Do You Have The Sex Factor? (NSFW)
My quest for a visual masturbation aid came to a screeching halt. I was transfixed by this show, its contestants, the challenges they faced — head on and head-to-head (puns intended). I have always been intrigued by porn; who watches what and why, how much of it is conscious decision versus subconscious desire. And because there’s such a huge array of subgenres within porn, it wouldn’t be off base to assume that this show would cast a heterogenous crew. Au contraire.
“Sex Factor” is comprised of 16 contestants: (mostly white) women between the ages of 19-25 and (mostly white) men between the ages of 20-34, the majority of which are older than 25. In the second episode, the women must partake in an erotic photoshoot. Other than technique or lack thereof, the critiques and compliments the women garnered referred to who did and didn’t look like an All-American girl. The alternative, then, were those who looked “exotic” or “edgy” — so, breaking from conventional beauty standards — who the judges saw as less likely to do well in this industry.
Just as difficult and unlikely as it is for me, as a Black woman, to find mirrors in mainstream television and film, it is in “Sex Factor.” However, here it is more explicit why that mirror does not exist in this context. Perhaps, they didn’t get a lot of applicants of color. But, of the original 16 contestants, 3 were people of color, 1 of which is a Black man, 2 of which were gone by the end of the first episode.
This lack of not only racial/ethnic diversity but of gender/sexuality/genre diversity — 5 episodes in, and we’ve only tackled cis-hetero sex and girl-on-girl makeout sessions — speaks to the demographic they’re trying to reach for this show. It’s the same demographic most mainstream media aims its work at: white, cis-het, middle/working class viewers.
The same way I often dissociate when watching white, cis-het porn — bodies that don’t look like mine engaging in acts bodies like mine also engage in — I feel similarly watching “Sex Factor.” Unlike a game show like “Fear Factor,” where I’m not sure I can physically/emotionally/psychologically handle walking on a 50 ft high tightrope or eating live grasshoppers, I am sure that I can have sex. This is not to say I am physically/emotionally/psychologically capable of doing porn or that it is an easy job, but I don’t watch a woman giving a man a blowjob and think to myself, “How does she do that?!” So, as fun as this show is to watch, it also inadvertently portrays porn as a white sport, and to add color would mean adding kink, detracting from their brand of wholesome.
What really excites me about this show (okay, puns are inevitable at this point), is how it normalizes women wanting, craving, and thinking about sex. The women in this show, for the most part, love sex, and no one questions that or belittles them or shames them. No one assumes they must not want it as much as the men on the show do. Sex-positivity is central to the identity and mission of this show, but it is never brought up because it never crosses anyone’s mind that it’s abnormal to talk about or want sex.
But as much work as it does supporting autonomy, especially a woman’s, it still complicates the notion of consent. In the first episode, we’re introduced to Caspian, a man who loves to masturbate — in public. Many of the women, in “Real World” video confession style, complained about how uncomfortable he made them. They often asked him to stop doing that when they were present, but he always refused, stating that he loved having eyes on him now that he was finally in an environment where nudity and sex were acceptable, so they might as well get used to it.
Though, the women voted him out of the house that first episode because of his behavior, there were a few judges who exclaimed their confusion at the women’s decisions, that Caspian had potential and was a good performer. What’s been great (and scary) to witness, though, is that when it comes to consenting to the actual act of intercourse, those who have crossed a line have been reprimanded and eliminated, and those who have said “no,” have had their “no” respected and honored.
Consent is also blurred in regards to how hands-on and physical the judges get with their coaching. In the third episode, the sole male coach Keiran interrupted a failing sex scene to show the male contestant, Sonny, the proper way to give his scene-partner, Blair, head so that it looks best on camera. He did so by lifting Blair’s leg up, spreading her ass open, putting his head close enough to her vagina that I thought he was going to up to finish the scene himself. And though Blair did not seem uncomfortable — in fact, she looked quite pleased — the lack of verbal communication with her made me, as a viewer, uncomfortable. That, even though Keiran was playing around with Blair’s body, working to make it/her hyper-visible, nothing he said was directed at her.
It all comes back to this central fact: sex work is work. In fact, after a scene in which a woman confessed she said no to having sex with someone because she wasn’t attracted to him, Tori, one of the judges said this:
"So now you wanna say, you know, you only wanna have sex with certain people but not other people? Well, then you’re not a pornstar, you’re a girl. You know what i’m saying? Like, there’s a difference between just being a girl and being a pornstar."
What Tori was getting at here is that, because this is a job, sometimes you have to work with people you don’t like, don’t respect, don’t have chemistry with, but you have to make it work. Because this is a job. “Sex Factor” does not glamorize porn, there are no bells and whistles; these hopefuls are learning useful skills for the job they want, and it's not always sexy. One of the first challenges the contestants partook in was about seeing who was good at faking orgasms. And, this work is not always fun.
In fact, it’s typically anxiety-inducing for a lot of them. When the men cry after shooting a scene during which they either couldn’t get hard or couldn’t cum, when they confess that they couldn’t perform because they were over-thinking and let the competition get to their heads, it’s easy to see that they are just people who want to succeed at their dream job. They are just like those of us who freak out when we don’t think we’re going to meet a project’s deadline, or when we get off-hours emails from our bosses. We all profit off our bodies, off of working long hours, off of repetition and tedium, off of faking a smile or a laugh. Labor is labor. And, we’re all just trying to make it.
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Taylor Steele is a Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based writer and performer. Her work can be found at such esteemed publications as Apogee Journal, HEArt Journal, Rogue Agent, Blackberry Magazine, and many others. Her chapbook Dirty.Mouth.Kiss will be available Fall 2016 on Pizza Pi Press. Taylor is a content writer for The Body is Not an Apology, Drunken Boat Journal, and Philadelphia Printworks. She is an internationally ranked spoken word artist, but, more importantly, she is a triple-Taurus. |