Pornography: From industry to your bedroom

Most people hear about porn for the first time as an adolescent, however porn has grown to be much more than pop-ups and dirty pictures. Porn is a million-dollar industry, producing seemingly harmless films.

In a survey of 1,023 Australian porn consumer, “More respondents (a total of 58.8 percent) felt pornography had had a positive effect than those who thought it had a negative effect (a total of 6.8 percent),” said Alan McKee, an Australian University professor who conducted research on porn consumers.

The results sound realistic, since most people watch porn for pleasure and stress relief. However, what consumers don’t know is the impact creating these videos can have on the actors and actresses that work in the scenes. Some adult film actors choose to resulting to drinking and abusing painkillers in an effort to combat the rigorous nature of the job.

“I had to hold the positions much longer and wait for them to meter the light, take a Polaroid and check the light again before they even started shooting. I was so out of shape from my unhealthy lifestyle that my knees would suddenly start knocking during a pose or my lower back would spasm when I arched it for too long, ” said Jenna Jameson in her memoir “How to Make Love like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale.”

Many porn stars, male and female, work for hours to achieve what seems like a five minute scene, often with a counterpart that they may never have worked with before. Though there are strict STD testing regulations, tests have been known to show up as false positives and there is the additional risk of actors lying about their results to continue making money in the business.

However, not all porn stars hate the industry in which they work.

“I can’t really pinpoint an age when I knew I wanted to work in the sex industry, but I was always really drawn to it,” said Asa Akira, a porn star and author of the novel “Insatiable: A Love Story.”

Many men and women also stay in the lucrative business because that is the line of work they have chosen and been branded to.

Even with the porn stars who enjoy their work, negatives still seem to outweigh the viewer pleasure and the successful employees.

“...porn not only affects the lives of the people working in it but also the lives of the people watching it and in turn the lives of the people who are surrounded by people that watch it,” said ex-pornstar “Jessie Rodgers.”

So how does it affect people who merely watch to pleasure themselves? Many couples use porn to spice up a relationship and add flavor to their experience. Many also use it as a forefront to explore sexual fantasies. But there are down sides to using porn too frequently.  

“More and more men are suffering from performance anxiety because of the ‘impressive’ feats they see in porn, whilst women feel insecure about their bodies and feel pressured to ‘perform’,” said Dave Kirkova, a Daily Mail columnist.

However that isn’t the only downfall.  Watching porn changes the way the consumer is naturally stimulated. “The spouse is not what turns them on, and so the natural drive that we have for sex is transferred somewhere else,” said Shella Wray Gregoire, author of four relationship self-help books.

Many of the benefits and disadvantages to consuming porn are linked to couples in relationships, though. For singles, porn plays a different role of the Saturday one-night-stand with the romantic light of their computer screen to relieve the week’s sexual frustration. In addition, porn is a resource to people trying to explore their sexual preference, identity, or just fantasy in a judgement-free environment.

Like all industries, there are positive and negative consequences of content production, and porn is no different. Porn can have positive and negative effects on a relationship depending on what partners want out of their sex life. The best advice for maintaining a healthy intimate relationship that is respectful of personal boundaries and to talk about what each partner wants.