Make way for porn’s fastest growing demo: women

“It happened to be in a strip club. I had this money…and couldn’t for the life of me get a lap dance. I was the only woman in this topless bar. The dancers kept passing me by and I thought to myself, ‘What’s going on? Do I smell? Do I not look cute enough? What’s wrong with me?” This is where Kassia Wosick’s study of women as consumers in the sex industry began. “I realized it was because I was a woman that I was getting passed over,” she says. “That sparked this question for me: How are women in strip clubs treated? In fact, how are women who want to participate as consumers in the sex industry incorporated into business concepts about customers? What is it like being a female consumer in an industry that had traditionally objectified and exploited women’s bodies particularly for heterosexual male consumption?” For her research, Wosick, a sociologist at NM State University, spent a year on a porn set observing the production process.

Wosick explains that more women are involved behind-the-scenes in porn than one might expect. She also notes that more women then ever before are buying it. “Women have come forward and said, ‘Look I like to watch porn. I like to watch porn with my partner, I like to watch it alone; I’m not as disgusted by it as I thought I was going to be or I never was disgusted and now I’m coming out as a porn watcher.”

Still, the industry has failed to adequately market to the demographic. “I think that more women have started to enjoy pornography as a sexual outlet, as a way of turning themselves on. I don’t think that the porn industry is saying women are our new main customers, but they’re realizing that their customers base is continuing to diversify,” she says. “I think that by diversifying pornography as a whole, what we’ll see is a better reflection of people’s sexual desire and that’s going to help regular people of the world not feel like we’re abnormal as maybe we think we are.”

More on women as consumers of adult entertainment…