In 1980 sex toy manufacturer Doc Johnson published a book called Sex Stars Favorite Sex Positions. This was before the Internet, before Jenna Jameson, Sasha Grey, James Deen, before porn became part of the mainstream pop culture discussion. It was sold as more of a novelty than anything. Today, there’s an effort to sell porn stars as sex educators, and to argue that making your sex life more like porn could actually be a good thing.
It’s important to distinguish between mainstream pornography which is both an industry and a body of work and the actors who star in porn films. Porn actors may have amazing private sex lives. Their experience having sex on camera for a living may have offered them plenty of insight into their own and others desires and probably leaves them with a lot of knowledge and at least a little wisdom.
But every person who works in the porn industry is different, and there’s no meaningful way to generalize about them. Porn stars aren’t some homogenous group. They don’t hold the secrets to a great sex life any more than they all have terrible sex lives or a past filled with abuse.
The porn industry and the way mainstream porn is made, on the other hand, can be generalized about to an extent. Like any other industry, it exists to make money and it has its own rules and cultures that guide how it does what it does.
With names like “The Piledriver” “Standing 69” and “The Wheelbarrow” the list of porn star sex positions makes for funny reading, but it shouldn’t serve as a guide to anyone’s explorations of new sexual positions.
The positions defy logic, gravity, and most importantly pleasure.
Porn films are to sex education what Hollywood films are to morality tales. From a sexual pleasure perspective, most porn is fake. It may be a very sexy, entertaining kind of fake, but it’s fake nonetheless. The sexual positions used in porn films are chosen not for their likelihood to turn on the actors, or even for the ways that the positions might allow for hot creative sex.
Sex positions used in porn are chosen because they are visually appealing to an audience and/or because they make shooting sex scenes easier. Positions that allow room for a camera or lights to get into the right position have no relationship to positions that are good for bodies trying to feel good.
While visual porn can be a good place to look for inspiration and ideas, mimicking what you see in porn is not likely to yield very erotic results. Plus who wants to wear all that ass make-up every time you have sex?
