15-time Playboy cover model, 2-time celebrity sex tape star, and Baywatch actor Pamela Anderson says porn is bad. More specifically, she says, “this is a public hazard of unprecedented seriousness given how freely available, anonymously accessible, and easily disseminated pornography is nowadays,” in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece.
Written with an American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, the two describe how porn is ruining relationships in America and say that people need to give it up. They urge readers to “understand that porn is for losers — a boring, wasteful and dead-end outlet for people too lazy to reap the ample rewards of health sexuality.”
Now, she does have a point. I mean, it’s crazy to think that we all have access to an endless amount of porn in our pocket right now, and combining that with an increasingly disconnected world, the effects on relationships can be major in today’s day and age.
In fact, a study published recently in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that younger millennials are more than twice as likely to be sexually inactive in their early 20s as the previous generation was.
It’s a classic “too many choices” problem. Studies have been done on “choice overload,” which basically says that when we have a nearly endless number of options to choose from, “the level of certainty people have about their choice decreases. And the anticipation that they will regret their choice increases,” says researcher Barry Schwartz.
In essence, too many options overwhelms us and makes us more anxious to actually make a decision. So when we have Tinder, OkCupid, Match, Bumble, and the endless other dating apps on top of meeting people in the real world, in essence we have too many options.
Now throw in the fact that you have porn as a constant backup, and, well, there’s a hint of truth to what Pamela Anderson is saying.
My thing, though, is should this message really be coming from her? Maybe it’s more powerful coming from her, but to me, it’s like your drug dealer saying drugs are bad for you right before offering you more drugs. Let’s not forget that Pam is currently set to star in another Baywatch movie. And in Baywatch’s heyday, that show was basically as closest to porn as you could get on TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lAQQWpFN8I
Whether or not Pamela’s plea to stop being a loser and give up porn will happen remains to be seen, but it definitely couldn’t hurt if the youngins of the world got out from behind their screens and interacted in the real world a bit more.
