Kink, virginity and big-tittied whores
Adult Webmastery, Politics of porn — By Adele on 14 January, 2011 12:50 amThere once was a girl who had a hot fantasy about being ceremonially deflowered in front of an audience. Luckily, this girl – Nicki Blue – knew exactly who to approach to make this happen for her: she talked to the producers of Kink.com family of websites. (She had already modelled for them.) They have arranged to web-cast the ceremony live on The Upper Floor. The show is scheduled for 15 January, 7pm*.
A press release followed. It included lines like:
Kink.com will stream the deflowering of young virgin Nikki** Blue in a ritualistic ceremony live on the Internet on Jan. 15 at 7 p.m.
The ceremony will be held on The Upper Floor of Kink.com’s headquarters, the San Francisco Armory. Prior to the event, a trained expert will insert Kink.com’s official hymen-cam to validate that Blue’s hymen is still in place and that she is a true virgin. Once her hymen is confirmed, the evening will proceed, the company said.
And:
Kink.com founder Peter Acworth adds, “…“We strive each and every day to bring the best possible content to our customers and sacrificing Nikki’s innocence is in perfect alignment with what our fans expect and deserve.”
Now, take a minute to examine your reaction to the text above. Does it seem to you like it, well, smells a bit? I mean, “true virgin”? What is this, a recipe for a philosopher’s stone?
Internet being wonderful, there’s been some seriously sharp analysis of why this marketing around the live show is, essentially, toxic. The best article I’ve seen comes from Miss Maggie Mayhem, who, in a few paragraphs, explains why hymens have nothing to do with virginity, why equating not having vaginal sex with virginity is delusional, and why the wording of the press release doesn’t align with the self-proclaimed sex-positive image of the Kink.com enterprise. I highly recommend having a read.
Violet Blue has linked to it; the high profile of her blog soon drew many interesting comments – including one from Peter Acworth, the CEO of Kink Inc. He said: “We did admittedly make a mess of the marketing surrounding this event, and we are now working to change it.” Change it they did; Kink’s official blog now announces simply:
Kink.com, the largest producer of authentic kinky adult entertainment, has announced that it was chosen by 21-year-old virgin Nikki Blue as her venue of choice for her first-ever vaginal penetration in a live ceremony on the Internet.
They listened. Good for them. They’re still a bit too focused on the hymen thing, but whatever, listening to reason is a good sign.
However, one piece of commentary that particularly struck a chord with me came from Bacchus of Eros Blog:
“The Kink people have always been much better pornographers than they have been marketers. Ham-fisted off-key marketing from them we have seen before.”
No fucking kidding, boys and girls. The thing that struck me first of all when the entire piece of internet drama came to my attention, was that anyone was surprised that the wording of Kink’s marketing campaign is a great deal less than feminist and sex-positive.
Frankly, compared to some of their other stuff, it could have been utterings of angels.
Let’s consider the writing inside Kink’s affiliate programme.
In case you’re not an adult webmaster: an affiliate programme allows you to earn money by promoting a website, and a big programme – as Kinky Dollars happens to be – will usually have a library of tools that helps automate the affiliates’ job. In this instance, I’m looking at the lists of free galleries of photos and videos that one can link to; these come with off-the-shelf descriptions of the content of each gallery. For example, a spanking gallery might come with the description, “a petulant young lady having her bottom spanked over her jeans.” A lazy pornographer can grab these for her site. It’s marketing, you see?
Let’s cast an eye over what sort of descriptions we can find inside Kinky Dollars.
- “Sexy MILF is bound , stripped, and made to carry a mattress through the city so everyone can see what a huge whore she is!” (They’re sure she has children? No? Oh, she’s supposed to, because she isn’t a teenager any more? And don’t get me started on huge whores, or even medium-sized ones.)
- “Tea Blondie gets fucked on the street by BIG BLACK COCK!!!” (OMG, disembodied enthnically-specific cock!)
- “34DD hottie locked in iron shackles and breast whipped” (So glad they took the time to stop for a bra fitting.)
- “Tight hard body fucked upside down made to cum over and over.” (Hel-lo, necrophilia.)
- “Q. Who doesn’t like Double EE breasts? Who doesn’t like a big titted whore, with her boobs bound and pulled to her tip toes by them? A. No one..” (Oh, copywriter, you slay me.)
Having had a read of this, are we still surprised that the wording of the live show’s press-release was a little on the sexist side?
In fairness to them, Kink aren’t as bad as many, many other porn producers. In their descriptions, women are often described as hot, gorgeous, strong or cute – not, I assure you, an industry standard. And yet, there are enough instances of OMG MASSIVE WHORE MILF for you to either rage, cringe, or roll your eyes, depending on your level of cynicism.
Lovers of sex-positive, fair-trade porn still have a long, long wait.
—————————–
* California time, I presume, but don’t quote me on that.
** The correct spelling of Ms Blue’s name has proved difficult to determine.
Tags: Eros Blog Bacchus, Kink.com, Maggie Mayhem, Nicki Blue, porn copy, rant, Violet Blue
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13 Comments
This article pretty much articulates the thought process I had earlier today when filling D in on the whole virginity press release thing. It’s true that this is a long way from the first sexist marketing from Kink.com (and those descriptions are not only insulting, they’re unhelpful to webmasters. I don’t want to hear demeaning words describing the female model, I want to hear details of the contents of the scene so I know if I’m interested in reselling it!).
As you know, marketing is one of the biggies for me when it comes to defining ethical/fair-trade/feminist porn (and those three categories are by no means synonymous). I’ve written about this a bit before but there’s still more to be said, I think. I suspect it’s a conversation we’ll be having for a while. Thanks for this awesome take on the topic. Posts like this will, I hope, make that wait a little bit shorter than it would be otherwise.
I’m sorry, but this is much ado about nothing. If porn (or anything else) is not done in a way I approve of then it has to change.
I know this answer will get tons of scorn heaped upon me but that’s OK, I will have some wine and get on with the things I enjoy and not worry about the technical definition of virginity. (Like it makes any difference in anything.)
LOL, Adele, that rant about the descriptions inside the affiliate content area is something I’ve considered writing half a hundred times since I first joined the Kinkydollars affiliate program. (Actually, it wasn’t even called “Kinkydollars” way back then, because — true fact — I sold them that domain name a few years later.)
You’re right though — the gallery/shoot descriptions have always been perfectly useless, utterly impossible to use for anybody that’s trying to do sex-positive marketing. You’re also right that they’re better, most days, than the descriptions from anybody else. At least Kink.com never gives us any truly derogatory copy, none of the “we beat these worthless bitches until they screamed and begged us to stop, and then we laughed and beat them some more” stuff like you see from too many other producers.
But I’m coming up hard on a long decade, now, of wondering why people who make such good porn — and hire so many people to do it — have never been able to hire even one good sex-positive copywriter to do marketing copy for them.
A very long time ago when she was way less famous and busy and a whole lot hungrier than she is now, I lobbied them to hire Violet Blue to do that, and write a kick-ass blog for them too. Sadly, they didn’t take my advice.
Excellent critical article. I wonder if I can do a promo to the same standard?
‘Dithering 18 y/o man dips his 4 inch wick for first time and comes within 30 seconds’
In full HD!
Well, Keith, that’s just the thing, this is a pornographer whose porn is better than that.
Good sex copy is hard to write. But the problem here isn’t lack of honesty, it’s lack of imagination and a bad case of “doing it like it’s always been done”.
I’m glad to see that I’m obviously not the only one who isn’t turned on by these kinds of porn film descriptions. Except for the disembodied cock of course, that one made me curious… And Keith’s promo is great, too. ;-)
Joking aside, it’s good to see that the producer obviously reacted on the comments about the promo and that they treat their models well. I have to admit that I don’t understand why Nicki Blue wants to be deflowered in front of a camera (I preferred to have that experience in private with the man I love), but she’s an adult and it is of course her decision. And I hope that it will be a good experience for her.
If Kink.com uses “big-titted whores” promos all the time, anyway, then one really wonders why this particular press release was singled out for attention.
The “Hymen-gate” press release seems positively restrained to me by comparison. Having read it, I do not find it clearly sexist or offensive. Yes, as Maggie Mayhem points out, they are guilty of repeating some myths about virginity. But does that in itself constitute “sexism”, and are these myths really as “damaging” and “dangerous” as some commenters have claimed? That is debatable. Frankly, it reminds me of the vague and unsupported claims made by anti-porn prudes who insist that porn in general is “damaging” (to whom? women? society? outraged religious fundamentalists?).
So, while some of the advertising language used by Kink.com is problematic, I must say that I find some of the reactions to “Hymen-gate” in the porn community problematic as well. The tone of some of the commenters is decidedly too shrill and self-righteous for my taste. Some people seem to believe that they know exactly what kind of language is appropriate and what kind is not – what constitutes “sexist language” “damaging language”, “sex-positive language”, “feminist language”… The manner in which they seem to take for granted the sovereignty of definition over these terms grates a bit.
I normally just lurk, but I love that Ludwig said “Hymen-gate.” :)
@ Linda: Unfortunately, I can’t claim authorship of the indeed wonderful term “Hymen-gate”. I have it from Pandora Blake’s blog post about this affair. I don’t know if she was the one who originated it or if she took it from someone else, too.
Either way, it’s hilarious and perfect.
Their approach doesn’t seem to be the result of any refined marketing mix analysis I’d recognize (product demand, value proposition, means of availability to the consumer, communication).
But perhaps their exhaustive research has identified that guys holed up in Darkwoods, North Wynnesoka are the $-rich disp.-inc. target market segment that responds to this call to action. Certainly not my beer and miles away from anyone I’ve ever played with. Candida Royalle and Nina Hartley are streets ahead in their marcoms philosophies.
R
Oh well, I havn’t been upset from this type of thing for a while now. Sad. Its just another case of sensory overload. Since I have an established web site I’m privy to the free edition of AVN magizine. (Adult vidio news) The boasts about the material They are selling are absolutly just as steller as all the above!
Like Linda, I’m a long time lurker (love the blog, Adele!), but I had to comment on the MILF made to carry the mattress through town so everyone would know what a huge whore she was.
‘Cause, like if I saw someone carrying a mattress across town, I would think the appropriate response might be, rent a moving truck, dumbass. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t go all Scarlet Letter on the whole thing