Americans lie about what really turns them on.
If they had it their way, their favorite fetishes would be written into the history books as “romantic brunches” and “butterfly kisses.” No mention of “lesbians scissoring,” “MILFs,” “extreme gangbangs,” or “big black dicks” would be made.
But researcher Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of “Everybody Lies,” believes that Internet search data can reveal the ugly truth about what really gets Americans off. So he downloaded all of the data he could get his hands on — from Google, Wikipedia, Facebook and Pornhub — to uncover all the dirty secrets we’re hiding from our friends, colleagues and grandparents.
“I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche,” writes Stephens-Davidowitz. Below are a few explanations of his most fascinating findings.
STRAIGHT WOMEN LOVE LESBIAN PORN
“About 20 percent of the porn women watch is lesbian porn,” Stephens-Davidowitz tells Vox. “A lot of straight women watch lesbian porn.”
Pornhub’s statisicians annually crunch the numbers, and for the past three years in a row, “lesbian” is far and away the most viewed category among its female users. In fact, horny women are far more likely to search for girl-on-girl action than men are.
Women’s fascination with female love scenes might stem from fantasies for same-sex experimentation. After all, women are much more sexually flexible than men are, and far less stigmatized for getting intimate with whichever gender they felt like fucking when they got out of bed that morning.
However, a love of lesbian porn doesn’t necessarily mean a woman is dying to scissor another snatch. More likely, ladies dig girl-on-girl porn because it gives more air time to acts that actually get women off. Instead of going straight to the fuck scene or money shot, lesbian porn focuses more on things like foreplay, breast stimulation and oral sex.
It’s more tender and intimate, ladies say, and seems a little more convincing that both parties are enjoying themselves as much as their theatrical moans portray.
MEN LOVE FAT WOMEN
“Porn featuring overweight women is surprisingly common among men. But the data from dating sites tells us that just about all men try to date skinny women,” Stephens-Davidowitz says. “I am certain a large number of men are more attracted to overweight women than skinny women but try to date skinny women to impress their friends and family members.”
With the concept of the “ideal body” constantly shifting, it’s no big surprise that Big Beautiful Women (BBW) porn is silently on the rise. As voluptuous women with big butts and thick thighs become America’s darlings, BBW porn has climbed its way out of an unknown fetish category and into the mainstream porn spotlight.
It’s also possible that as people are getting bigger overall — 160 million Americans are now overweight or obese — they crave porn with characters that look more like themselves, rather than a couple of hardbodies going at one another’s physically immaculate bodies.
It might be unrealistically optimistic to think that increasing social approval of plus-size figures is the reason behind this porn’s success. With overweight stars getting paid less than their skinny counterparts and film titles like "Whale Watchers" or "Scale Bustin' Babes,” it’s hard to believe BBW porn’s populity is a sign of progressive values.
LADIES LOVE PORN WITH VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
“Porn featuring violence against women is also extremely popular among women. It is far more popular among women than men,” Stephens-Davidowitz says. “Fantasy life isn't always politically correct.”
It’s true that women are increasingly seeking out porn with tags like “extreme brutal gangbang,” “forced” and “rape.” Some studies have even found that a whopping two thirds of American women get off to the idea of coercive sex. Stephens-Davidowitz has found that number is closer to one fourth.
“Fully 25 percent of female searches for straight porn emphasize the pain and/or humiliation of the woman,” he writes.
Among the theories for why women might fantasize about something so flagrantly terrible, illegal and unwanted, the most likely explanations are sexual openness and sexual desirability.
The sexual openness argument applies to women who love sex without any anxiety, guilt or shame surrounding it. These ladies feel free to play around with erotic scenarios beyond the boundaries of what they’d ever want to experience in real life.
The sexual desirability theory reflects your typical romance novel narrative, in which a powerful, dangerous man is so seduced by a beautiful woman that he simply must have her right then and there. “I’m so goddamn sexy,” the fantasy goes, “I can’t be resisted.”
The only hypothesis that is downright false, Stephens-Davidowitz says, is that sexual assault fantasies are more common in women who are abused. “The rate at which women watch violent porn is roughly the same in every part of the world. It isn’t correlated with how women are treated,” he says.
JAPANESE MEN ADORE TICKLE PORN
There’s no deeper meaning to be found in this fact. It’s simply an interesting subject to bring up in conversation at your next romantic brunch.
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