The Blowfish Blog

[The Pro Circuit] Sunny Lane’s Anal Virginity, Maybe

Recently Sunny Lane, a prolific and popular 27-year-old mainstream porn star, decided to do her first anal scene after more than three years in the biz without having anal sex on camera. I’m telling you, from the coverage that’s so far ensued in the adult industry, you woulda thought that Jesus Christ himself had descended from Heaven and soundly ploughed the esteemed Ms. Lane’s virgin back door. She did it for a movie called Big Wet Asses 13, in which women with impossibly tiny asses or no asses at all are shot from angles that make them appear to have the barest, most infinitesimal hint of an ass, and occasionally hips as well. I am being partially flippant; in fact, the angles tend to emphasize the hips and ass enough that the actresses appear to have slightly rounded behinds. I get the sense from the marketing copy associated with this series that these angles and this illusory body type is supposed to appeal to African American men, who are said in the porn industry to have particular preferences when it comes to the junk in the trunk, or lack thereof. I fully admit that I don’t “get” this series, not so much because I have any objection to women with slightly rounder than not-round asses (I am exceedingly fond of Ms. Lane’s ass, for instance) but because the “Big Wet” part of “Big Wet Asses” means that a lot of screen time is spent rubbing massage, baby or vegetable oil upon said asses, which I always thought was just kinda weird.

Years ago when Sunny Lane was a new and relatively green porn star and I was a new and relatively green porn reporter, I interviewed her after watching perhaps a half dozen of her movies. What did I think to ask her? “Do you plan to do anal scenes any time soon?” I asked this both because I am a devotee of the butt love and longed to see Ms. Lane ploughed (by Jesus or anyone), but because it seemed like the thing to ask a porn actress in the days when anal sex was swiftly growing in popularity. I mean, if she hasn’t done it, will she?

This is a recurring obsession on message boards where guys discuss porn — “Does ______ Do Anal?” would not be an unusual subject line to see, and Sunny Lane is the first non-buttsex actress to make headlines by engaging in the buttsex or, in porn parlance, giving up her anal cherry, which is, I’ll admit, a disturbing concept.

It isn’t exactly surprising given how much anal sex is beloved in porn, not to mention sought-after and fantasized about by men, who constitute the bulk of porn’s consumers. What is surprising, however, is that such a media kerfuffle would ensue in a time when anal sex is so de rigeur for porn actresses. Many if not most of the biggest porn actresses nowadays do anal sex quite frequently, and the porn labels considered “high quality” in the gonzo side of the industry, in which Sunny specializes, most frequently feature oodles of anal sex whatever the theme of the title. While there’s still a substantial representation of plastic bimbos out there who don’t seem to do much of anything in bed, more and more the popular girls seem to be the ones who get fucked every which way, including anal. So why does it remain so hot for so many porn watchers — enough that when Sunny finally decided to let Manuel Ferrara plumb the depths of her back passage, it’s front page news?

The blandest of sex-positive assertions would be that anal sex is a healthy form of sex enjoyed by healthy people who are getting off; very nearly as bland is the explanation that it’s a kinky, taboo variation that’s hot. But this is also about virginity. I would be a little less insistent on pointing that out if I hadn’t gone bugfuck to Sunny Lane’s portrayal of a virgin female patrolwoman inveigled into life as an undercover agent and then reluctantly corrupted by oversexed criminals in James Avalon’s 2005 movie She Bangs, which remains some of my favorite private entertainment material. I especially like the part where she gives her boyfriend a handjob in order to preserve her virginity, even though she’s already done it with the criminals. But she can’t tell her boyfriend, see, because he’d think she’s a slut. Guilt, secrecy, corruption, lies and handjobs: these are a few of my favorite things.

The things that are hot about virginity are kind of the same things that are hot about anal sex: they’re both taboo, they’re both intense, they’re both kinda scary to a lot of people. And while anal sex may be de riguer in porn, virginity is far from it. The stereotype of porn where schoolgirls pretend to be innocent gives the lie to the fact that, frankly, almost none of these girls can act. Usually in porn, if you spot an actress in a white dress pretending to be innocent or naive, fast-forward a minute and she’ll probably be wrapped up in a triple penetration scene with two Hungarians and a man in a Nixon mask. Virginity, for all the cultural obsession that’s focused on it, is a topic of some delicacy that video porn never seems to tackle with class, wit, or verve.

That’s why I find it so interesting that Sunny’s selling us the loss of her anal virginity onscreen to mammoth-donged Manuel Ferrara. Can anyone legitimately claim that Sunny Lane engaging in anal intercourse after starring in like 100 porn film constitutes losing any sort of virginity, let alone “corruption,” which I’m so fond of? It has to be, in a jaded age where even for non-professionals, if you’re to believe most porn movies and all the CNN headlines, getting fucked in the ass is no longer saved for the second date. As a porn actress, if you want to plead inexperience you have to find increasingly esoteric things you’ve never done.

Still, that anal virginity thing is kind of a hard sell. But Sunny’s one hell of a saleswoman. In a recent podcast, Sunny goes to great lengths to emphasize that this was the first time she’d engaged in receptive penis-anus intercourse, though she does say she played extensively with dildos before she was ready to try anal fucking on camera. But regardless, the fantasy being sold is just that, a fantasy, and the Porn Valley hype machine has made front-page and podcastworthy news of much less interesting moments in porn history.

Personally I’d cheerfully buy the Brooklyn Bridge from Sunny Lane, and probably give her a tip. But that’s hardly the point.

I applaud a couple of things here: the fact that Sunny is, at least partially, furthering the idea that women should do what they want, when they want to do it, and that if you want to get fucked in the ass the best way to do it safely is to fuck yourself with a dildo a whole damn lot first.

And perhaps more foolishly, I applaud that she’s selling us the fantasy of a first time, because that sort of thing implies a subtlety that, nowadays, commercial porn doesn’t usually bother with.

Thomas S. Roche blogs about Goth, God, and Zombies at thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 5 August 2008 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.