…to the memory of LInda Lovelace, whose topsy-turvy life (now ended with a car crash at age 53) pivoted around her status as the first woman to become an above-ground celebrity for appearing in an explicit sex film.
Hardcore porn on theater screens, and pubic hair in magazines, emerged in 1970-71, which meant the media became obsessed with sex at exactly the same time I did. (But by the time I was old enough to legally view hardcore films, they’d already started to become the formulaic tripe porno videos are now. I preferred softcore, and still do, because it was more attractive to look at and gave me female characters to fall in love with, not just female physiques to hunger for.)
Lovelace’s post-porn memoirs were believed by conservatives who’d never read them to be righteous indictments against the whole genre of sex films. The books could be more accurately described as tales of a personal abusive relationship with a controlling husband-manager and his small-time-hood cronies. (I’ve never heard anyone invoke the marital ordeals of Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner as a pretext to condemn the entire institution of pop music.)
Her private troubles and triumphs aside, Lovelace will forever be the first real Sex Star. There had been famous upper-class courtesans thoughout history; some of whom performed in live sex shows at discreet venues for the decadent rich; there had also been “stag reel” hardcore films screened surreptitiously in private clubs and homes. But those women were still perceived all too often as “fallen women,” unfit to be mentioned in polite society. There had been famous nude models and dancers in North America and Europe for decades, but these were women who proudly displayed themselves with an essence of decorum and dignity. The early-’70s porn queens, in contrast, were shown doing the full down-‘n’-dirty, to the point of total out-of-control mindless ecstasy (or at least imitations of it), in garish color images projected ten feet tall. And for doing this they were marketed as not just respectable ladies but as admirable goddesses.
If you remember that this had never been done before in anything even close to “mainstream” American culture, you might more easily understand how it would rile a lot of people–not just political conservatives but also many progressives and feminists who’d traditionally equated women’s empowerment with rising above such tawdriness. You can also imagine how, when Lovelace had left both the relationship and the business, she could have identified the two as interchangeable incarnations of extreme ickiness.
Nowadays, porn is just another corporate, LA-monopolized entertainment enterprise. There’s also a more “respectable” (though almost as formulaic) parallel genre of woman-friendly “erotica.” (There’s even a whole consumer trade show of middle-class-couple oriented “sex-positive” seminars and merch sales in Vancouver this weekend.)
In her last published interviews, Lovelace claimed to have come to terms with both her porn and anti-porn careers. She said she’d never found anything wrong with being or looking sexy, that she didn’t advocate censorship but simply “awareness,” and that the best sex she’d ever had was in an ongoing relationsip with a guy she liked. She’d finally become an ordinary woman who’d found her peace with the world.
