You, Me and Pornography: The Benefits of Watching Porn

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When I normally write anything for Study Breaks, I usually like to begin with an anecdote about my parents or my boyfriend, but any anecdote here feels sort of inappropriate, and maybe that’s because I’m too afraid to admit how old I was when I first looked at porn (the answer is probably too young to be looking at porn, but my parents had the Playboy channel and no parental locks on the TV).

For boys, looking at porn is sort of like a rite of passage, especially if it’s a creepy cousin or a reckless older brother or just a killer friend who’s showing them the porn for the first time. But for girls, no such “rite of passage” exists. Maybe that’s because girls don’t seek out porn like boys do.

Or maybe it’s because most porn is geared toward men, so straight girls are automatically alienated from it. Or maybe it’s because the women in professional porn tend to be outrageous in their looks, which can be a bit intimidating, especially for a teenage girl. I don’t know.

But what I do know is that porn has a bad reputation. I also know that, more often than not, the man-woman-porn relationship exists without an agreeable midpoint.

The lady is scandalized that their husband or boyfriend is looking at porn, and the husband or boyfriend is frantically clearing their phone history so no one knows they were spanking it to a MILF doing it with her own stiletto heel (or, you know, the stick shift in a manual car because why the hell not?).

Sure, porn has some obvious cons. Without focusing on all the crazy shit you can find on the internet — the snuff films, bizarre happenings with horses, the dreaded Czech porn (don’t Google it. Don’t look at it. It’s one rough neck grab away from being coercion porn) — the cons list gets a lot smaller. But I think the biggest problem with porn is that it sets unrealistic expectations for sex. A problem that I suspect is more or less solvable once you have disappointing, real life sex.

Or maybe the biggest problem isn’t “unrealistic expectations” at all. Maybe it’s that watching porn isn’t all that bad, but enough people aren’t talking about it because everyone is too busy being ashamed or embarrassed or upset over something that’s as normal as needing to poo after having a smoke and a coffee.

So, stop being ashamed and/or upset. Whip out that cell phone, tune in to your favorite porn webpage, make sure your phone isn’t streaming to the family TV, and enjoy the benefits of pornography.

Porn As A Learning Tool: Oral Sex

I’ll preface this section by saying you can learn a lot of bad things from porn. Not every woman wants her rear slapped or her hair pulled, and not every lady wants your erection and/or balls smacking her in the face. Conversely, not every man wants a chick using 90 percent of her molars during a blow job. I know that the guy on screen is “enjoying” it, but he’s got some dead wood down there from years of professional practice.

What can you learn from porn?

Men, it may not be your “thing,” but if you seek out videos of men going down on their ladies, you will undoubtedly learn some nifty techniques.

In porn, the camera is almost always going to be on the girl’s vagina or her face. Most guy-going-down-on-girl videos provide the right angle to see both his technique — how he’s using his tongue (whether it’s flat or rigid, if he’s using just the tip, etc.) and fingers — as well as the, uh… “inner workings” of her vagina. So, if you don’t know where (or what) a clitoris is, these types of videos are a good starting point.

Women, it may not be your “thing,” either, but men always want blow jobs. And if you hate giving blow jobs, and I think a lot of women do hate it, learn how to do it well so you can blow his mind for five minutes. For most straight men, if the option is between “receive a killer BJ for a few minutes” and “receive no BJ,” they’re going to almost always choose the first one.

So, get on that internet machine and look up BJ videos. Don’t read Cosmo. Don’t go to Women’s Health. Go straight to porn — particularly videos of a chick blowing a guy.

Why? Let me put it like this. Do you want your man going to Men’s Health and Super Big Man Fast Car Sexy Chick Explosion magazine for advice on pleasing your naughty bits? I personally don’t want John Cena or John Stamos or really anyone named John, because John is a boring ass name, giving my boyfriend advice on how to perform oral. Similarly, your man does not want your BJ tips to come from a woman.

I understand that that last statement is a bit problematic because I’m a woman giving other women BJ tips. So … your man does not want your BJ tips to come from a woman unless that woman is telling you to go watch BJ porn.

Porn as a Learning Tool: Anatomy Lesson + Positions

Part of having good sex — aside from occasionally starting it with some porn you and your partner can agree on — is knowing her anatomy. If you happen to be a well-endowed man, but your girlfriend is a bit on the small side, do not just ram your entire length into her. Seriously. I italicized this part because, really, don’t do it. It will hurt her.

On average, the stout, American penis is a well-forged five to six inches. On average, the warm, sticky American love-box has a depth of about six and a half (when aroused, the vagina, normally only three to four inches, elongates to accommodate your man’s sometimes unwanted sausage).

If you’re above average, anything beyond your lady’s depth will have you just slamming into the opening of her cervix, which can be exquisitely painful, although some women like how this feels.

Porn can be helpful here since most of the men tend to be well-endowed and most of the women tend to be on the smaller side. If you look for porn that’s tagged with “sensual” or “romantic,” you can usually find videos where the guy is not just slamming himself into the girl, regardless of her screams. Usually, these videos are full of positions that accommodate her smallness and his bigness.

These positions often have the man lying behind the woman so that some of his length can’t enter her. If you like to go hard and fast, but she can’t handle all of you at once, these are good positions to try. But they take practice to get right, so whip out the porn! Not only can you figure out, for example, how her hips need to be positioned, or where he needs to put his leg, but you’ll both stay aroused while enduring the trial-and-error process.

And ladies — don’t be afraid to take control. For a long time, I wanted to try a lady-on-top position with my boyfriend, but I was having a hard time figuring out how he should enter, or if he should already be inside, or if I needed to face west, or if I should do a tap dancing routine first (you know, normal shit).

So I watched porn that included that position and I learned. Then, the next time we had sex, I took control.

Trying new positions can be fun, and porn is always full of multiple positions. Pretty much anything done professionally is going to include a lot of different positions. So give some of them a go. If you’re worried that you might somehow embarrass yourself trying new positions, just remember this: I was once poked in the eye with an erect penis.

Now set yourself shame free into the wonderful world of porn.

Solo Benefits: Female Masturbation Techniques

Ladies, ladies, ladies. I’ve talked about the vibrator thing before, but if that’s not your style, take a gander at some solo, or lesbian, porn. Are you gay for looking at women masturbating/lesbian porn? I don’t know. Who cares? Their stuff may look more chewed on than your stuff, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.

If you’re bored with how you’re masturbating, watching how other women masturbate can shed some new light on what you’re doing solo. I’ve seen a lot of porn where women are using a curved dildo/vibrator that’s a bit bulky at the end, and I wondered for a long time about this toy before deciding to buy a similar one. Without going into detail, the toy was a good purchase, and it was only through porn that I even discovered it.

For ladies who don’t like to use toys or just haven’t had the opportunity, there are other ways to touch yourself that you may not have explored. From my own experience with porn, I’ve learned a lot. For example, gently pulling back the hood of the clitoris can increase sensitivity and pleasure. Rubbing your labia, which swells during sex, in an up-and-down motion can further increase your pleasure. If you like to finger yourself when you masturbate, you can try curling your finger(s) upward.

There are numerous ways to touch yourself, and porn — especially porn that’s specifically made by women to help other women — can be a helpful teacher.

If your hang-up here is that watching women touch themselves is “gay,” then don’t masturbate while watching those videos. Watch them. Digest them. Try those techniques later. Learning how to please yourself is not gay, and, honestly, what you masturbate to or find hot is no one’s business but your own, so you do you and to hell with everyone else.

Body Acceptance and Porn

Probably the best thing about porn is that even the ugliest, trashiest, most disgusting weirdos can be porn “stars.” I personally cannot stand amateur porn videos because I’m a little bit critical, actually, and I like it when both the man and woman are fairly lean, preferably with minimal body hair. But, as Peter Griffin would say, “Some guys like Butter.”

Just as porn can set unrealistic body expectations — particularly in the boobie department — it can also help you accept your own body. If you notice, most lady porn stars, while small, are typically not skeleton-thin with big fake tits and no ass. Usually, they’ve got a jiggly butt and love handles, and when they pull their legs up, they get lines across their abdomen, too. Yeah, their butthole might be bleached to a crisp shade of unnatural white, but that’s just part of the business.

What I’m saying is that, by and large, porn stars look like normal people. They’ve got on a lot of make-up, they’re tan, and there’s touching-up that happens, but they’re pretty much normal looking. If you’re having trouble watching porn because you’re constantly comparing your body to the bodies of the women in the videos, stop.

First, it’s not healthy to constantly compare yourself to other people. And second, go and glam yourself up. Put on some sexy lingerie and heels. Straighten your hair or curl it or whatever. Get your bits waxed. Go the extra mile and get your butthole bleached. My point is that you can look just as hot, if not hotter, than most of the chicks in those videos.

If you can’t get past how sexy some of the ladies are in porn (and some of them are very pretty), start going through amateur stuff. I can also promise you that, regardless of how “ugly” you think you are, you can find some amateur video that looks like two sea walruses struggling to find their way back to water.

Above all, though, always remember that, no matter how “sexy” your boyfriend or husband may think a porn star is, you’re his actual star. Be confident in how you look because confidence is sexy, and porn stars have mountains of confidence. Whip out your boobies. Bend over in a thong. He doesn’t care if your butthole isn’t snow white, or if you’ve missed some hair while shaving—he just cares that you’re confident enough to show him your most private bits without provocation.

Part of the hotness of porn is that the women and men are completely exposed, and they’re exposed no matter how they look. So expose yourself to your man. Be confidence about it. Besides, most men don’t actually want to sleep with a porn star, anyway. The “driving the wiener mobile through a Dixie cup” experience is always preferable to the “throwing a hotdog down a hallway” experience.