Adding “Porn” as a Description is Not Clever Anymore

 

We see it all over the Internet: people referring to everyday things as ____ Porn.

I can’t be certain when it originated, but the first time I ever saw it, it was a description of someone’s scrumptious lunch photo. They delighted in sharing their delicious dish for all their friends to see and said, “Food Porn!” Let’s admit it; this is kind of clever. I mean, for us foodies of the world, we definitely DO prefer sexy photos of beautifully plated cuisine or gooey greasy spoon appetizers to pornography, but what is our obsession with making everything sexual?

What started out as a somewhat funny and dissonant wordplay, has now become vacuously trite.

For example, I am a writer and I love seeing memes about writers, quotes from writers, books, literature, and libraries. One of the most popular Facebook pages to be shared over social media right now is Word Porn. Word Porn puts out a lot of great content. I would love to share many of their posts, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I love words. I even say that I have a “love affair with words”; therefore, I do not want to reduce them down to “Porn”.

Word Porn is registered as a Education Website. Whatever our opinion is of pornography, using it as a description of everyday things—in some cases, classy and sophisticated things—just dumbs it down. (There is so much I could say about Tolstoy having Word Porn written under his name, but I digress.)

Now there are television and game shows like Pawn Stars and Pawnography on the History Channel. I mean, education is always sexy, and antiques are definitely hot items, but why? Just why? Do these shows sells themselves to a larger audience just because they title their shows with a sexual play on words? Can pawned material processions display living sexual organs or stimulate erotic feelings?

Can food?

Can * actual * words (outside of describing sexual organs or writing erotica)?

Not to mention the fact that I am trying NOT to normalize pornography in my home with my children as young as 12 years old. Do these “educational” websites and primetime television channels think of their younger viewers at all when they come up with these clever wordplays and punny names? I wouldn’t take my young daughter to a Disney or Pixar movie called Cartoon Porn, so I really do not want to sit in the living room and watch a gameshow called Pawnography. Outside of this one detail, it is a good show and should be enjoyed by the entire family.

I just don’t see the point of this anymore. It is no longer clever. In fact, it is rather rudimentary. It is like hearing the same joke over over—eventually it stops being as funny each time you hear it. I am turned off by websites, businesses, and television shows that reference their product to porn to pull people in. It is not even offensive; it is just old hat now.

Let’s leave actual pornography to being porn. It is what it is, but it was never intended to be beautifully plated foie gras or Shakespeare. This is pretty much how I feel about it:

By: Heather Angelika
Owner/Founder