Despertar

second banana

Once every five minutes or so, Tyra Banks does a show featuring ordinary (read: average-looking, natural-breasted, jobless) women whose marriages are being destroyed by their husbands' secret porn "addictions." Tyra lowers her voice into its rehearsed Sympathetic Register and commiserates with Jane Smith and Susie Homemaker over how awful it must feel to lose their husbands to faceless plastic women who have TIME to get professional waxes and manicures and who don't HAVE C-section scars and three kids to put to bed, leaving them with no time for romance or exercise.

Then she has two stereotypical blond porn actresses come onstage in miniskirts and stripper heels, and seats them across from Wife Squad for the most contrived confrontation ever. Who's really at fault here? Is it the neglectful wife or the desperate entertainer with no self-respect? Why should devoted wives have to compete with the unrealistic standards of beauty promoted by filthy porn studios? Why should hard-working husbands have to remain mentally faithful to high-school-sweethearts-turned-nags who have let themselves go? Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck!

The whole thing embodies what I hate most both about Tyra Banks and the Real Women Have Curves movement.

*

Seriously, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The husbands masturbating to Got Jizz? clips aren't cheating any more than their wives are when they read love poems by published authors.

Sexual psychologists have proved that men are stimuated visually; women, mentally. Most men masturbate, and most (or all, probably) do it with the intention of producing the friction necessary to eventually ejaculate. For various physiological reasons, variety sometimes enhances the experience. Watching another man penetrate a woman at an angle designed specifically for maximum visibility helps a man imagine that his hand is the feminine orifice of his choice, which increases his temporary physical pleasure.

Men who watch porn don't love those female porn stars. Jenna Jameson had a long, lucrative career in the industry, and I've never met a guy who (a) had never seen her work, and (b) had anything respectful or praising to say about her. Have you seen her recently? One collagen injection too many and she looks like a mannequin from a department store on Jupiter. No one respects her except, perhaps, aspiring adult-film starlets and her own husband (which is questionable, considering how much men actually don't love it when their wives have sex with other men, especially for pay).

Hey Tyra Banks wives, porn is not a threat to your marriage. Becoming unnecessarily paranoid and controlling about porn very well might be.

And we could turn the camera around and condemn the men for the double standard, feeding a "disgusting" industry, pleasuring themselves to women they wouldn't date or marry. But why bother? I think we've said all we need to say about Average Man's ability to make emotionally responsible decisions where sex is involved.

*

Someone I know (three guesses who it was, name rhymes with "carcass") SWORE he never masturbated or watched porn, citing religious reasons. I was way more freaked out by that than I am by every other man's nervous, knowing chuckle whenever someone mentions "One Night in Paris" or the infamous R. Kelly sex tape.

And the only thing that freaks me out more than that, more than Marcus piously lying about something so ridiculous, is the fact that there are some guys out there, walking around, interacting with us, bankers and butchers just like you and me, who can only get off behind hentai. WTF??

*

I didn't mean this to be a Public Service Announcement, so I'll try to finish on a more personal note.

I learned my very favorite position from a grainy two-minute clip on some free porn site.

But I'm not telling what it is, or which one.