Julian, commenting on the rise of amateur porn, writes:
there are plenty of people who consume porn as a second-best substitute for the sex they're not having, which means they want something that approximates at closely as possible an erotic experience they could imagine themselves having. In other words: Couples (or whatever) who are slightly-more-attractive versions of recognizably ordinary sorts of people, having sex because they actually want to, genuinely enjoying it, and displaying the kind of affection it would be difficult to convincingly feign for someone you'd just met even if you had trained with Lee Strasberg for a decade.
That's always been my sense of it, though I don't follow the industry's sale numbers terribly closely. This also has problematic implication for the Laura Sessions Stepp thesis that porn is leaving young men uninterested in young women. Or something. If what folks seem to be looking for in porn is realism, something as close to the women they know as possible, then the causality may well be going in the other direction. As Julian puts it, it's a "second-best substitute for the sex they're not having," not an obstruction to their actual pursuit of sex. Although to really confuse matters, I could also see an argument that porn that's closer to real life, but still populated by uncommonly attractive individuals, would raise expectations higher than porn where the women don't look like human beings. Making the rare look achievable may do more to change behavior than the outlandish. All that said, though, I highly doubt porn is a serious culprit here. If it's unrealizable beauty standards in romance, it's romantic comedies you want to yell at.
