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Contact CU Independent Opinion Columnist Alex Meyers at alexandra.meyers@colorado.edu.
Over the years, porn has gone through many changes as an aspect of our society. It’s no longer just in naughty magazines that are hidden underneath young boys’ beds — the porn industry today has become a medium that can be easily accessed with just a click on our iPhones or computers.
The growth of the industry has brought with it an increase in the intensity of videos and pictures. The actors and models aren’t just doing the same positions you saw in the `70s in every clip anymore; they’re spicing it up. There’s bondage, anal, countless fetishes and various subcategories of porn. With these changes, though, unrealistic ideas about what sex is really like have developed. It could therefore be said that the porn industry ruined sex in our society.
Porn, although its origins are hard to trace, has been around for centuries. Around the time of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, porn became a wide-reaching industry as printing technology advanced. In the early 1900s, many people would shoot and distribute films that portrayed women in a crude and sexual way. Once porn was more socially accepted, the industry grew even more and eventually went commercial. In the `70s, known as the “golden age of porn,” films such as “Deep Throat” were born, taking porn into an entirely new level. By the time the `90s came around, porn had become a worldwide web and video phenomenon.
Since then, audience interest is held by showing women always being down to do anything dirty. Depending on what type of porn they are working on, female porn stars’ actions can get extremely kinky. But that portrayal can cause men to think that that’s how sex will be in real life. But in reality, I don’t know too many women that would be down to do many of the things that go on in porn. I know most women would not be okay with having a threesome or getting cum in their face.
Porn also creates an unrealistic idea of how to achieve an orgasm. Porn shows that as long as you stick it in, the woman is always going to have an orgasm. Sorry to say, but you have to do a little bit more work if you want your partner to finish too.
In a Reddit thread pointed out by the Huffington Post, women were asked what expectations they felt porn had imposed on their own sex lives. Some claimed that they always thought that they would need vaginoplasty because of how big men’s genitals were in porn. In reality, the chances of seeing an extremely large penis is pretty low. Other women indicated they thought they would have to pretend to enjoy sex even if they were not.
There is nothing wrong with watching porn — 12 percent of adults on the Internet watch porn, and that’s just those who will admit it. It might be a stress reliever or a way to gain a few extra tips for bed. The main thing people need to realize is that porn is unrealistic. It’s just like watching a fictional movie; it does not show what sex is really like. So the next time you ask your partner for a threesome because you saw it in a porno, don’t be in shock if they say hell no.
