‘One dollar gets you in!’: historical resonance and online solo girls circa 2005

ABSTRACT

In this article, with the aid of film and media theories, I provide an overview of ‘solo girl’ pornography, a category of mainstream heterosexual porn with online ubiquity. I discuss the historical relevance of this subgenre in specifically technological and affective terms, taking a cue from Susanna Paasonen’s work on tactile engagements with online pornography. Solo girl performances are preserved in still images, videos, and webcams and consist of striptease, masturbation, and girl-on-girl sex. I outline how each of these types of porn content functions within the niche and how users access the materials. Following this, I discuss the role of the online forum Free Ones and its significance for promoting solo girl content and fostering relationships amongst pornophiles. I conclude with some remarks about the lasting resonance of early twenty-first-century solo performers and consider the role of archiving vintage online porn.

KEYWORDS:

• Solo girls
• teen pornography
• online pornography
• heterosexual pornography
• affect theory
• fandom

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the audience members at the Sixth Annual Popular Culture Association of Canada Conference at McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, 12–14 May 2016, for their helpful comments and questions on an earlier draft of this article. Additionally, the excellent suggestions and comments from the anonymous reviewers for Porn Studies greatly improved both the research and writing – the author extends his gratitude to them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Troy Bordun received his PhD in Cultural Studies from Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada and splits his time teaching at Trent and Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada. Bordun’s Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema: Film Theory at the Fringes of Contemporary Art Cinema was recently published by Palgrave MacMillan. His recent publications can be found in Off-screen, Senses of Cinema, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Porn Studies, and Science Fiction Film and Television, and on the sex, relationships, and culture website Slutever.

ORCID

Troy Bordun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8360-2060

Notes

1 While the history of the subgenre could be productively linked to 8-mm reels from the 1950s and 1960s, the online performer warrants an extended investigation within the parameters of online pornography itself. A longer article might speculate on the historical resonances between solo girls on 8-mm reels and the contemporary performances, or between the feel of the film and digital images.

2 The solo girl perhaps best demonstrates that the female porn performer requires ‘heteroflexibility’ in order to be successful in their profession. Female performers, unlike their male counterparts, must appear straight but also occasionally ‘experiment with same-sex activity’ (Härmä and Stolpe 2010, 118–119).

3 On authenticity in contemporary pornography, see Paasonen (2011), Hester (2014), and Kerner and Knapp (2016, 125–126).

4 ‘Classic’ Pattycake zips can still be purchased for US$1.99 at Pattcakezips.com. Undated Peachez zips are currently US$5.99–14.99 at realpeachez.com.

5 See Arroyo (2016) for a treatment of tube sites and user engagement as ‘queer transgressiveness’.

6 According to the top-rated definition at Urban Dictionary, a ‘pornado’ is ‘used to describe a seemingly endless stream of pop-up windows appearing on ones [sic] computer screen while looking at pornographic websites’ (posted by devon, 8 April 2004, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pornado, accessed December 13, 2017).

7 Williams ([1989] 1999, 96–97) discusses 1960s solo girl reels and notes that the industry categorized them into ‘beaver’, ‘split beaver’, and ‘action beaver’. The terminology could apply to more recent solo girl videos as well.

8 The video, only a few minutes in length, did not end with an orgasm; instead, the camera moves to a close-up of Kaley’s face and she proceeds to smell her sex toy. She attempts to feign a sexy smile, but she is obviously displeased with the olfactory sensation. I could not track down the original video and most user-posted links on the Kaley Kennedy thread at Free Ones usually led me to defunct pages.

9 See Tibbals (2014). Live performances continue to dominate the porn industry today.

10 Posted by beany_man, ‘Kates playground vrs Karen dreams’, 24 August 2007, https://board.freeones.com/showthread.php?145264-Kates-playground-vrs-Karen-dreams, accessed December 13, 2017.

11 Posted by agrees316, 19 February 2010, https://board.freeones.com/showthread.php?23384-Kari-Sweets&highlight=kari, accessed December 13, 2017.

12 Tiny Teen Pass has purchased 29 sites and users get two days of access to all of them for US$1.29. Porn stars include Teen Topanga (2001–2007), Trixie Teen (2003–?), Little April (began in 2006), Little Lupe (2006–2012), Little Summer (2006?), Chloe 18 (2006–2016), Lil Maya (started in 2009), Kacey 18 (2009–?), and Cute Cristina (2010–2014), among others. Similar sites include 18Magazine, All Teen Stars, and Free Teenie Pass. Research on performers’ career start and end dates for these respective sites would generate similar results.

13 My historical interest in pornography is indebted to this curatorial work on the history of moving-image pornography. In this exhibition, ‘Stags, Sexploitation, and Hard Core: Moving-Image Pornography up to 1972’ (Bordun 2014), I presented a visual tour through porn history that included, among other materials, Eadweard Muybridge’s photography, French stag films from the 1930s, sexploitation films and pseudo-documentaries, art cinema distributed as pornography, and porno chic films, ending with Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano 1972). I detail the exhibition in some detail in Bordun (2015, 2016). The former article focuses on the porn archive and the challenges associated with compiling materials for the exhibition; the latter piece reflects on my experience as a curator of pornographic materials.