Notes from Afar on the AVN Expo

I've been reading and watching a lot of coverage of the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo (thanks to Fleshbot, Audacia Ray, and Jayme Waxman) recently.

I just wanted to note that the most talked about booth at AVN, by far, is the Abby Winters booth. Now, that makes a lot of sense since the gorgeous models from the site camped out in underwear doing yoga and making out all day, but I think there are some very good things about the amount of attention they've received.

These women are definitely not your "average" porn stars. No augmented breasts, no makeup (!), and a somewhat more representative range of body types. Granted, the women who traveled to Las Vegas were generally thin and relatively well endowed in the bust region, but a quick glimpse of the Abby Winters website shows that they're not afraid to leave the usual porn realm of teeny tiny women with ginormous breasts and really long fingernails.

All the videos and pictures on the site are shot by women, they don't use airbrushing, and they even "use green energy" and have "company bicycles." I also liked that they have shoots of women doing yoga, dancing, running, tumbling etc. Part of objectification of women has always been reducing the female body to sex and sex alone, ignoring the other things it can do: move, lift, run, sit, etc. Granted, they're pictures meant for masturbation, but they at least acknowledge that women do more with their bodies than fuck.

Now, I'm not saying the site is perfect. There is always the implication of a male viewer in this all-female paradise. The site heavily emphasizes the authenticity of the models and the shoots, but they play on the idea of a voyeur. I haven't cut the following blurb from their website tour at all: "it’s not a fantasy – it’s reality! What will happen next? Who will get naked first? How do friends react to each other? Imagine if you were there too!" Imagining if "you were there too" is clearly a fantasy, but they are trying to blur that line. The viewer is still meant to place HIMself in the scene in his imagination.

BUT I like the site as a woman-friendly, authentic-female-orgasm-showing, and just plain sexy porn site. I think its popularity at AVN should be a message to at least someone in the porn industry that men (and women) are not always looking for the overblown, plasticized porn star. We want realistic women, too. I'd love to see more of them in porn.