Since the first erotic content hit film, traditional wisdom has held pornography appeals primarily to men, not women. Physiologically and psychologically, that makes sense. Men typically are more visually oriented. They’re quicker to heat up. They have a seemingly endless appetite for sex that is not as dependent upon hormonal activity as women’s sex drive can be. Like other mammals, human males don’t bear young, so except for social mores, there’s little to stop them from attempting covert—or overt, for that matter—assignations with as many females as are willing.
In short, men are easily aroused and, at least to a certain extent are expected to “sow wild oats.” The old joke “How do you arouse a man? Show up naked” has significant biological and psychosocial underpinnings.
Even more important for adult content producers, the average man earns more than the average woman, even in today’s gender-egalitarian workplace. Offering a consumer product designed to appeal to the prurient interest and aiming that product squarely at a man’s crotch, therefore, would seem to be a no-brainer.
Also high on the no-brainer scale is the notion that to maintain profitability, producers constantly must seek new distribution vectors and content themes—especially in a globally connected world where taboos are busted daily and demanding consumers insist they be provided with ever-more-intriguing options. As taboos fall, porn producers must find new lines to cross, new genres to explore and new markets to conquer, always mindful that consumers are notoriously fickle. Too much of a good thing can become tedious almost overnight.
“Originally, pornography was very ‘gentle,’” said Walter E. Brackelmanns, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, couples therapist and educator in Sherman Oaks, Calif. “Over the years, porn became more legitimate and more and more hardcore. It moved from behind closed doors to out in the open; went from gentle to over-the-edge, taken too far to the wall. Whenever that happens, you can expect a rebound effect.”
After several decades of no-holds-barred freedom, producers and distributors are experiencing the rebound effect now in a rising number of obscenity prosecutions provoked by ever-increasing wails of doom from social conservatives. Consumers are experiencing the effect, too, but in a less personally and financially disastrous way. On the consumer side, the rebound is reflected in the types of content viewers seek: Retailers, distributors and producers report increased interest in so-called “couples films” and “story porn”—the yin to gonzo’s all-sex yang. In addition, consumers are buying more adult content with a softer, gentler tone—not less adventurous sex, but sex wrapped in a negligee.
For lack of a better term, porn is incorporating more romance, and according to Brackelmanns, the industry can thank women for the change. Among the other social shifts wrought by the internet, 21st-century women have embraced their sexuality in bold new ways. No longer compelled to hide their desire behind a coy façade, women have made role models of female porn stars. The stars, in turn, have benefitted from increased public acceptance and decreased shame ... creating a self-perpetuating cycle. A few adult performers have parlayed their popularity into financial empires and mainstream careers, phenomena that could not have happened even 10 years ago.
All of this is good news for the adult industry. As women become less embarrassed to admit they enjoy porn, they become more willing to watch sexcapades with their men. Men, suddenly at liberty to enjoy their formerly closeted vice in the open, buy more porn. For producers, distributors and retailers, the trick to capturing a piece of that burgeoning market is appealing to women’s tastes without alienating male core consumers.
Pornographers are learning what automobile manufacturers and homebuilders discovered decades ago: Hardly “the weaker sex,” women wield enormous influence in the consumer market. Win their hearts and minds, and men’s money will follow.
‘Show Up Naked’
According to Brackelmanns, women enjoy adult content just as much as men if the material is presented in a way to which women can relate. The advice “grab men by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow” works in reverse with women.
“Women do not have sexual desire without arousal,” Brackelmanns said, and for women, arousal starts in the mind. While the mere sight of a naked breast or an auditory double entendre may snap a man to attention, women are programmed, biologically and culturally, to respond to different cues. In the types of gonzo and “extreme” porn that have proved popular with male audiences, female triggers either don’t exist or are so heavily obscured as to be meaningless.
That’s a trap studios like Vivid Entertainment and Wicked Pictures try to avoid. Vivid founder and co-chairman Steve Hirsch said although his 26-year-old studio’s products aren’t necessarily “women-focused,” Vivid’s writers, producers, directors and performers always have worked to achieve a middle ground that stimulates both genders. It only makes sense to appeal to the broadest market possible, he said.
“Twenty-five years ago, the ‘new demographic’ was couples,” Hirsch said. “From the very beginning, we saw that as one of our core markets.” Consequently, Vivid takes great care to tease and please both genders with its couples-oriented lines. Language, sex acts and storylines are geared to hold a man’s attention long enough for the onscreen action to seduce his female viewing partner.
Steve Orenstein founded Wicked Pictures in 1993 with a similar goal: to produce story-driven adult content that would appeal to couples and women. Instead of chasing genre trends as so many other studios have done, Wicked remained true to its mission and reaped the benefits by virtually cornering a market that contracted for a while. “Even when women weren’t going into the stores, we advised guys to buy something their women wanted to see,” Orenstein said. “[Watching with their women] is what guys want anyway, and women want chemistry, passion, a connection between the actors—the buildup.” The philosophy has worked well for the studio, and may work better yet: Wicked is shopping some of its movie scripts to publishers of erotic fiction, hoping to capture a part of that booming market with “movie-tie-in” novels. The studio also is branding a new line that incorporates romantic heat. Called Wicked Passions, the imprint’s sex scenes are as hot and imaginative as anything else Wicked produces, but Orenstein said writers, directors and actors layer in a deeper level of intimacy.
Intimacy and layering are nothing new for studios that focus specifically on women. Former performer Candida Royalle boosted the “women’s porn” movement in 1984 when her studio, Femme Productions, released its first title. From the beginning, Femme’s goal was to produce erotically charged content that depicts sexuality within the broader context of women’s emotional and social lives. Royalle’s films regularly receive praise from counselors and therapists because they reveal healthy and realistic sexual activity. According to Brackelmanns, healthy sex and realism on-screen are important components of any content that hopes to attract “the women’s vote.”
“One of the reasons porn hasn’t broken down mainstream walls is because no one has really tried to get the women’s vote,” he said. “Women aren’t prudes; engaging them is the key. Women require something positive in the relationship. Adding a romantic component makes the content acceptable.”
Lennox Films founder and Chief Executive Officer Kimberly Wilson agrees. During her 15 years of brokering male-oriented content to pay-TV, she never failed to be pleased when women told her they would watch “hardcore content for women” if it were available. Not much was, so in 2003 Wilson stepped in to fill the void. Her experience since then has convinced her porn doesn’t have to be aggressive, in-your-face-raunchy or laughably overflowing with mythical stereotypes to attract a male audience. In fact, many guys are turned on as much by the notion of watching with their women as they are by the characters’ antics.
“I have not heard one man complain about my movies,” Wilson said. “There’s hardcore sex, and they see naked women. In fact, most men are really excited that they finally have something they can watch with their partners.”
Lennox has produced nine movies, and even the oldest still enjoys significant monthly sales and rentals on DVD and pay-per-view. For Wilson, that indicates a fertile market destined to grow as today’s teenagers cross the line into adulthood, unfettered by previous generations’ conception of porn as the ultimate in filth and perversion.
“I’ve been in the industry since 1991,” she said. “In the beginning, nobody mentioned they watched adult movies. Nowadays, it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t seen porn. Literally, I’m hard-pressed to find a young adult who has not watched an erotic movie.”
So is New Sensations founder and President Scott Taylor, who said not only are most young adults experienced porn viewers, but fewer and fewer are willing to pay for gonzo and the “scene porn” found on most tube sites and peer-to-peer networks. Ripping entire movies is much less common, Taylor said, which makes the sex-in-context of couples and women’s porn even more attractive from an economic standpoint. “High-end feature products, parodies and romantic stories are better in their entirety, so they’re not as subject to piracy [as gonzo and scene compilations],” he said.
New Sensations has produced several best-selling XXX parodies and in January launched a new line called The Romance Series, in which the sex exists to support the story, not vice-versa. He described the six Romance titles released to date as “connected sex. It’s about chemistry and the lead-up. There’s no crazy, over-the-top sex, no ‘porno look,’ although our stars are attractive. They also have to be able to act. The characters have to follow who they are and why they are. It means so much more and it’s so much less corny if there’s a reason [for what they’re doing].” Taylor said he’ll need about a year to analyze the market for the Romance line, but so far all six titles have exceeded sales expectations.
Show Me Some Love
Finding performers who can act is only one of the challenges facing studios that produce “romantic porn.” The bigger task is figuring out what women and couples really want to see.
According to Brackelmanns, Royalle is on the right track with her depictions of healthy fantasies featuring realistic performers. Female performers’ idealized, often augmented, bodies may appeal to men, but they frequently alienate women, who feel they can’t compete. In addition, most women are not enamored of the multiple orgasms and disrespect common in some male-oriented porn.
“Women want a little romance; to see emotional involvement between the characters,” Brackelmanns said. “Caressing, holding, touching, licking, biting…all of that can be making love, not just having sex.” He also said women appreciate an attractive body as much as men do—but they want to see it on the male performer. In order to appeal to both genders, porn could use a good dose of “handsome, romantic leading men who treat their partners nice,” he said. Although a male performer’s south-of-the-beltline equipment undoubtedly is important to him, women viewers are not as interested in what he has as in how he uses it. “Do you realize the average erect penis in the U.S. is only four and one-half inches?” Brackelmanns asked.
With that revelation in mind, as long as the guy has a penis and demonstrates some attentiveness and skill before getting down to the nitty-gritty, women are willing to embrace the fantasy.
Wilson said the relative scarcity of attractive leading men in male-oriented porn is one of the most common complaints she hears from women. And why should the situation be different? Male viewers are watching her, not him. However, since “women want sex as much as men do; they think about sex as much as men do,” she ensures Lennox films are brimming with eye candy for the distaff side. She also said Lennox’s writers, directors and performers don’t “dumb down” their material simply because it’s made for women. “There’s no vanilla sex,” Wilson said. “Our product is exciting and keeps you on the edge of your bed. There’s variety in location, situation, storyline and performers. Women like variety. Of course you see hardcore sex; you see naked men for a good long time. They are hot-bodied, good-looking guys.” Also important to her are high production values, more screen time for the male performer, and keeping the female performer’s eyes on her partner, not on the camera. “She’s into the guy, so we want her looking at him, not the viewer,” Wilson said.
Equally important, she noted, are the things Lennox films do not include. “There’s absolutely no verbal abuse,” Wilson said. “There is no place for that in erotic entertainment. We don’t allow male or female performers to show disrespect for each other.” In addition, “Women don’t like it when a man climaxes on the woman’s face,” she said. “We don’t show that. Never on the face. It can be anywhere else, but not on the face.” Lennox also depicts only boy-girl or solo-girl scenes.
Orenstein agreed about banning violence and degradation. He also said directors and casting agents face an additional burden when creating adult content that appeals to both genders. He believes that in order for the material to connect with both men and women, the performers must be able to act beyond moaning, screaming and talking dirty. “More than ever, this is about the action,” he said. That’s one of the reasons Wicked is quick to sign performers and directors to exclusive contracts.
And speaking of directors, he has found that although men are completely capable of directing “romantic porn,” several women who began their careers as Wicked contract girls have become standouts as writers and directors of content that appeals to women. Stormy Daniels and Jessica Drake are two.
Taylor said the director’s gender isn’t as important as his or her artistic vision. “Writers and directors need to understand romance—to be able to see the story in their heads,” he said, admitting the concepts for the first six titles in New Sensations’ Romance line came from his head. Lee Roy Myers helmed the first five, but Eddie Powell—formerly lead cameraman for the series and a director of “theatrical gonzo”—will direct the vision for the future. The films go through a lengthy vetting process from script through editing, and every woman on staff has her say before the product is released to the public. “We want to make sure the product appeals to women,” Taylor said. “That’s essential for couple approval.”
Show Me the Money
So how does the balancing act play with consumers? Very well, according to retailers, who indicated couples and women compose an ever-larger segment of store traffic. Castle Megastore Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Franks said 60-70 percent of the customers who visit his chain’s 18 stores in five western states are women and couples. In fact, at 10 p.m. on one recent Sunday night, every one of the 12 customers in the store was female. They must like what they find among his movie selection, because “we still do a huge DVD business,” he said.
The “blockbuster” couples lines for Castle are produced by Wicked, Vivid and Digital Playground, Franks said, but the combined sales of all studios’ couples-oriented videos are surpassed only by the bargain-priced “catalog” titles. Couples-oriented videos sell better than even the “extreme” titles aimed primarily at men.
Franks is an enormous advocate for the buying power of women. Castle stores employ more women than men in management and general-sales positions. In the 1990s, he hosted “ladies nights” with wine tastings and Chippendales dancers inside the chain of adult stores he operated in Australia. He said he has been delighted to see manufacturers across the adult-products spectrum “soften” their packaging in recent years as part of a general industry movement to entice instead of arouse. “Manufacturers are making and packaging product that is focused toward the couples and female market,” Franks said. “That’s where the growth is. And the softer side will keep growing. Romance will be a trend.”
And it’s a trend that Castle has been aware of for some time, Franks said. “In any successful retail business it is a prerequisite to determine who is the customer you want to attract and cater to. At Castle we decided many years ago that catering to the romantic needs of our customers was a growth business. We have created sections in our stores that target romance as a category, [with] candles, massage oils, massagers , sexy lingerie, couples kits, and romantic cards, to name a few.
“For many, romance is the prelude to sex,” Franks continued, “and for many romance is the enhancement of their sexual relationships. Making your stores a romance destination brings in the same customer that is buying toys, novelties, lubes and lotions, and lingerie. That makes romance a key category section of any good adult retail store or boutique.”
Nikki Mier, manager of Fairvilla Megastore in Orlando, Fla., said she has noticed the same trends. “The softer side [of adult content] is a good intro for couples,” she said. “It’s a good way for men to introduce their partners to porn, and some couples are happy to stay right there. Some men may buy both [male-oriented and couples-oriented product] at different times or in different places. And some couples progress from Playgirl to Wicked and Vivid and eventually end up in the Evil Empire.”
As for best-selling categories, Mier said far and away the store’s top sellers are all-girl titles. Features, parodies and “softer” content by studios like Wicked and Vivid jockey for second place, but all three categories hover close together in sales volume. “Romance is popular now, but I don’t think it’ll ever abolish harder content,” she said. By the same token, though, “Romance is nothing new. The industry always has had storylines and romance. There always will be a market for natural-looking people doing regular stuff.” In addition to titles by Wicked and Vivid, content by New Sensations, Playgirl, Digital Playground and Sweet Sinner seems perennially among Fairvilla’s best sellers, Mier noted.
That doesn’t surprise Orenstein. He remains convinced the couples and women’s markets have no place to go but up. “If retailers haven’t already been catering to women and couples, they will be,” he said. “At Wicked, we make the product we enjoy making, and as long as there’s a market for it, that’s what we’re going to continue to do. There’s always been a market for our kind of content, but it’s been hard to get to. That’s changing.”
Taylor said New Sensations, a relative newcomer to the softer side, already has seen the benefit of the market shift. He plans to release one Romance title per month during 2010, but already is eyeing an increase in the production schedule based on market demand. “A bad experience can turn off a first-time consumer,” he said, so New Sensations wants to provide the kind of “first porn experience” about which couples and women don’t have to be anxious.
Frankly, Taylor said, he’s surprised it took the bulk of the industry so long to “discover” the concept. “Love and sex? Really? Come on,” he said, laughing. “As silly as it sounds, no one in adult ever thought about it—but the success of the Romance line defies the trend of decaying DVD sales, so I’m a believer.”
This article originally ran in the October 2010 issue of AVN.
