -- an international one at that -- to emigrate from the generic commercial domain to the .xxx domain. (No worries about the legalities, of course; we can work out the details later.)
Then we'd have to create a committee to determine whether certain websites -- those about figure drawing , for example, or online bookstores that publish user reviews of erotica books -- belong in .xxx.
Of course once all "adult" enterprises have paid $75 for each of their new .xxx domains (versus the $10 or so they pay for .com), we'd know exactly where to find them next time we decide to impose further regulations (or even taxes ) on them.
For me, the most intriguing part of the story is not the .xxx domain itself, but the reason ICANN delayed its approval for another month. All the official statements spout politespeak about making sure everyone gets to be heard, all political and social implications are considered, blah blah blah.
But the impetus for the Department of Commerce's letter (.pdf) to ICANN requesting the delay are the 6,000 letters and e-mails the DOC has received on the subject since June.
Considering that the Florida-based ICM Registry first applied for assignment of the .xxx domain (along with the .kids domain, incidentally) in 2000, it seems like we've all had plenty of time to share our views on the subject. Yet one month's flurry is enough to change the course of the final decision.
That's the strength of the internet. Certain international governments had already expressed concern about .xxx, according to a letter from the Governmental Advisory Committee to ICANN, dated Aug. 12.
But when Conservative Petitions and Family Research Council called their members to action, all it took was 6,000 voices to slow, and possibly reverse, approval of a top-level domain.
I'm glad this example of the power of online communities is happening over a technicality. It doesn't matter much to me which way ICANN decides on this issue -- I don't think a voluntary .xxx domain changes much for consumers, whether they view porn or eschew it.
But I have seen from this that by acting in concert, a small group can have tremendous influence over the future of sex and the internet. And I know I have to pay closer attention to the various arguments. What starts with the porn industry could expand to the personal -- our right to post a profile at an adult swinger site, maybe, or to vlog our showercam to a small group of fans.
Personally, I'd rather not have the Family Research Council dictating what (or whom) I can and can't play with online, whether it's porn videos, BDSM role-playing games or VOIP sex.
Oh, and about that KY massage oil-cum-lube -- you can buy it on Amazon , too.
Visit reginalynn.com to find out where you can meet Regina in person and to join the Sex Drive forum.
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How and Why Pubic Hair Is Back in Porn
Will the mainstream follow porn? Or is porn following the mainstream?
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Female pornstars have no pubic hair. Even someone who's never seen a porno would likely tell you that. It's a fact that has been established in the American cultural psyche in the past few decades. Shaved crotches are so pervasive that cultural commentators have written tomes on about what they say about porn's attitude towards women or how much their pornographic ubiquity has influenced the rise of pubic depilation in the general public. ("No one has authoritatively established a causal connection," the porn scholar Joseph Slade told me recently, but "surveys of students in my media and sexuality classes indicated that women felt pressured [to go hairless] by boyfriends who were themselves conditioned by porn.")
Yet all this common knowledge and cultural debate about porn's plucked pubes misses a major beat: hair has actually made a significant comeback in the industry. That very well may be because it's back in the culture at large as well (more on that in a bit). But as hair down there creeps back into the mainstream of pornography, it could serve as an aid to help decrease the pressure to go hairless among everyday people.
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Hairlessness was not always the norm in American pornography, of course. Instead, Slade noted, it was quite prominent in the 1970s and 80s "when hirsuteness was equated with virility and lubricity. Harry Reems and many male performers sported mustaches and hairy armpits and chest hair. And women sported hairy armpits and crotches." Even into the 1990s , for some in the general public, the idea of a woman fully shaving her nethers seemed odd, even a bit like a fetish.
But heading into that decade , heavy grooming became more and more common. By its end, the "landing strip" was pretty much the pornographic norm . And midway through the aughts, the landing strip was about as much hair as you'd find down there, with total shaving, waxing, and lasering gaining dominance. "When I got into the adult film industry" as recently as 2014, said porn star Kasey Warner , "I had a bush only on top of my pubis. I was one of extremely few girls to sport anything more than a landing strip."
There's no consensus on why porn (or the general public for that matter) turned on pubes. Some think it was a purely practical choice . Shaving allows the camera to capture more of the purely mechanical ins and outs of genitals that porn thrives on. That's why male pornstars shave their pubes as well—that and to make their dicks seem a bit larger in some shots. It also makes it easier to clean a crotch or lessen friction and hair tugging when doing tons of scenes. It may even have been part of a misguided attempt to keep things hygienic, which many in the wider public also seem to believe, despite the reality that pubic hair likely protects against disease . Not to mention that shaving or waxing, while good at preventing crabs , can cause injury or infection. "Those messy pubes of yours were seen as a haven for all sorts of bacteria, turning you into a perceived cesspool of disease," explained pornstar Hedera Helix.
Others argue that it was part and parcel with wider norms and forces, which may already have been promoting pubic grooming before it caught on in porn. Think of the progressively skimpier fashion trends , or the popularization of hairlessness by mainstream movie stars and fashion icons throughout the late 90s and early aughts . Some also argue that it was an extension of a wider infantilization of women and fetishization of youth .
Many of the performers I spoke to told me they had been shaving or waxing for years before getting into the industry due to a general sense, gleaned through cultural osmosis, that their pubic hair was weird, gross, or unnatural. Those who've been in the industry longer also noted that many booking when they started out explicitly called for a clean crotch shave. So in all likelihood, it was some mixture of practicality and a chicken-and-egg feedback loop between porn and general cultural tastes that killed hair in the adult industry and kept it down.
Then around the turn of this decade, according to sexuality researcher Debra Herbenick , some performers started to opt to keep a bush. Herbenick believes the number of performers who do this is low overall. But according to performer turned producer Lily Campbell , within a couple of years, it's become normal for a third to half of the girls she shoots to keep a bush.
Todd Spaits , who works at yanks.com with Campbell, noted that over 15 years he's seen a drastic change in the number of girls opting for hairlessness. Of the last 50 girls who shot scenes for yanks.com , only a third have gone completely hairless, about a quarter went all natural, and the rest opted for basic grooming. Performer Dolly Leigh added that younger performers appear to be especially fond of keeping their bushes, suggesting a trend that will grow with time.
There are still stories of directors and producers pushing for hairlessness in the adult industry. Warner for one said she's received plenty of flack from folks who've refused to work with her because she won't shave. And Campbell adds many girls still come into the industry under the impression that they'll only get filmed if they shave. But Leigh maintains that in the year she's had a full bush she's had no complaints, and new stars like Jasmine Summers who have had a bush from the start of their careers say directors who push back are the exception and not the rule. In fact, agents and directors are even encouraging performers to grow out their pubes now. Leigh grew her bush back out at the behest of her manager.
"I was literally shocked when I let the bush grow half an inch and got compliments and thank yous from men," said performer Ana Molly . "Fans, photographers, and lovers all say they like 'something down there.'" Since she stopped shaving as a preference, she added, "I don't believe I've ever been asked to shave everything entirely, or ever lost an opportunity" because of it.
The return of pubes to porn is as mysterious and likely multifaceted as their vanishing a quarter century ago. Leigh and a number of other porn stars assume it's just part of a cyclical trend. People have grown tired of hairlessness, so they're looping around to something new yet very old. It could also just be porn riding a wave of pro-pube (and generally body-positive) sentiment that welled up in pop culture from 2013 well into 2015 . "The trend has faded due to social media," argued performer Olive Glass . "There are so many people posting images of their bodies, their pubic hair, armpit hair, leg hair, and having discussions [about] what is 'socially acceptable.'"
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No matter the social pressures at work, it helps that porn is generally getting more diverse as the industry struggles with old production norms, producers scramble for new markets , and more diverse tastes and viewpoints take control behind the camera. "There is not one look or thing that is standard the way it was in the 70s or 80s," said indie-alt porn star Joanna Angel . "Whatever you got," added yanks.com model Raven Snow, "somebody is probably going to want to see it."
As pubes become a part of the porn landscape again, it could help accelerate a greater acceptance for pubic hair within the general public, especially given that horse is well out of the barn already. After all, even if porn played a role in sparking anti-pube norms in the popular culture, they now perpetuate themselves through a host of culturally entrenched and self-reinforcing preferences and popular opinions . But seeing porn morph into a force pushing body diversity is a noteworthy and meaningful shift.
The newfound viability of pube diversity allows performers and others "to be the subject instead of an object that has to conform to the centralized industries' cookie cutter porn star" standard," said Turquoise Faye , an actress whose work appears on various hairy fetish sites and new-ish model at yanks.com "It's not a complete social revolution. But it's an improvement."
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