Pornified

Pornography, once the taboo vice that no one dared mention, has become part of our daily lives –affordable, accessible, anonymous, and, increasingly, acceptable. The all-pornography, al-the-time mentality is everywhere –on the covers of mainstream men's magazines; in the promotion of music, movies, and television celebrities; and in the advice columns of women's magazines. The Internet is bursting with hardcore pornography, just a mouse-click away; cable and pay-per-view channels teem with porn; and "adult superstores" reel in customers off the interstate. The days of Playboy magazine wrapped in plain brown paper seem quaint.

Most striking, pornography has become a big part of the personal lives of many Americans. In Pornified, Pamela Paul argues that as porn has become more pervasive it has changed our marriages and families as well as our children's understanding of sex and sexuality. She presents eye-opening portraits of Americans in the age of porn:

• Rob, who insists that his girlfriend look and behave, in bed and out, like a porn star

•  Charlie, who spends hours cruising porn sites and setting up meetings with women and couples he befriends in sex chat rooms, while telling his wife that he's just working late
   on the computer

•  Jonah, a fan of violent hardcore porn, who introduces tamer porn to his fiancée in an effort to revive their troubled sex life

•  Abby, who discovers her husband's hidden box of diskettes of child porn images downloaded from the Internet

• Preteen girls who start their own pornography Web sites

•  Teenage boys, mimicking porn, who videotape themselves having sex with an apparently unconscious girl

Drawing on the result of more than a hundred interviews an an exclusive nationwide poll, Paul exposes how porn has infiltrated and unsettled our lives. We see the costs and consequences of pornography, as intimacy is replaced by fantasy distrust, dissatisfaction, and emotional isolation. Pornified is an insightful, shocking, and indispensable investigation.

Pamela Paul. Pornified; How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. First Edition. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2005. Hardcover. xi+304 pp.