By the way, this is a missive I sent to a stringer lady.
Here is the original request:
"For our May Body Image story, we are seeking a real
woman age 20-35 who does not live in New York State
who can talk about how the increasing availability of
porn -- who hasn't heard of the Paris Hilton sex
video?- has made her feel worse about her own body
image. Maybe she would say something like "I feel
like guys look at perfect breasts all day long and
then expect me to have perfect breasts."
We need just one or two quotes for this one, but we
need them desperately and we need them today!"
And this is my reply:
"How about a woman for whom the increasing availability of porn has had a positive effect as far as her body image is concerned?
Female porn stars are far from perfect. In professional porn, the great majority of women are short (their being tiny makes the penis of the male co-stars look bigger), with surgically-enhanced parts of the body that, even if they do titillate on screen, would most likely repel the man on the street if he were in their presence. Nobody who watches porn expects or desires their women to look like Jenna Jameson (although she does have a pretty face). The excitement of porn lies in the nasty things that the people on screen do.
As for amateur porn, the "perfect look" is even less of a factor. Amateur porn is about the normal, everyday woman, whose mouth is maybe too big, whose legs are maybe too short, whose ass is too skinny or whose ankles are too thick. It is true that most amateur porn stars are pretty or cute, but most women are pretty or cute if they put on a bit of mascara and lipstick. Men don't watch porn in order to find physically perfect women: they want to see non-abhorrent lasses doing dirty things.
Finally, porn is one of the few image-based industries where beauty is explicitly not of the issue. Any physical "defect" has been and will continue to be featured in porn, from obesity to pimply asses, because people enjoy that. They are curious voyeurs. They enjoy witnessing people that look like people they know being sexual.
I am a great consumer of porn. So is my boyfriend. This doesn't make me feel bad about the way I look. Neither does it make him suggest that I get ass-cheek implants."
[To be very honest, the reason I am including this is that name-dropping porn stars is a guaranteed way to get page hits.]