The Sensual Proletariat
My lover purrs, low and breathy. He is spent—eyes closed and flat on his back, arms limp, legs slack, rotated outward just slightly. His abdomen rises and falls hypnotically. In yoga, they call this “corpse pose”—or savasana. Done correctly, it can stimulate blood circulation and relieve conditions including nervousness and insomnia. Not unlike the toe-curling orgasm that brought him here in under four-and-a-half minutes—and without all those grueling sun salutations.
“You should be in movies,” he says dreamily, half-smiling.
Riiiiiight. You get the camera. I’ll dig out my clear heels, call a girlfriend and hop on the Sybian with a riding crop.
Except he’s not wrong. I could be in movies. And I’m not basing this entirely on my mind-blowing skills, either. The days of the glossy box-cover porn goddess may not be gone, but as media has evolved, so, too, has the material the world jacks to. And guess what? It turns out the world really likes to watch itself fuck—despite the fact that most of it doesn’t look at all like Tera Patrick.
“You should be in movies,” he says dreamily, half-smiling.
Riiiiiight. You get the camera. I’ll dig out my clear heels, call a girlfriend and hop on the Sybian with a riding crop.
Except he’s not wrong. I could be in movies. And I’m not basing this entirely on my mind-blowing skills, either. The days of the glossy box-cover porn goddess may not be gone, but as media has evolved, so, too, has the material the world jacks to. And guess what? It turns out the world really likes to watch itself fuck—despite the fact that most of it doesn’t look at all like Tera Patrick.
Evolution in Brief
Human nature being what it is, porno flicks were invented about 3.7 seconds after the actual movie camera. The adult entertainment industry has always been at the forefront of technology, and with the advent of video and affordable hand-held cameras, the amateur category was born. Like every other X-rated niche—from instructional soft-core to the 27-inmate conjugal gang-bang—amateur porn flourished in the balmy waters of the World Wide Web.
So why, precisely, is it so hot to watch a zaftig everygirl enthusiastically fellating her boyfriend (still wearing the shirt from his UPS uniform) on the tatty futon in her apartment when you could be watching one (or even three) AVN award winners cavorting on a big, round satin-covered bed?
“The most simple explanation of amateur’s appeal is that most porn consumers are men and the idea that they can have sex with actual women is more believable with less-than-perfect girls as opposed to popular porn stars,” says Bill, a former executive producer for Playboy’s Spice Studios.
Makes sense, but perceived accessibility notwithstanding, there’s gotta be something more to it, right?
So why, precisely, is it so hot to watch a zaftig everygirl enthusiastically fellating her boyfriend (still wearing the shirt from his UPS uniform) on the tatty futon in her apartment when you could be watching one (or even three) AVN award winners cavorting on a big, round satin-covered bed?
“The most simple explanation of amateur’s appeal is that most porn consumers are men and the idea that they can have sex with actual women is more believable with less-than-perfect girls as opposed to popular porn stars,” says Bill, a former executive producer for Playboy’s Spice Studios.
Makes sense, but perceived accessibility notwithstanding, there’s gotta be something more to it, right?
Armchair Psych & The Elusive O Face
Ravi, 41, has been watching porn for more than 30 years. His current favorite among the pro starlets is Tori Black. “But a friend of mine wouldn’t shut up about ‘the naturalness’ of amateur, so I checked it out. The more I watched, the more I saw women really getting into it, which was a very big turn-on.”
Why?
“Men like to believe it’s more real, that the women aren’t just doing it for a paycheck. And so many of them seem like they’re married—which for some married guys, like me—is very hot.”
Thomas doesn’t necessarily prefer amateur to professional porn, “but I find myself gravitating more toward it because my predilection tends to center on watching women climax. I don’t like the fake, ‘Do me, Baby!!!’ orgasms you find in mainstream videos.”
While Thomas appreciates beautiful women, watching a woman experience genuine, unbridled pleasure is far more important. “A woman who’s only a ‘5,’ but uninhibited enough to have an orgasm on camera is far sexier than a ‘10’ who’s obviously faking.”
Thomas and Ravi share this inclination. In fact, the topic of whether a performer looks into it came up again and again. Is she really coming? Can you see it in her face? Does she look spent when it’s over? This, for me, brought the very essence of the pro-am juxtaposition up for serious debate. Should we really be calling the actors—the ones following a script—“professionals” while the genuine articles, be they hairy gay bears, art-school lesbians or horny cuckolded husbands and their promiscuous wives, are relegated to the amateur bin?
Why?
“Men like to believe it’s more real, that the women aren’t just doing it for a paycheck. And so many of them seem like they’re married—which for some married guys, like me—is very hot.”
Thomas doesn’t necessarily prefer amateur to professional porn, “but I find myself gravitating more toward it because my predilection tends to center on watching women climax. I don’t like the fake, ‘Do me, Baby!!!’ orgasms you find in mainstream videos.”
While Thomas appreciates beautiful women, watching a woman experience genuine, unbridled pleasure is far more important. “A woman who’s only a ‘5,’ but uninhibited enough to have an orgasm on camera is far sexier than a ‘10’ who’s obviously faking.”
Thomas and Ravi share this inclination. In fact, the topic of whether a performer looks into it came up again and again. Is she really coming? Can you see it in her face? Does she look spent when it’s over? This, for me, brought the very essence of the pro-am juxtaposition up for serious debate. Should we really be calling the actors—the ones following a script—“professionals” while the genuine articles, be they hairy gay bears, art-school lesbians or horny cuckolded husbands and their promiscuous wives, are relegated to the amateur bin?
The O Face Realized
Turning Pro
This couple's homemade take on cinema verité gives a whole new meaning to the term, Candid Camera...
It started simply enough.
“We set up a tripod in the corner, and just did what we always do,” says Tara, the 47-year-old mom and homemaker, whose MILF-labeled amateur videos have garnered more than 300 hits a day. “Back then, we were just taping for ourselves. The uploading came later.”
“It was primitive,” Larry admits. Their first forays consisted of one achingly long shot. “We’d suck, we’d fuck, we’d suck again,” he laughs. “The camera never moved. After a couple of videos even we got bored.”
Inspired by watching some of his vintage Seymore Butts’ favorites, Larry, a top-level engineer at a well-known telecommunications company, began experimenting with a smaller hand-held, eventually doing a series they informally called Blowjob Jeopardy, in which Tara would try and answer Trebek’s questions (the TV was on in the background) while pleasuring him orally. Simultaneously silly and sexy, they were a big hit with viewers.
The pair, happily married for nearly 20 years, don’t swing or work with other couples, and believe the reason people enjoy them is quite simple: “Our attraction—and affection—for one another is real,” says Larry. “We have fun. We turn each other on, and it shows.”
“I couldn’t make these videos with a production crew here!” says Tara, who’s been seen naked (and penetrated), by millions on the Internet. She laughs, with a not small amount of irony. “I won’t get undressed in front of anyone but Larry.”
La petite mort is a French metaphor for orgasm. Its translation, “the little death,” conjures the moment one lies lost in an afterglow dusted with a hint of sadness—as though with each climax, we lose a small trace of life’s very essence.
Both Ravi and Thomas referenced their attraction to the faces of women in the throes of rapture; both joked (with a detectable level of swagger) that they thought they were pretty good at sorting authentic from ersatz. But probably not as practiced as Richard Lawrence, co-founder of BeautifulAgony.com, a site dedicated entirely to the beauty and raw, erotic power of the human orgasm.
You won’t see any hardcore action here. Each video is made privately by the contributor and shows the “Agonee,” as they are called, from about the neck up. Some are masturbating, some pleasured in other ways, but mostly you won’t know how. And you won’t mind. The sounds, movements, facial expressions—the incredibly intimacy—is both mesmeric and overwhelming. (I kept feeling like I shouldn’t be watching, but of course, I did.)
“I was talking to my friend about porn several years ago,” says Lawrence. “She had some informed opinions which complemented my collected years’ experience as an occasional consumer. I would have been a more frequent consumer had I been finding any porn that actually turned me on … everything seemed so fake, contrived, and totally devoid of any humanity.”
The pair began to deconstruct the porn paradigm and came to an opinion that echoes what Ravi, Thomas, and more than a few others said. “Not only was the face the real key to it all,” Lawrence explains, “but in fact, the face was all you needed, if it was experiencing genuine sexual pleasure.”
They began with four submissions. Today, they upload new Agonies several times each week. The site’s “Confessions” section delves deeper, with interviews or self-filmed revelations of participants that give viewers a candid peek inside their motivations and even their actual sex lives.
One such woman is Contributor #329. She is 26. “I thought it was conceptually the most exciting erotica I had seen … and was immediately drawn to the idea of being a part of it. It was also somewhat of a personal challenge to share something so intimate in a public space. It’s cliché, but it’s really so liberating.”
She found the prospect of masturbating before the camera something of a buffer to climax. “I thought I was taking ages and ages,” she admits, “but when I’d finished and looked at the time code, I’d only taken seven minutes.” (She averages three or four minutes, sans camera.)
Porn classic, of course, will endure, but our Web-fed cravings have evolved. Or devolved. Or something. For what it’s worth, Lawrence doesn’t see traditional porn auteur as competitors. “They seem to have reacted the same way they reacted to the alt-porn thing—they fake it. It’s not terribly successful, and it’s not a threat to the real amateur porn out there.”
And so, while we all love scoffing at those dated scenarios from decades past in which the TV repairman saunters in, shirt open, medallion glinting amid a soft prairie of Hasselhoffian chest hair and queries the housewife with a knowing smirk as to what she’d like him to do about all the fuzz on her box (cue funky bass-driven soundtrack), they have taken on a corny, almost Norman Rockwell quality. Something akin to when your Nana speaks fondly of the days when she could get two chocolate bars and see a movie for 10 cents… Only with anal.
Amateur Smut is so the way to go. Who wants to look at these dolled Porn stars who have been mined so many times, their parts dont even look normal anymore. Also I dont know about the rest of you but I consider myself a fairly good looking guy and Im just not getting the opportunity to hang with these Amazonian, cum cravers that you see in the pro stuff. I dont even know where they hang out these days. Give me a normal woman any day. I want to watch a girl thats shorter than me with curves and "Gasp", a little bit of belly fat. I like watching a girl take one on the face and look sincerely shocked at how much she just dug that over the girl who takes dumpsters worth on the face from multiple guys, just for the cash. I'll also say that it's kinda hot to see what normal people are doing in their beds. I dont know about you but Pro Porn has lead to more ill advised adventures in positions than I like to talk about. My only complaint about the amateur stuff is that it's ussualy only one camera angle and the quality is not very good. I myself like a good shot of the penetration and the amateurs are just not getting that shot for me. Overall, I'll still take Paul and Mary over Luxy and Rodd anyday. That's just me
I'm personally not a huge fan of porno movies, I think they girls look to silicone and the sex is staged and it just doesnt get me off. If Im going to watch other people have sex I want to at least believe they are getting off, and fake moans and fake orgasms are so not the way to go for my tastes. I tend to stick to erotic literature. Ametur videos however tend to take the fake out of porn. Besides the obvious ones who look like a deer caught in the headlights of a camera. The people look more real, the moaning and groaning sounds wonderful, and 9 times out of ten I actually believe they are enjoying the sex. Why make barbie have fake sex when you can have the real thing?