The thread on vomiting potentially becoming more mainstream got me thinking. A few posters fearfully predict that vomiting may become as ubiquitous as anal in mainstream gonzo. I think it's a false analogy, but it made me wonder: how did anal sex become so commonplace? At one time I believe it was very taboo and regarded as especially dirty. I came of age in the late 90's and early 2000's so I have no recollection of that time. For me, anal sex has always been a mainstay of porn. So how did the norms around anal sex shift and when did it happen? Was it gradual or did it happen all of a sudden? I know John Stagliano was a pioneer with his Buttman series in the early 90's, but is there more to the story then that? Were there broader cultural influences that lead to the shift? What's the story?
I am almost 50 and I've been an anal nut ever since about I was 11 years old. I've been watching porn since the late 70s. I mean, back when you actually had to go to a theater to see porn. Back then you had no idea what kind of movie you were going to see. You just paid your money and hoped it was good. I was always hoping for anal, but if you were lucky you might get one anal scene out of every ten movies you went to see. Back then porn producers still tried to make actual "films" and you had to deal with all that plot shit and crappy acting and cheesy 70s porn music. And most of the time the girls were skanks anyway. Very few of the girls were actually hot--some, but not many. You could, however order little 8mm films from Hustler magazine and such. You could occasionally find categories that were specifically anal, but most of those were shorts and only about 4-6 minutes long. I remember having to go to the neighboring town and renting a post office box so I could order a few of them and my parents not find out about them. The quality was horrible, but that's really all we had back then. It wasn't until the mid 80s when VHS rentals came out that you could find movies that were specifically catering to anal, at least in my experience. We had this little Mom and Pop record store in town and eventually they did rent porn. All they had was a clipboard on the counter with the names of the movies. No picture or anything, just the name and a number by it. Usually one would just browse around in the store until there were very few other customers, trying to work up the nerve, and then you would look at the clipboard, make a decision, and tell the guy behind the counter what number you wanted. I remember the first all anal video I ever found was called Backdoor Romance. I was this girl who went to the house and peeped around. Everytime she opened another door, it was an anal scene from some other movie, supposedly all happening in the same place. I got it home and I was in hog heaven!! 90 minute of nothing but anal sex! Eventually I graduated college and moved to a bigger city and, for the first time, I actually was able to go into a real porno store. LOL I remember driving around that store for two hours trying to get up the courage to go in. Usually they had the VHS tapes in categories on the shelf, and I rented every anal video I could get my hands on. Don't know if I will get in trouble for saying this, but I bought two VCRs so I could copy them and keep them. I racked up a pretty good library of anal porn, eventually filling two foot lockers with them. It was at that point I learned how to edit them down, cutting out everything that wasn't pertaining to the butt stuff. I kept all those edited tapes until the early 2000s and finally transferred them all to discs. The quality of them, of course, is pretty crappy, but I occasionally take them out and give a wank to them, just for old times sake. Nowadays I order everything online, download it into my computer....but I still make my own edits..I guess I got spoiled on having just what I want. But to answer your original question, I think it wasn't really until about a decade ago that you could really find just tons of porn that was just anal, anal, anal---but I could be wrong, that's just my experience. All I know is that I am happy about it, because I LOVE ANAL PORN!!!
What does "normalized" means? As a European I may say that here has always been depicted since the seventies the infamous Cicciolina did IR , anal, DP, TP, gangbangs and even watersports (aka pissing ) already , there were some stars who wouldn't do that , but nobody forced them to, they doubled the actress instead (i.e. Marilyn Jess has a couple anal scene but she said never performed any , did a anal scene for Supersex a photo magazine, but they were just stills not an actual anal. in the USA Buffy davis did lots of anal scene, same for Kari Foxx and Paula Price , Ginger Lynn too and, of course Nina Hartley
By normalized I guess I mean prevalent. It seems as though pretty much every major company releases scores of anal scenes every year and not solely in explicitly anal-oriented titles. It's not a fringe niche; it's practically as commonplace as depictions of oral sex. Interesting that anal has always had more of a place in Euro porn. The stereotype is that Europeans are much more free when it comes to their sexuality, as opposed to Americans who are repressed. Since the seventies Americans have certainly become more accepting of sexual diversity, so that's a social factor that probably led to anal's rise. And just to clear up in case there is any misconception: I love anal too. I'm just curious how it became so mainstream.
I would suspect that anal has always been part of porn since day one. I certainly remember plenty of movies made in the 70's and 80's that had anal in them. I know some will say that the total of anal scenes is quite small when compared to later decades but I would argue that the total number of porn movies made back then was also quite small. The number of all anal movies probably didn't exist until the 80's but is that because the number of women willing to do it on film was quite rare or is it maybe that porn producers didn't realise just how popular anal was. it's clear that they quickly did because you can see plenty of all anal movies in the 80's. The caught from behind series comes to mind. They certainly don't seem to have had a hard time recruiting performers to do anal. Is it possible that the reason why you are asking this question is because you think that there isn't a single newbie that doesn't get asked about anal? They all get asked and asked until they do one or they leave the industry. If the internet had existed in the 70's and 80's than I can assure you that every performer back then would have been asked about anal like she would have been asked about interracial, girl/girl and every other type of sex that you can think of.
^ Nope, I'm not asking because of the constant anal badgering. I consider that to be a separate issue. Really, the only reason I asked was out of a genuine curiosity about how anal became such a massive thing in the industry.
Strictly a $ issue. Why make porn and miss half the market? Vag lovers will still buy if there is an anal scene. Anal freaks will not buy vag only. Producers started to notice that Vanessa Del Rio flicks were hugely popular. Same with Tanya Foxx. Deep Throat sold bigtime and had anal scenes.
Fat bottomed girls make the rockin' world go round! 1551 Posts 5/09
Posted - Mar 22 2015 : 11:15PM
^^^^^^ + 1 A good post. What you said is true. In one form or another, anal sex has always been in porn. I suspect soldiers, during the Civil War, obtained flip-card, anal porn from distributors in New York City.
The broader cultural influence in 1990s was increased sexual freedom for women and men in Eastern European countries. Their communist governments broke down and went away, and for a while they had no laws against making porn or other types of sexual activity. There was demand for anal porn all along. But anal porn couldn't take off, until a lot of good-looking women were suddenly free to go on a fucking spree. Of course, it wasn't just increased sexual freedom for women. It was also decreased opportunities for women to do other things. During communist times, people weren't getting paid much, but they all had day-jobs and had enough to live on. But once they lost their communist governments, then a lot of people also lost their jobs and couldn't find anything else to do. And on top of this, people in Eastern Europe also lost their religions and traditions that still keep women subjugated in other countries. Communists in their countries were officially atheist, and they did their best to eradicate old traditions and religious beliefs that often stop women from doing sexual things.
I think it's the natural progression of the business. In the 70's and early 80's there were few, if any, gonzo movies. A lot of the movies had no anal scenes. Those that did usually had one token anal scene, and the least attractive and/or least famous actress was usually the girl in the anal scene. Many big name box cover stars -- Christy Canyon for example -- simply did not do anal scenes. The first big name star to regularly do anal scenes was Ginger Lynn, and she continued to do them even after becoming famous. When the top star in the industry was doing anal regularly, new, unknown, and upcoming actresses no longer had "no anal" as a choice. So anal became more common and with the rise of gonzo movies catering to all types of genres, all-anal became one of the categories. Once it became mainstream things like double penetration, A2M, and double anal became the token scenes. In the same way that early 80's movies might have had one anal scene, by the late 90's movies might have had anal in most scenes but have DP or A2M in only one scene. Something like Aurora Snow's scene in Space Invaderz would have been unthinkable in the 80's, rare in the 90's, and normal in the 2000's. Who knows what will become normalized in the next decade?
^ That's a fascinating thesis. If I was still in school I could totally see doing a research paper on that. Working title: "Opening New Markets: How Post-Soviet Neoliberalization Lead to a Boom in Pornography."
As about Space Invaderz and Aurora's scene , maybe it wasn't this greatly unthinkable , Annabel Chong did it regularly in the previous decade , regularly means a dozen times at least and she wasn't even the first nor the only one
There is already some work on this (though it thankfully avoids pretending that consumer products are simply a result of liberation as opposed to capitalist marketing strategies), specifically in connection to Budapest (Budaporn) and the effort to define a European brand of porn (authentic, natural, anal) that differentiated itself from the USA (fake, plastic). Check out "Global Traffic in Pornography: The Hungarian Example" in International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800-2000) ed. Lisa Z. Sigel. PM me if you want a copy.
Anal has always been around and it's fairly common now but I often wonder why so many people here seem o think that most porn is anal these days. Maybe it's because it's what some seek out and it's easy to find but from what I see there still more non-anal porn than anal porn being produced. I think anal is as common as it is today because throughout the years porn makers have had to constantly come up with the next "thing" to push porn a bit further to keep the more jaded fans coming back. Plus, in the old days of contract girls and girls who excelled in porn because of their looks moreso than their sexual performance abilties they had more clout to say no to anal. With Gonzo pretty much taking over porn at one point the girls who may have not been so "hot" made up for that with wilder sex performances (anal, DPs, gangbangs, etc...) and then some of the better looking girls had to follow suit to keep up or make themselves stand out more in the sea of porngirls. Then some of the bigger studios had more and more content that spotlighted anal and the girls who didn't do it or want to had to start or else they'd miss out on some high profile and higher paying work. Plus as fans were able to more easily interact with porn directors and talent they let it be known they let it be known vocally and through sales want to see more anal.
