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fake orgasm—it’s all performance for the sake of the other person, and it often ends up making the real thing harder to get in the end.
    That said, I do have faith that younger women can look at pop culture and analyze it in a way that’s positive. We may not be able to escape the porn/pop culture ridiculousness, but we can try to use it to create a more reality-based sexuality for ourselves.

That’s (Not) Hot
    It’s pretty well established that girls want to be considered hot. I mean, when you’re brought up to think that your hotness
quotient is pretty much your entire worth, that shit becomes pretty damn important. Don’t get me wrong, I think wanting to be desired is a really understandable thing. Who doesn’t want to be wanted? The problem is who defines “hot”—and therefore desirability. Hint: It’s not women.
    Unattainable beauty standards for women aren’t a new thing. Magazines, TV shows, and movies have been shoving a certain kind of woman down our throats for decades. White, skinny waist, big boobs, long legs, full lips, great hair—a conglomeration of body parts put together to create the “perfect” woman we’re all supposed to be. And if we’re not, we’re scorned. Nothing worse than being the ugly girl, right?
    But it’s not just looks that make you “hot”—beauty standards are a whole other conversation. It’s being accessible—to men, in particular. To be truly hot in this never-never land of tits and ass, we have to be constantly available—to be looked at, touched, and fucked. Sounds harsh, I know, but it’s true. We’re only as hot as our willingness to put on a show for guys.
    And the “show” is everywhere. In magazines like Maxim and Playboy . And in the insanity of Girls Gone Wild, with teens putting on fake lesbian make-out sessions so guys will think they’re hot. We’re on display—everywhere. We couldn’t escape it if we wanted to. (And maybe some of us don’t. More on this later.)
    Hot and available is everywhere. Maxim magazine—kind of like Playboy with more clothes—is the number-one
best-selling men’s magazine in the nation. Maxim not only puts out an annual “hot list” (just in case you forgot how you don’t measure up), but also has a VH1 special and is in talks to start Maxim hotels and lounges.
    Playboy is even worse. All you have to do is go to the local mall to see how normalized Playboy has become in American culture. Teens buy Playboy shirts before they even have boobs. The E! channel has a reality show, The Girls Next Door, based on the lives of several Playboy Bunnies who are also magazine founder Hugh Hefner’s live-in “girlfriends.” MTV has even featured teenagers getting plastic surgery in order to look like (and be) Playboy Bunnies. And again— Playboy pencil cases. ’Nuff said.
    But there’s probably no better example of Porn Gone Wild in pop culture than the ubiquitous Girls Gone Wild (GGW) . What started as voyeuristic porn lite—girls flashing their boobs to cameras during Mardi Gras and spring break—is now an empire. The company that owns GGW claims $40 million in yearly sales, and the founder, Joe Francis, has said he’s working on a film, GGW ocean cruises, a clothing line, and a restaurant chain (I’m imagining Hooters Gone Wild).
    When people think of the way porn culture has oozed into the mainstream in recent years, Girls Gone Wild is usually the first thing to come up. After all, GGW is where porn meets real life—you don’t have to be a porn star to be in one of its videos. You just have to be willing.
    I remember the first time I saw one of GGW’ s late-night commercials, featuring girls lifting their shirts to reveal
Mardi Gras beads and little else—maybe a GGW logo across their nipples. (Classy, right?) This was back when the girls featured were still largely unaware that their images would be used to make up a tit montage. I mean, really, these were girls who were “caught” on camera in a