I Ditched Studio-Produced Porn

Amateur porn is way better — and better for me

High-speed internet was a real blessing for me as a young adult.

I hadn’t married Mr. Austin yet, but we were already playing house. Unfortunately, that meant he’d leave for 8 to 10 hour work shifts and I’d be all alone for the entire evening.

There were only so many Sex and the City reruns I could watch before feeling restless.

Netflix was still delivering DVDs through the mail. YouTube had just come on the scene but no one had figured out how to turn it into a non-stop entertainment machine yet. And Mr. Austin’s fondness for horror films meant I had limited use for his VHS collection.

There were also no X-rated tube sites like Pornhub or YouPorn. Luckily, I had no qualms about internet piracy and violating some kind of intellectual property right (honestly, I had no idea there were intellectual property rights — I was just a horny stoner looking for ways to pass the time).

So, I spent part of my days downloading and watching porn (and doing all the associated activities you do during and after a porn binge).

Glitz and Glamor

Even though I wasn’t looking at tube sites that were neatly arranged into categories, I had developed a set of favorite search terms.

I’d look up things like “threesome,” “lesbian,” or just roll the dice with “XXX.”

Eventually, I became a little savvier and started to search for adult films by some of the top studios, like Vivid Entertainment. Other times, I’d look for video series. I hadn’t really worked out the whole daddy thing yet (Twitter wasn’t full of people swooning over attractive middle aged men), but judging by how many Couples Seduce Teen I filled my hard drive with, I clearly had a preference.

But there are a few search terms I never used. I wasn’t searching for fisting videos and I didn’t go cruising for bukkake. And I also never once typed in the word “amateur.”

I wasn’t interested in porn unless it was produced by a studio.

I figured all the most attractive people were in the industry, not uploading their camcorder experiments to a torrent site. I wanted the people I watched to be lean, shaved, and at least a Scranton 7.

The production quality for porn films was already pretty low as it was — it was afternoon TV movie quality at best. I wasn’t about to go from low budgets to videos produced with no budget.

Plus, the setups were fun. These movies weren’t penned by people who had mastered the craft of screenwriting, but the cheesy storylines and improbable setups were amusing and part of the experience. It was like watching one of those wild soap operas (Passions, anyone?) only with a lot of fucking.

Most of those videos might end with a lady pretending she enjoys come splattering dangerously close to her eyes, but I still wanted it to have some glitz and glamor, damnit.

I Was Losing Sight of What’s Ordinary

All that studio porn was having an effect on me (well, besides the obvious, intended one). It started to normalize the porn aesthetic.

12-inch cocks and zero waists started to seem ordinary. Impossibly firm and stationary breasts were paraded in front of me constantly. The girls in most videos looked cuter than anyone I went to high school with and somehow managed to keep their angelic demeanor while doing some of the nastiest stuff imaginable.

There’s a lot of worry that porn is creeping into our sex lives and normalizing all sorts of debauchery.

Watch enough porn and you might get the impression that no guy is going to want to sleep with you unless you’re willing to ruin your mascara gagging on cock. And a porn habit might make you think that anal is as informal and common as handshakes and hugs.

But for me, the worst thing it did was give me a skewed picture of what kind of person is desirable and fuckable.

Watching a steady stream of studio porn had me believing that no one is really all that interested in men (visually, sexually) unless they’re jacked and no one is all that interested in bedding a woman unless she has the body of a 20 year old who has never spent too much time in the sun.

Even the MILFs looked like they were in their early 30s and spent most of their day at the gym and not, you know, doing mom stuff.

I knew that people who looked like the girl next door (not the one from porn, the one from your neighborhood) could still be considered sexy, but my baseline for what is sexy enough started creeping up, closer and closer to the porn aesthetic.

That was really rough on me, because if that’s the baseline, then I don’t measure up. I was convinced I wasn’t the kind of person you would describe as fuckable. I knew people might want to fuck me, but I imagined it was only after getting to know me personally.

No One Told Me Reddit Was So Horny

It’s hard for me to accept my body. I’m making some progress in that department, but it’s taking effort.

Slogans like “everyone is beautiful,” “beauty at every size,” or “attraction is subjective” aren’t enough to make me love my body. I need stronger stuff.

And part of that stronger stuff is porn.

I’m making an effort to unlearn the things I’ve learned about beauty and attraction from Hollywood, women’s magazines, and studio porn.

If an ordinary girl like myself is going to feel hot and fuckable, one of the best ways is to watch ordinary people strip and fuck.

I went on a quest to find ordinary people doing naughty stuff online, and the internet did not disappoint.

Pornhub has upended the porn world. Where searching “amateur” mostly meant you’d find gonzo porn featuring women who hadn’t been filmed more than few times, now it’s a lot more likely to yield sex entrepreneurs.

The amateurs that populate X-rated tube sites are mostly content creators. They use their webcams, smartphone cameras, or whatever video equipment they have on hand to create and upload their own dirty content.

There are no gatekeepers. No one is turning them down because they don’t fit some narrow aesthetic. Any adult who wants to upload can go ahead and upload — even if they’re not doing anything naughty.

Guys, it’s incredible. It’s a world of beautiful people with chubby tummies, real tits, stretch marks, multicolored hair, extravagant tattoos all feeling and looking sexy. Fat or thin, short or tall, shaved or bushy, femme or butch, straight or queer, thick dicked or small and proud — everyone is represented and I can’t get enough of it.

And then there’s Reddit. I’ll be honest, until recently, I had no idea what Reddit really was. I had some vague notion that (maybe?) people went there to talk about video games and other nerdy stuff. I heard rumblings that there was some sketchy incel business going on. But I never checked it out for myself.

I would have created an account a lot sooner if I knew it’s where countless people post their nudes. Now, I’m getting regular phone notifications from “gone wild” subreddits, /r/normalnudes, and other boards where regular, everyday people show off what they look like naked.

And the best part of it is all the genuine joy out there. That’s something that’s missing from pretty much every studio porn production. And I get it, there’s a lot of downtime and editing, there’s a lot of stuff that’s done just for the camera angle, and at the end of the day these people have come together because it’s their job. And I don’t know about you, but even when I’ve enjoyed my job, I didn’t enjoy it that much.

There can be some chemistry on screen, but it’s usually the kind you get from a “sure, why not?” one-night stand.

But often, it would trigger some uneasiness in me. Something about their behavior or the looks on their faces made me feel like they were only acting out enjoyment. That deep down, there was some degree of discomfort, or at least some indifference.

The intrepid people on Reddit and the bold folks amateurs on Pornhub, though, they’re full of giddy smiles and genuine O faces. When they partner up, it’s usually with, well, their partners. That’s the kind of chemistry I live for — they’re fucking, but you can tell they also go grocery shopping together and snuggle while watching movies in bed.

I sought out amateurs because I wanted some validation. What I found was amazingly good porn.

The Most Fun You Can Have Being Body Positive

Consuming amateur porn hasn’t cured my body image issues, but it helped.

I’m still terribly self-conscious and I struggle to see my body as attractive. I still feel like I don’t measure up. But at least now that I ditched studio porn, the baseline for what counts as sexy isn’t set so high.

There are a lot of ways to broaden your idea of what it means to be beautiful, what it means to be desirable, and what counts as a sexy body. But none of them are nearly as fun as watching amateurs get frisky on screen.

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