Can watching ethical porn help improve our sexual body image? 

As a teenager, Dani Butler, 26, had a "weird" and strained relationship with her body hair. A relationship that would become even more fraught thanks to the influence of free porn.

When Butler started watching free porn on Pornhub, her initial reaction was not one of arousal. "It didn't turn me on. It didn't make me feel good about myself," she tells Mashable. 

Previously, she'd been a Tumblr "porn for ladies" user, which she feels had a positive impact on her. "It was all kinds of porn made by the people that posted it. And it was realistic. It looked like the other women that I knew in my life," she adds. However, after the Tumblr NSFW Content Purge), Butler, alongside many others, had to look for porn elsewhere.

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Turning to Pornhub, Butler began to feel the impact of free porn on her body image and self-esteem, particularly where her body hair was concerned. "Constantly seeing these completely shaved clean, almost prepubescent women was not great. And I would look for different content. But a lot of it was all just the same on Pornhub. I struggled to find porn that actually engaged me in it."

Butler's experience is far from a one-off. Open the homepage of any number of free porn sites and you'll be confronted with a similar scene. White, thin athletic bodies; cisgender performers; mixed-sex couples and throuples (majority male, male, female — or MMF). Many performers have cosmetic surgical enhancements. Often, the porn shows explicit cover photos, showing expressions of pain, humiliation, and bewilderment on the faces of women from the perspectives of the men fucking them. The titles are brimming with terms like, "step sister" and "stepdaughter" or "tight teen pussy," and there is an overwhelming amount of penis in vagina (PIV) sex, (despite reports that 81.6 percent of women cannot reach orgasm from vaginal penetration alone). 

In stark contrast, paid-for ethical porn sites like Cheex, Lust Cinema, Belessa or PinkLabel (to name but a few) show a range of body diversity and relationship styles. In free porn we see little to no communication of consent, or sexual boundaries, yet paid-for porn often centralises consent as a sexy and necessary part of sex. This tells us that women's pleasure is not the focal point of free porn, regardless of 30 percent of women under thirty watching it. Rather, it is designed for a very specific point of view — one that places women as objects and not subjects of sex.

The truth is, women can experience contradictory feelings when it comes to viewing mainstream pornography. Dr. Karen Ciclitira, an associate professor in psychology at Middlesex University, wrote in a paper published in 2004 that; "Women may feel identified with both oppressed and oppressor, seeing themselves outside and yet within the terms of others who dictate their condition." What this tells us is that our relationship with free porn, or mainstream porn, is complex. It allows us to explore subjugation, while still feeling turned on by the act of sex itself.

In making a change from watching free porn to viewing diverse body types experiencing pleasure, what's the impact on our own body image? 

Why should we care about sexual body image?

For over 61 percent of Britons, how we perceive our body during sex directly impacts our sexual relationships, self-esteem, and body image. 

Sexual body image is a term that describes the way someone feels or thinks about their body sexually. As Melissa Cook, AASECT-certified sex therapist explains: "This might be how they feel about their body and certain areas, how attractive they feel, how comfortable they are with their body in certain situations." Cook tells Mashable that having a positive sexual body image can do wonders for self-worth and confidence, while a negative sexual body image does quite the opposite, inhibiting the enjoyment of overall sexual experiences.

But where does a negative sexual body image come from? There are many levers in a patriarchal and capitalist society that pull on people's self-worth and broader body image concerns. We battle with the impact of social media, representation in TV and film and weight loss adverts, as well as a renewed 00s-esque discourse and criticism of celebrity diets, bodies and sex lives. 83 percent of American women surveyed feel that there is more pressure on them to have a certain body type than men. However, sexual body image is particularly affected by porn consumption. And, with 1 in 5 American women watching porn, it's easy to see how sexual body image dissatisfaction could creep in. Especially when we consider all of the other ways body image is challenged.

Silva Neves, an accredited psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist, tells Mashable that free porn has nuances, especially for LGBTQ+ people. "With gay porn — yes, the bodies are 'idealised'. It's big penises, six packs, but the guys tend to look like they're enjoying it, compared to the women who look like they're in pain," says Neves. 

He explains that this nuance means that gay people may well have a different sexual body image experience than those watching porn with mixed-sex performers portraying heterosexual sex. "I don't think it has the same kind of impact," he says.

Neves describes how society prioritises a heteronormative lens and, in doing so, creates ample opportunity for heterosexual mixed sex coupling to be affirmed everywhere. But, for homosexual and queer couples, this isn't the case. This means that porn, even free porn, can play a vastly different role, as there is more access to kink and other sexual practices that can be very affirming for LGBTQ people watching.  

However, Neves tells Mashable that the "ghastly" nature of most free porn is down to its focus on patriarchal representations of heterosexual sex, not actual representations of what sex is really like. He says, "Part of the problem is that women look like they're in abusive, humiliating, or violent situations because they are actually choking on big penises, or are having anal sex with no lube," Neves continues, "Somebody watching that without a sex education will get the wrong message of what takes place in the bedroom. And also, women might think, 'Oh, this is what I need to do,' when that's not the case." 

In Butler's case, she would watch porn and copy it verbatim. "That's how they do it. That's how I'll do it. That's what must feel good to them. That's what will feel good to me," She says. "I was having sex for a lot of years before I even realised that it was meant to be pleasurable."

Although, as Neves tells Mashable, it's not free porn that's the problem — or, at least, the only problem (allegations of abuse and child sex trafficking have been widely reported). When it comes to how we view our sexual body image, a lack of porn literacy plays a major role in how we place expectations on ourselves during sex. 

Porn isn't the problem. It's a lack of porn literacy. 

Copying porn, or looking to porn as a sex education tool, can be disastrous to our experiences of pleasure and detrimental to our sexual body image. This is because we see a very narrow view of what sex could look like. 

Neves explains that there are two main problems surrounding free porn to consider. "One is that there is no comprehensive sex education — meaning there's no porn literacy. So people watching it think it's real rather than entertainment. Porn is not representative of real sex," He continues, "The second problem; why is free porn so popular and lucrative? Why do the studios keep making it? Because, maybe, in the first place, our world is patriarchal, and there's a high demand for that kind of misogynist porn." 

After some years, Butler's sexual body image took a negative turn, until she discovered paid-for ethical porn. "I watch porn I pay for now," she tells Mashable. "Knowing that the actors are paid is really important to me. I don't feel scummy after watching it. There's no shame when I get off watching paid-for porn because it feels safer."

Butler's quest for a more ethical way to enjoy porn entertainment isn't an isolated experience. Searches for feminist porn have increased by 117 percent since 2018, indicating a growing interest in alternative forms of adult entertainment, which can only be a good thing. This is in line with what Neves is hearing from his clients, "They want to see the people have pleasure. They want to see that people enjoy it," he says. 

Ethical porn shows diverse ranges of bodies, fetishes and relationship styles without the exploitative undercurrents and risks attributed to free porn. There is also a plethora of ethical porn to try, from paying for porn from your favourite OnlyFans performers and subscribing to audio erotica (or reading it), or buying films from reputable producers. 

For Butler, the move to ethical porn made an astoundingly positive impact on her sexual body image. "I think seeing diverse bodies in ethical porn (whether that’s slim, large, hairy, gender non-conforming, etc.) has been the absolute biggest positive impact on my own body image," she continues, "Slowly, over time, it showed me I could be sexy too. That my body is sexy," she explains. 

Ethical porn is not a silver bullet 

Ethical porn, sometimes referred to as feminist porn, arrived during third wave feminism, championing sex positivity, and is seen as an antithesis to mainstream pornography. According to research conducted by Dr. Rachael Lieberman, teaching associate professor at the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, ethical porn is uniquely positioned for people to explore "sexual practices and develop sexual subjectivity." 

As such, feminist porn can be used to "cultivate a renewed and refined understanding of female sexuality", which positively impacts sexual body image. But, it's important to remember that ethical porn isn't perfect. 

There are still concerns surrounding fetishisation and objectification, specifically surrounding Black and POC stereotypes (also known as race based sexual stereotypes, or RBSS) that feed into systematic misogynoir, negatively impacting body image and sex safety. But, it does have the potential to be a lot less harmful (albeit, more broadly) on sexual body image compared to free porn's current offering. What ethical porn does well, is show us a diverse range of bodies that don't necessarily conform to western beauty ideologies. In ethical porn, you're more likely to see different kinds of labia, gender non-conforming bodies, body hair, gender affirming surgery and genital size, as well as different kinds of sex that don't centre around PIV.

"By choosing this type of porn, individuals are supporting a safer sex industry — one that’s more representative. Not to mention, they will be fostering their own sexuality and sexual arousal more inclusively and authentically," says Cook. 

We might not have the power to control how advertisers make us feel about our bodies or shift capitalist society, but we can choose what type of porn to consume. If free porn is making you feel bad or unsure of your sexual body image, try on paid-for ethical porn for size. You might discover more than you bargained for.