Hot Girls Wanted

When I saw that a new documentary just came out and it was gaining a lot of attention in social media, I assumed I knew what the film would be--about countless women being exploited by evil pimp-like guys. Well, the truth for the women in this picture was quite a bit different. Sad, but very different.

A camera crew somehow was allowed into a home owned by a young entrepreneur named Riley. Riley recruits girls 18-25 from Craigslist. However, he doesn't trick them in any way--he offers them airplane tickets to his home in Miami and they move there specifically to make porn. The home is filled with a half dozen or so aspiring 'actresses' and the crew interviews them and follows them on some of their jobs. They are there to have sex on camera and supposedly live an exciting life in the sun.

The part about all this that surprised me is that the film does NOT show strung-out drug addicts or illegal aliens forced into sex slavery. Instead, the girls seem to come from rather normal backgrounds and they want to be porn stars for fast money--bored girls with no thoughts about tomorrow. And, while I am sure some will find my words harsh, they seem incredibly vacuous and selfish. AIDS, pregnancy and the realities of the industry seemed irrelevant to these stars. They are simply out to have a good time and that's all that matters to them...end of story. This brings us to a major weakness in the film. You really don't care about these ladies because they all seemed to know exactly what they were getting into and they weren't very nice folks. They seem completely amoral and self-absorbed, so it really was hard to find much in the way of meaning to all this. As a father of two daughters, I was horrified by these women and their attitudes...but felt at least in these stories, they were involved with their eyes wide open...at least most of the time. The proliferation of rape and violence porn came as a surprise to me and some of them, as their fun lives (as they put it) stopped being fun when they were deliberately hurt or completely degraded in a few of the films. This part was a bit shocking as well as quite sad--and this was one case where I did feel for a couple of the girls, as they were raped or nearly raped to satisfy some guys' bizarre fantasies.

Overall, this film is mildly interesting but overly long. I really think with some editing, it would have been a more impactful film. As it is, I just found myself a bit bored with some of the girls' stories, though I was at least happy to see that a few of them chose to leave this self-imposed life. Technically, the camera-work was okay and the viewing experience was much like watching a reality TV show as opposed to a typical documentary. Interestingly, the film's executive producer is Rashida Jones--yes, Quincy Jones' daughter and who played Ann on Parks and Recreation. You can watch it streaming on Netflix if you'd like.

A documentary about young women who have been drawn into the online sex trade - and how easy it is for a web-savvy generation to end up making porn.

First of all, this was produced by Rashida Jones, best known for her role on "Parks and Recreation". Who knew she had it in her to get involved with this sort of project? But it is an interesting topic. With the internet so prevalent, it becomes extra easy to access this type of material, as well as appear in it. Exactly how the money is made is unclear, and it would have been nice if they went into that more. On one occasion, it almost sounded like a way around prostitution laws -- if you film an act and make it public, it is not a crime to pay the woman $300 for her act.

Now, the unfortunate consequence of this film is that is will make the girls featured more popular. As some of them are trying to get out of the business, this film will actually increase the numbers of web searches. Videos that had a few thousand views may now get a million... with no additional income for them, but rather the companies who hired them.

What the film tries to tap into is a kind-of shocking female, teenage-exploitation expose narrative, but, instead it uncovers a series of relatively normal, young, stupid and feckless teenagers looking for a way out of their middle-class suburban monotony.

What is supposed to strike you as something akin to sex trafficking (ie imposed drug addiction, systematic dehumanization etc etc) actually reveals an ever-more mainstream industry that has little compunction in playing to the natural vanities and naiveté of emerging female adults, sure, but yet never takes away their choice to leave or stay.

They are paid well, treated like human beings (with the agency and self-determination to board planes to unknown locations with a head full of dreams of being a 'porn star and the hopes of escaping their home town), yet the film still tries desperately to supplant this with a slow descent into infantilization of it's subjects.

The film does not hide that the high turnover of débutantes in this portion of the industry generally wields a 3-4 month cycle for each actress (after the realities of the trade-off of money for loss of reputation and damage to relationships become too much for them to bare, presumably) yet the narrative still implies the idea that it's anything but their own stupidity that has lead them to this.

Unfortunately for the film makers, everything seems 'above board'.

These girls are making 'bad' decisions, defying their parents wishes, wasting money instead of saving it, not thinking about the future or how their decisions effect their romantic life, and yet it's clear that they are having a lot of FUN! All you see is people freely having the liberty to do what hey want, when they want, getting paid and partying till the sun comes up. Seems alright really, doesn't it? It's almost as if it's what being young is all about - Making very bad mistakes through the endeavor of having a good time.

And that's the central dilemma here: How much responsibility do we place on young women to be accountable for all their free choices? The tone here suggests a mixed bag, dependent on the circumstances.

There is definitely an unspoken, Feminist finger being pointed at 'institutions of male power' here, who 'seek to manipulate women for sexual gratification', yet the women make A LOT of cash for their troubles. And as should be well known by now, women make a lot more than men as performers in this industry. Feminists watching this would be careful to invoke the 'wage gap' myth lest the reasoning be turned against them, for example. But, when society sees a woman 'giving' away her chastity so easily and having sex with many people, it suggests the woman is hurting herself. When a man does the same, he is hurting other people. This is patently sexist in itself, implying that women are not capable of making decisions for themselves or being self-reliant enough to learn from said mistakes.

The film does come to a shocking point somewhere towards the end when we see that the girls extended time in the industry means more and more offers that test the limits of their own bodily comfort and autonomy. 'Abuse Porn' is therefore somehow suggested as being the heart and soul of porn when it is allowed to reach it's natural limit, ie simulated rape. Not surprisingly the girls find it to be a step too far for their sensibilities to take. Quite right, I'd suggest, as the money to perform this stuff without having your 'heart in it' would never find a suitably high enough equation to deem it of any net benefit to my person-hood.

As many men will testify however, Porn is not a monolithic trove of played-out and video taped rape fantasies. It has thousands of strange, wonderful, tasteful, distasteful, Arty, disturbing and myriad permutations that bridge the full scope of the collective human desire for 'sex'. They do not ALL involve a form of quasi- consensual rape. Nor is 'Abuse Porn' as ubiquitous as this film suggests. Which leaves you wondering how 'neo-puritan' the film makers must be to be so naive about 'mens habits' as to paint it otherwise.

There are plenty of adult performers who are happy, well paid, professional, safe, intelligent, post-grad, up-standing citizens that chose Porn instead of a career in Science, for example, who DO NOT become the subject of porn documentaries. The film tries a little too hard to shame porn as an industry and in so doing, a lot of successful womens free choices to do something they love.

An average film which raises very important questions about female agency and male sexual desire.

I say it should have been called "Young Girls Wanted" because what enabled the objects of this film to make money in the adult industry was definitely not their looks, but their ages.

Hot girls Wanted is an interesting (albeit skewed) documentary about one very small aspect of the adult industry. HGW focuses on a few girls who go off to a flop house in FL to take advantage of the money available to them via making adult videos. The film focuses in on just one or two of these girls, thus giving you an extremely myopic look at what is arguably the biggest, most lucrative industry in history. While you couldn't possible get a feel (pun intended) for the adult industry by following even a hundred or a thousand talents around, just how much can you expect to learn from following a few? And these few are rock bottom amateurs being managed by a rock bottom amateur.

I find it amusing how people rectify capitalism with instances of it where other people are making money doing things that they a) don't like, b) wouldn't do themselves, and/or c) wouldn't want family doing. Seems to me that the phrase "they're being taken advantage of" or "they're being manipulated" comes in quite handy to folks who can't grapple with the fact that quite often, what makes money valuable is that it gets people to do stuff they normally wouldn't do. Maybe it's a plumber who deals with feces on a daily basis, maybe it's the person that's flipping burgers for minimum wage, or maybe it's someone exhibiting sexual behavior on film. And while I'm certain there are people who do all of these jobs and love doing them, the fact is that most are doing it for the money. You could make the same movie and title it "Plumbers Wanted" or "Short Order Cooks Wanted." Either would make the exact same point.

But of course we have the double standard that sex is all at once wonderful and special, but at the same time "bad" to do for money. Please do this little thought experiment... Imagine that there are no more STDs, and that people are able to control their ability to breed 100%. No one ever gets sick, and no one ever gets pregnant (or impregnates someone) if they don't want to. Now ask yourself if it's OK for people (your wife, kid, etc...) to work in this industry. If the answer is "no" then you have some deep thinking to do.

As far as the "morality" of adult content in and of itself, I will offer this... If you wouldn't condone your wife, daughter, mother, son, neighbor, anybody doing it, then you ought not be watching/consuming it.

And I loved the puppy:)

If you are interested in who the girls are you skip threw tumblr, youporn, redtube and so on this could be interesting to watch. The documentary tells you a bit about the young girls that do porn and why they do it. I was not really shocked about the girls and their life, that was pretty much what i expected. Sometimes i felt sorry for the teens, sometimes not so much.

Summary:

You watch porn and want to know a bit more about the work behind the cam? Feel free to watch "hot girls wanted".

You are looking for some good, touching documentary? Skip it.