On August 1st, 2014, I received an email from Lawrence Schlossman, Four Pins Editor-in-chief, asking me to write about American Pervert, a website he described as, "A hardcore porn site that plays off the popularity of Terry Richardson, American Apparel and, like, fashion in general." Why he chose me for this task, out of the legions of humans whose bylines appear on Four Pins on a semi-regular basis, I do not know. Regardless, I immediately responded, "lol yeah ok."
That night, I logged onto my computer and headed to American Pervert's website where I was confronted with the homepage of a porn site that did indeed offer a play on American Apparel's aesthetics: clean designs, girls wearing thick-rimmed glasses, girls wearing solid colors and the promise of said girls having sex on camera. I clicked the box signifying that I was indeed above the age of 18 and proceeded onward and upward, towards my (probably) porn-filled destiny.
American Pervert is a monthly subscription service, offering high-quality videos, all starring either Dov Charney (here, charmingly renamed "POV Charney") or Terry Richardson ( aka "Harry Richardson," which is hilarious), all for the low (I think?) price of $20 per month. The copy for every video is, much like every porn video, written by someone who seemed to be typing with one hand (the other, presumably, was busy beating off). A quick sample, taken from "Harrys World: Dillion At My Studio":
Harry loves 2 things in this world, his cock and his camera, they go hand in hand. He’s the worlds most sought after fashion photographer and America's Biggest Pervert. Are Mr Richardson’s shooting techniques a little, uuuumm different? Of course!! He’s an artist. Does he fuck his models? DUH but they don’t seem to mind.
If you know anything about the world of fashion, American Pervert plays off the popular opinion of both Charney and Richardson as exploitative, creepy uncle types who use their high profiles and considerable influence to coerce women into bed with them. Charney, since fired, used company money to pay off women he'd either sexually harassed or with whom he had engaged in inappropriate relationships, and Richardson is said to have exploited and coerced countless young female models into engaging in sexual acts with him in the service of both art and advancing their careers, not to mention the fact that Richardson has published books depicting women performing oral sex on him in the name of art.
And can you masturbate to a critique without it losing its power?
Like most of you, my relationship with pornography is not, shall we say, academic in nature. Do I understand that lots of practices in porn can be kinda fucked up and exploitative of those in front of the camera, especially women? Sure. Do I understand that onscreen, porn often plays towards our basest desires and fantasies and can be regressive in shocking ways that make the past thirty years of social progress look like a sick fucking joke? Again, yes. But, just as terrifying thunderstorms bring rain that will water beautiful flowers and some guy hitting a possum on the highway will lead to a bunch of bugs getting a free meal, porn has plenty of upside. For many performers, doing porn is a conscious, joyously-made choice. And for those worried about porn's treatment of those onscreen, there is plenty of sex-positive porn that depicts realistic, healthy sexual interactions between two adults who are genuinely passionate about each other. But these are not things that I tend to consider while stimulating myself.
Though it treats its subjects lightheartedly—the site's trailer depicts its Dov and Terry avatars gleefully running through women, while making purposefully corny jokes poking fun at itself—American Pervert speaks to a very real phenomenon. There is an imbalanced power dynamic at play whenever someone is holding a camera in front of somebody else. A model will do pretty much anything you tell them if you're a persuasive enough photographer who has industry clout. In Richardson's case, this meant convincing his models to do a litany of inappropriate shit to him including sucking him off and being the subject of a bukkake that Steve-O participated in. Meanwhile, if your boss sexually harasses you, or holds the fact that you guys slept together over your head, and he just so happens to be the owner and founder of American Apparel, he can, at least in the short term, do whatever the fuck he wants with you. This is why Dov Charney got away with being a royal fuccboi to countless female employees for the better part of a decade.
In many ways, what Richardson and Charney have done IRL is vastly more fucked up than the idea an of-age woman willfully consenting to have sex with someone on camera, with full, advance knowledge that this express transaction—on camera sex for money—is about to occur. In depicting these consenting women simulating a scarily real power relationship that has been carried out for real in the fashion industry for pretty much ever, is American Pervert really critiquing the subjects it's ostensibly parodying? And can you masturbate to a critique without it losing its power? Or is your very act of masturbating to it a meta commentary on how you feel about power dynamics in the fashion world? Is American Pervert actually art?
It doesn't take a rocket psychologist (a rocket scientist, but for psychology, DUH) to realize that "Powerful Man Uses Power To Seduce Less Powerful Woman Who Would Otherwise Be Out Of His League" is a pretty common sexual fantasy, and that the creators of American Pervert were probably thinking of this (as well as, "LOL hipsters!") when they made the decision to make a porno site that made fun of American Apprel and Terry Richardson. That they definitely did not intend to comment upon the fashion industry as a whole, and that someone could diddle themselves to said commentary, is immaterial. Honestly, it's probably better that way. In a hundred years, when we think back upon both Charney and Richardson, the fact that someone felt their exploits were ripe enough for creating parody porn will say more about their controversial careers, innovations within the realm of fashion and undeniably fucked up psyches than any conventional analysis ever could.
In the trailer for American Pervert, the words "American sex," "American power" and "American dream" flash upon the screen, interspersed by shots of penises piercing various female orifices. Shortly thereafter, POV Charney says, "We're gonna make millions off these little fuckin' hipsters!" to a recently slain conquest. It's unclear whether or not he's speaking in character or about the hope that the same people who gobble up the consistently complicated imagery of bro-centric hipster fashion will drop twenty bucks a month to jerk off to their website. But, then again, maybe that's the point.
Drew Millard is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can read more of his work on Noisey and follow him on Twitter here.
