There’s been a lot of talk about the death throws of Page 3 over the last few months, with Rupert Murdock hinting at doing away with the whole thing and going upmarket instead. Scrapping Page 3 might annoy a few dirty old men, or those molly-coddled adolescents whose parents insist on placing O.T.T firewalls on their MacBooks, but for anyone who’s actually touched a lady’s private parts, a grainy picture of a pair of saggy breasts doesn’t hold much appeal (especially when your dad’s mooning at it over your shoulder).

Thank God then, for porn stars. These valiant men and women are never afraid to push boundaries, coiling their bodies in to all manner of non-Bikram-approved positions for our perverse titillation. You don’t need to give Rupert Murdock your money to look at them either.

We’ve all seen porn, and we’ve all got our own ideas of what a porn star looks like. Chances are, when you close your eyes and imagine the ‘porn star ideal’, she’s not too far away from Bloodhound Gang favourite, Chasey Lain. Turns out, you’re wrong. A new study from writer Jon Millward reveals the average porn star no longer matches this big-boobed, blonde-haired archetype. Instead, teenage boys and men alike are much more likely to be tugging it to a B-cupped starlet, named Nikki. Move over Jenna; the likes of Stoya and Tori Black are taking over the industry.

After six months of intense research, Jon has complied a thorough and incisive report of all the ins and outs (ahem) of porn, from how far girls are willing to go, to the average number of years spent working in the industry. Thankfully, he was able to drag himself away from RedTube long enough to talk about some of the things his research has revealed.

Hi Jon, how are you?

Very good, thank you.

You spent six months analysing porn and have just published your results. What has the reaction been like?

The reaction has been insane. I thought the piece would be popular, but it’s gone galactic really. 603,798 unique visits and 343k social shares in five days is so far beyond what I thought it’d do. Keeping my server up was a constant struggle, but obviously an exciting one—like riding a bucking bronco. In terms of the actual feedback from people, again, it’s been extremely positive. I’ve skim read several thousands tweets and can’t remember seeing any that absolutely ripped the piece apart. Everybody seems to like the fact that it’s a saucy subject with a sciency slant.

Great. Why porn, and why spend six months of your life looking into it?

I think porn is damn interesting. It’s a carnal, primitive, gene-propagating force manifested through a totally modern technological phenomenon. So the resulting psychology is bound to be interesting. I also did do other things during the six months—not just stare at the data.

Did you every get ‘distracted’ during your work and have to take a few ‘breaks’, or did you just see everything as data, rather than hot people having sex?

Heh, it wasn’t like staring at the green scrolling code then seeing The Matrix, unfortunately. And I did take a lot of breaks. I watched copious, mind-blowing amounts of porn in my teenage years so kind of became a bit of an ‘expert’ on porn as many men do even then. So, the idea of being distracted now, when I’m 26, by watching porn instead of hand placing each of the 5,000 headshots into that huge race circle wasn’t really an issue. In a way, doing certain parts of the project was my porn. The facial morph was a lot of fun.

What was your girlfriend’s reaction to you spending all this time with porn?

My girlfriend while I was doing this project really did not care less. I mean, she cared about the project and thought it was amazing and worthwhile and interesting, but she didn’t care about the subject matter in a personal way. It’s just a juicy topic and one in a list of others I’ve written about—she didn’t care when I emailed 600+ UK call girls and got into email chats with them about their jobs.

More…

Naked Girls Reading: Breasts, Burlesque And Books 

A Handjob Lover’s Lament

Presumably, you have a full-time job as well as carrying out your research? What did your parents think about what you were doing on your downtime?

My mum died was I was 11, but I told my dad and he thought it was cool. He’s as liberal as it gets, so there’s no embarrassment between me and him. For money I do similar things to this project, but for companies, usually about boring stuff (no DAPs). My aim is to do this kind of project all the time, maybe syndicated or, who knows—but somehow. I want to go bigger, deeper, really get involved in some subterfuge. But keep the objective, fact-based style I have now.

What was the most surprising piece of information you uncovered?

I was surprised the racial breakdown of performers matches the US population so much, given that race is still very fetishized in American porn. The cup size obviously came as surprise too. Also, the difference in numbers of people the most prolific men and women in porn have had sex with on average.

Why do you think Asian and Latino performers are so underrepresented, despite, as you say, a fetish amongst Caucasians for this type of porn?

The breakdown of races for female porn stars is actually pretty closely matched to the general population. None are so different that I would say they are really underrepresented. For the men, it’s a big difference though. Asian men are underrepresented (less than 1% in porn, general population is 4.8% ). Maybe this is because they’re not known for being studs with big dicks, or maybe it’s just because they’re busy working in other fields.

You discovered that the idea of busty blondes as the stereotypical porn star is an outdated idea. Why are our tastes moving in the opposite direction these days?

The busty blonde thing isn’t necessarily outdated, it’s just not the average. You could still argue that the quintessential porn starlet is blonde with big boobs, if you were to only look at the most popular women in porn—however, I suspect this would still result in a bit of a subversion of the blonde, big tits thing. But yeah, the takeaway is that most women in porn are certainly not blonde bombshells, they’re average height dark haired women with B cups.

You mention that men only stay in porn for an average of four years, despite 96/100 of the most prolific porn stars being men. Having sex with beautiful women for a living might be some people’s idea of a dream job, so what are their motivations for quitting?

Most men don’t ever join the ranks of the top woodsmen, so they don’t enjoy the same spoils as the 96 most prolific. For them it’s probably more like turning up to a stinking warehouse to take part in a 40 man bukkake once a month. Also, being a male porn star isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, at least according to top male performer Evan Stone.

Being a male porn star takes a lot of viagra, a lot of stamina, you get paid a third of what the women do, etc. I don’t doubt that it’s still damn good compared to a lot of jobs, but it’s probably not the dream most men think it is.

Part of your research looks at which states female porn stars claim to have been born in. There’s a conspicuous lack of performers from Wyoming, does this mean Wyoming is the least sexy state?

It’s probably more than it’s just not got a very high population (under a million). Also, I don’t think the average sexiness of a state would correlate with its proclivity for producing porn stars!

You also discovered that ‘Lee’ is the pseudonym of choice for American porn stars, with Nicki Lee and David Lee being the most common first names. Surely, David Lee and Nicki Lee going at it in the same film is not without incestuous connotations?

Nikki, David, and Lee are all the most common names, but they aren’t the most common in combination. Meaning, there aren’t many porn stars actually called Nikki Lee (but there are lots called Nikki  Something and Something Lee). So, shouldn’t be an issue! Not that porn lets a little thing like the implication of incest get in its way.

You created an image of this ‘Nicki Lee’ ideal by merging the images of the top ten female starlets. Did you notice certain features were more popular with porn audiences? Do people get their rocks off looking at smaller ears, for instance?

I think this part was mostly for fun, because when you average lots of pretty faces together, you tend to get a generic pretty woman effect (“averageness-effect”). Then again, you could argue that my average wasn’t very dark skinned, or particularly blonde. So that could hint at something.

You mention that 43% of porn stars have a body piercing, which is 13% more than the national average. 45.5% also have at least one tattoo, 9.5% more than the national average. Does this prove the Daily Mail clichés that people with ink or piercings being degenerates?

No, it only really points at the fact they are more tattooed and pierced. The ‘why’ is left unanswered, really. Apparently, 29% of adults with tattoos feel more rebellious and 34% of people with tattoos feel sexier because they are tattooed. But neither of these percentages are majorities—so who knows why porn stars are so decorated. Maybe they’re more into their bodies generally, so do more stuff to them.

There’s a great part in your essay where you rally against these sorts of clichés and the people who claim porn is degrading.

I was having a debate with a female friend not long ago. We were talking about golden showers and she couldn’t understand how people would not think they’re degrading. I asked if two women urinating on each other, or even a single woman urinating on herself, was still degrading. Suddenly, it becomes a lot murkier. If you’re talking about porn as a degrading act, you have to be specific. Who is degrading who? Which acts are degrading? Porn is anything with people naked or fucking in it, so to say all porn is degrading seems an absurd, unqualified generalisation. You can’t just apply this knee-jerk reaction to something because it’s shocking. If a certain person performed a certain act, they might feel degraded, but that’s not to say others would. It’s ridiculous to feel degraded on behalf of others.

More…

My First Sexy Photoshoot

5 Sex Tips For Internet Porn Addicts

You point out that 62% of female performers consent to doing anal scenes, and the 2010 survey by the Journal of Sexual Medicine confirms that the number of women (outside of the porn industry) who had tried anal sex by the age of 24 had risen by 32%. Do you think our porn preferences influence our own sex lives?

I think that most spheres bleed into each other to a certain degree, so there probably is a bit of influence from porn in our sex lives. You see things in a video, and they’re things you can try out. You’re unlikely to want to try DAP (Double Anal Penetration), but certainly anal sex, and a lot of the visually engaging acts, are ripe for real life experimentation. This is not something new; men have been aroused by visual stimuli for millennia. In that respect, I would say there is more of a correlation between porn and real-life sex than there is with video games and real-life violence. I don’t think porn should be blamed for warping minds; just in the same way I don’t think video games have a causal relationship with the incidence of mass shootings. You wouldn’t go out and shoot people just to try it, but you could talk about trying anal with your girlfriend.

I don’t think there’s this poisonous, insidious relationship that people who hate porn claim there is. People still have the same morality; we aren’t just sponges, absorbing whatever we see. Who’s to say that porn doesn’t reflect our own fetishes, that we have deep in our psyche? Perhaps that’s why porn appeals so much.

You also found out that actresses performing as ‘MILF’s aren’t as old as they’d have you believe. (20% of ‘MILFs’ are aged 20-25 whilst only 11% are over 40) Is this a reflection of unrealistic expectations in porn, or is it based in reality and a general trend towards women having children at a younger age?

I didn’t track MILFs over time, I only random sampled them to check the average age, so it’s hard to say. My hunch is that the average age for MILFs in web porn is younger than old school hard copy porn.

By combining your first pet’s name and the name of the street you grew up on, you came up with ‘Pud Rutland’ as your porn star alter-ego. Does this mean you’re ready to get into the industry? With all you knowledge you could probably play the game quite well.

Able, maybe, but not ready!

Finally, having done all this research and having had the chance to understand the business a bit better, would you be willing to let your daughter get into porn?

I’m not sure about the ‘let’ part. If I’m having to let her do or not do things, I may have already failed as a parent. I wouldn’t like it though, because, well, it’s basic. I don’t think porn is bad in the main, or that women in it are less than human, or anything, but I would hope my daughter was more aspirational and long-sighted in her career choice.

Thanks Jon!