Sexuality and Contemporary Literature By Joel Gwynne and Angeli ...

Hijacked Our Sexuality, scholar Gail Dines comments that “in the past, porn performers couldn’t shake the sleaze factor and were hence considered untouchable by most mainstream pop culture industries” (34). Dines laments the media reception to Jenna Jameson’s career as a testimony to the popularization of the sex industry, commenting that the former porn star “managed to break through the porn barrier by moving seamlessly between the porn world and mainstream media” (34). Like a host of transatlantic cultural commentators, including the popular journalists Ariel Levy and Natasha Walter, Dines has identified Jameson’s crossover success from porn idol to popular icon as emblematic of contemporary permissiveness surrounding the sex industry (pornography, prostitution, and stripping), commenting that “the hypersexualization of mass-produced images” has “crowded out any alternative images of being female” (104–105). Magazine content in mainstream men's, women's, and teen magazines is increasingly sexually explicit, with covers routinely mentioning orgasm and sexual techniques, while a recent study of magazines targeting teenage girls found “an average of more than 80 column inches of text per issue on sexual topics” (9). Kinnick observes that porn culture has “ratcheted up what girls feel they must do to win the guy,” from dressing and dancing in a provocative manner to, more problematically, “engaging in sexual behaviors that are staples of male porn” (22). While these may appear to be harmless performances of emergent sexual identities, Bishop highlights the potential negative effects on young women’s negotiation of sexual boundaries and sexual decision making: “Girls are learning that sex is one-sided, that it is something they are to provide for the pleasure of boys” (54). Debates have emerged surrounding not only children’s access to sexual content in media—notably the effects of media consumption on their sexual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours—but also the detrimental effects of porn culture on adults. Plastic surgeons in the United States are experiencing an explosion in the demand for breast augmentation and vaginoplasty, while the consumption of erotic products is frequently presented as the