by Gail Dines
Following the Court’s decision, there has been an explosion in the number of sites that childify women, as well as those that use computer-generated imagery. In the former category, the pioneer was Hustler’s Barely Legal porn magazine, which started in 1974 and is now a popular Web site and video series, with Barely Legal 79 released in February of 2008. Hustler is owned by Larry Flynt, a multimillionaire who is known in the porn world for being a risk taker and somewhat of a maverick. It is not surprising that it took the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision to open the gates to this new genre, since prior to then, sites such as Barely Legal were vulnerable to prosecution, and few pornographers had either Flynt’s money or his will to fight a legal battle. Now that the chance of prosecution has been eliminated, sites with childified women have sprung up all over the Web.1 Consequently, more users have the opportunity to masturbate to pseudo-child pornography (PCP), images of “girls” being penetrated by any number of men masquerading as fathers, teachers, employers, coaches, and just plain old anonymous child molesters.2
Because pornography that uses children (those under eighteen) is still illegal, PCP sites that use adults (those over eighteen) to represent children are never called child pornography by the industry. Instead, almost all of those sites that childify the female porn performer are found in the subgenre called “teen porn” or “teen sex” by the industry. There are any number of ways to access these sites, the most obvious one being Google. Typing “teen porn” into Google yields over 9 million hits, giving the user his choice of thousands of porn sites. A number of these hits are actually for porn portals where “teen porn” is one subcategory of many, and when the user clicks on that category, a list of sites come up that runs for over ninety pages. Moreover, teen porn has its very own portal, which lists hundreds of sub-subgenres such as Pissing Teens, Drunk Teens, Teen Anal Sluts, and Asian Teens.3
Even though these sites are also becoming increasingly popular with porn users, with nearly 14 million Internet searches for “teen sex” in 2006, an increase of 61 percent in just two years, and 6 million Internet searches for teen porn, an increase of 45 percent over the same period,4 there is very little research on either the content or the effects of such sites. One of the main reasons for this could be that those who research the field of child pornography and child sexual abuse prevention have been overwhelmed by the flood of real child pornography that accompanied the growth of the Internet. Since an actual child is used in the making of such imagery, there is an urgent need to track both the producers and consumers of such pornography and to infiltrate the many international child porn rings that swap thousands of child pornography pictures in the relatively safe and anonymous space created by the Internet. To get some idea of the scope of the problem, one Internet ring that was raided in 1998, called the Wonderland Club, operated in over twelve countries, and to join, each prospective member had to have at least 10,000 child pornography images to swap.5
Obviously, compared to such a mind-boggling level of actual child abuse, researching PCP images appears less pressing since the women involved are at least eighteen and hence, according to the law, no actual crime is taking place. But if we shift our attention away from production and toward consumption, then we can begin to ask questions regarding the possible effects that PCP and actual child pornography may have in common since both aim to sexually arouse men with images of sexualized “children.” If, as researchers argue,6 real child pornography is used by some men to prepare them for actual assault on a child by both arousing them and desensitizing them to the harm done to children, while at the same time offering a blueprint of how to commit the crime, then is it not possible that PCP sites could play a similar role? The answer to such a question depends to a large degree on just how successful the PCP sites are in constructing a reality for the user that he is in fact masturbating to images of sexualized children, and not of adults, since he presumably goes to these sites with the goal of gazing at females who look or behave somewhat differently from the thousands of females that populate the regular porn sites. So the first step in developing an analysis of effects is actually an investigation into how PCP sites borrow, employ, and mobilize symbols, codes, conventions, and narratives that are found in actual child pornography. It is only after developing such a map of content that we can begin to ask questions about the ways PCP images leak into the real-world attitudes and behaviors of users.
Developing a Map of Content of PCP Sites
To explore the linkages between PCP sites and actual child pornography, it first makes sense to develop a classification system for the former from the typologies developed to classify the latter. One of the most popular of these, according to Tony Krone, a well-known researcher in the field, is a five-point typology of child pornography.7 Using this typology not only helps to distill the thousands of PCP sites into a workable number of categories, it also provides a way to understand how users may seamlessly move between the two genres.
The five categories of child pornography described by Krone are
1. images depicting nudity or erotic posing, with no sexual activity;
2. sexual activity between children, or solo masturbation by a child;
3. nonpenetrative sexual activity between adult(s) and child(ren);
4. penetrative sexual activity between adult(s) and child(ren); and
5. sadism or bestiality.
While there are PCP sites that fall into all five categories, the vast majority fit into categories 2, 4, and 5. The acts, narratives, and visual techniques of the PCP sites in 2, 4, and 5 are drawn from the adult genre of pornography, since solo masturbation, penetrative sexual activity, and sadism (not bestiality)8 are common types of sex acts in mainstream pornography. What follows is a descriptive analysis of those PCP sites that fall into each of the three categories and a discussion of how the sites move from being relatively nonviolent (images of girls masturbating) to images of girls being used sexually in ways that are sadistic and abusive.
Type 2: Sexual activity between children, or solo masturbation by a child
The competition for customers is fierce in the porn industry since the user has a wide range of sites, themes, images, and narratives to choose from. Pornographers know this, so they attempt to pull the user in quickly by giving sites names that are short, to the point, and unambiguous. It is therefore not surprising that many of the sites in this category actually have the word “solo” in the name, along with a word that cues the user into the youthfulness of the females depicted: Solo Teen, Solo Teen Babe, Sexy Girl Solo, Solo Cuties, Solo Gals, Solo Teen Girls. When the user clicks on any one of these sites, the first and most striking feature is the body shape of the female porn performers. In place of the large-breasted, curvaceous bodies that populate regular porn Web sites are small-breasted, slightly built women with adolescent-looking faces that are relatively free of makeup. Many of these performers do look younger than eighteen, but they do not look like children, so pornographers use a range of techniques to make them appear more childlike than they actually are. Primary among these is the use of childhood clothes and props such as stuffed animals, lollipops, pigtails, pastel-colored ribbons, ankle socks, braces on the teeth, and, of course, school uniforms. It is not unusual to see a female porn performer wearing a school uniform, sucking a lollipop, and hugging a teddy bear as she masturbates with a dildo.
Another technique for childifying the woman’s body is the removal of all the pubic hair, so the external genitalia look like that of a prepubescent female. What is interesting is that over the years, this technique has lost much of its signifying power as it is now commonplace in porn for women to remove all their pubic hair. One of the results of this is that today, virtually every female porn performer looks like a child, a shift that in itself is cause for concern because porn users who are not looking for pseudo-child images are nonetheless exposed to them when they surf the porn sites.
For all the visual clues of childhood surrounding the women in PCP
sites, however, it is the written text accompanying the images that does most of the work in convincing the user that he is masturbating to images of sexual activity involving a minor. The words used to describe the women’s bodies (including their vaginas)—“tiny,” “small,” “petite,” “tight,” “cute,” “teeny”—not only stress their youthfulness but also work to separate them from women on other sites. Most striking is how many of these PCP sites refer to the female as “sweetie,” “sweetheart,” “little darling,” “cutie pie,” “honey”—terms of endearment that starkly contrast with the abusive names the women on other sites are commonly called, such as “slut,” “whore,” “cumdumpster,” and “cunt.” The use of kinder terms on PCP sites is a method of preserving the notion for the user that these girls are somehow different from the rest of the women who populate the world of porn in that they are not yet used-up whores deserving of verbal abuse. This would explain why so many of these Web sites have the word “innocent” in their name—Innocent Cute, Innocent Dream, Innocent Love, and Petite Innocent.
The reason why girls are portrayed as not yet sullied, soiled, or tainted by sex on these sites is because the underlying offer here is witnessing their loss of innocence. One fan of this genre, writing to Adult DVD Talk, calls this a “knowing innocence,” which he defines as “the illusion of innocence giving way to unbridled sexuality. Essentially, this is the old throwback of the Madonna and the Whore. Therein lies the vast majority of my attraction to this genre.”9 This fan, and indeed many others, if their posts are to be believed, makes clear that for him, the pleasure is in watching the (sweet, cute, petite) Madonna being coaxed, encouraged, and manipulated by adult men into revealing the whore that lies beneath the (illusionary) innocence. The pornographers reveal their understanding of the nature of this pleasure when they guarantee that the “girls” the users are watching are “first timers,” having their “first sexual experience,” which, of course, leads to their “first orgasm ever.” The Solo Teen site goes so far as to promise, “Here you will only find the cutest teen girls. . . . Our girls are fresh and inexperienced and very sexy in an innocent kind of way.”10 It is thus no surprise that most of these sites advertise “fresh girls added each week,” since using the same performer twice would cut into the sexual excitement of the viewer. How, after all, does one defile an already defiled girl?
The story of “defilement” told on these sites is formulaic in that it almost always starts with an eager but innocent girl who is gently and playfully coaxed by off-camera adult men into sexually performing for the pleasure of the viewer. This is the narrative informing most of the images on the SoloTeengirls.net site, which has hundreds of movies available to members as well as hundreds of still photographs posted on the site as a teaser for nonmembers. Each woman has five photographs and a written text detailing her supposed first sexual experience. For “Natasha” the story goes as follows: “This lil cutie came in pretending that she couldn’t wait to be naked in front of the camera. And . . . we couldn’t wait to see her. As she started to take off her clothes and show off she giggled and smiled but we could tell she was nervous and when she found out that naked meant showing of [sic ] her snug little teen pussy she blushed! But showing off her pussy proved to be too much of a turn on and when we encouraged her to play with it she could not resist. This beautiful teen girl really did have her first time on camera and we got to watch her stroke that velvety teen pussy.”11 The message that the written text conveys in this story can be found throughout the Web sites in this category, as it embodies the way the pornographers carefully craft a story of who is really innocent and who is really culpable in the scenario. For all the supposed innocence of the “lil cutie,” as evidenced by her nervousness, giggling, smiling, and blushing, it really took only a bit of encouragement to get her to masturbate for the camera, which in Pornland language is another way of saying that it didn’t take much for her to reveal her inner slut. It is this culpability on the part of the girl that simultaneously frees the user of his culpability in masturbating to what would be, in reality, a scenario of adult men manipulating a naive girl into masturbating for the pleasure of other adult men and themselves.
The Solo Teen sites are a gentle way to introduce the user to PCP since the absence of adult male performers means that the pornographers can construct a story for the user that avoids talking about heterosexual sex with underage girls and instead talks about a hot girl who, on the cusp of discovering her sexuality, needs just a little gentle verbal encouragement to finally take the plunge. The following classification of sites, those that have actual penetrative sex by a man, construct the male performer as both active and visible, and yet still manage to create a narrative that allows the user to believe he is watching consensual, nonexploitive sex.
Type 4: Penetrative sexual activity between adult(s) and child(ren)
The overriding theme of PCP sites that show nonsadistic sexual activity between a “child” and an adult is her supposed loss of virginity, a loss that the user gets to witness in excruciatingly clear detail. With names such as Bloody Virgins, First Time Sex, Real Virgins, and Defloration, these sites make it clear to the user just what he is getting. I have included these sites in the nonsadistic category not because they don’t include images of women in pain—many do—but because the sex acts in and of themselves are not of the body-punishing, abusive type that is standard in the more hard-core sites described in the sadistic category below.
The sex depicted in these sites differs markedly from much of the sex on regular porn sites as the adult male displays affection for the female in the form of kissing and caressing. This is a real departure from most porn sex even in feature movies, where there is some perfunctory kissing and touching, but signs of affection give way quickly to the usual mind-numbing penetration of the female’s orifices. In these PCP sites the kissing and touching actually last through much of the movie, and rarely is the woman called a slut or a whore. What is also striking to anyone who is familiar with the codes and conventions of Internet porn is that the male actually keeps asking the female, in a tender way, if the sex feels okay or if he is hurting her.
These differences should not be seen as positive steps toward a less violent type of porn; what they actually represent are techniques aimed at authenticating the supposed consensual loss of virginity. On these sites, there is no mention of coercion or even subtle manipulation; the performer is depicted as eager to lose her virginity. Moreover, as the male performer is clearly older and more mature, were he to behave like most men in porn, he would reveal himself to be a violent and manipulative exploiter of underage girls—an image that would destroy the carefully crafted story of him as a tender teacher, gently leading an innocent yet ripe and ready girl through this major rite of passage. On these sites, any type of text, image, or sex act that remotely suggests coercion would situate the user as a co-conspirator in a scenario that could be read as the rape of a minor, a role that many would likely find uncomfortable and that might prevent them from coming back for more.
One site that seems to be popular, judging from its top billing on many of the teen porn Web portals and its constant pop-up advertisement, which appears on other teen porn sites, is Defloration.com. Claiming to be the “first website about virginity since 1998” and promising the user “real acts of defloration,” the home page is dominated by a picture of two hands stretching open a vagina so the user can get a clear view of the internal genitalia, which depicts, the site claims, an “intact hymen.” Alongside this picture are four smaller images, one of which shows a doll resting on a woman’s thigh and a second that shows a lollipop placed inside a stretched vagina. The text by the side of the picture explains what the hymen is: “A mysterious body part that is lost by young girls when they have sexual intercourse for the first time. Few people have ever seen what this fragile object looks like. A girl who has never had sexual intercourse (a virgin) is supposed to have her hymen intact. In many societies, a girl’s
virginity until marriage is considered a great virtue. For a girl who possesses such chastity, getting married becomes easy.”12 After the pornographers have eroticized the hymen with its “mysterious” quality and “fragile” state, which is “stretched and ruptured by the erect penis,” they explain to the user that the “girl” may experience “discomfort and bleeding” during intercourse. For many porn users this is too good an offer to miss as they anticipate seeing something real unfold before them, rather than a staged performance by a “whore.”
For $38 a month, the user can access innumerable images on the site, including pages and pages of young-looking women. One can click on a selection of stills or an actual movie, which is split into two segments: “Hymen Performance” and “Losing of Virginity.” In the first, a male masturbates the girl, and then stretches her vagina open so the viewer gets a clear internal shot. The second segment is a long and drawn-out documentation of her being penetrated as she is grimacing and often asking her penetrator to be careful since the act is painful. This continues, sometimes for ten to fifteen minutes, until he withdraws his blood-stained penis. The camera lingers on the penis, showing the user clear evidence of the “defloration” before the male performer takes his penis and smears the blood over the buttocks and thighs of the female, an act that mirrors the usual “money shot” in porn in which semen is rubbed all over the woman’s body.
On this site and others of this type, the techniques used to childify the women are not so much childhood clothes or props but the actual behavior of the women during sex. To men accustomed to viewing mainstream adult porn, the women in these sites look inexperienced by comparison. In place of the writhing, oiled, voluptuous women who look like they know exactly what they are doing, these women resemble younger females who are unsure of how to perform sex for the camera. Their bodies are not arched enough, their moans not throaty enough, and their movements are awkward, sometimes to the point of being clumsy. Given the nature of the porn industry, it is unlikely that these women are acting the part since they are not top-tier porn performers—just a few of the many thosands of women who move in and out of the industry at an alarming rate. It is much more likely that what is being witnessed is not only their first porn movie ever, but much worse, the first time they have been penetrated vaginally. Indeed, these women are having the loss of their virginity documented by the porn industry, to be circulated over and over again for men’s masturbatory pleasure.