On: Abigail Mac & The Brashness of Insecurities
This article is best enjoyed whilst listening to the song "The A-Team" by Ed Sheeran. https://youtu.be/UAWcs5H-qgQ
This week, I watched an interview clip from Veteran Adult Entertainment Photographer and Producer Holly Randall with one of my favorite Adult Entertainment actresses of all time, Abigail Mac, on the Holly Randall Unfiltered show. I stumbled on this video after one of my long YouTube binging at 2 am in the morning and it was refreshing to watch and listen to two gorgeous women in the Adult Entertainment Industry chop it up about life outside of the industry.
Apparently, Abigail has been in a ten-year relationship with a guy, Zack, who isn't part of the Adult Entertainment industry and she claims that despite everything not being as rosy as a rose, she cannot imagine being with someone else because, since the start of her career, Zack (her boyfriend) has always been so supportive of her and her choices. Ideally, as a very traditional manly man, I felt a type of way whilst listening to this. To be honest, I wasn't even sure I believed her. I remember thinking to myself saying, "There is no way, that guy, Zack, is cool about his girlfriend being an adult film star. Even if he says he's okay with it and supports her, he's lying and one day he's going to snap." I wasn't surprised too that a lot of the comments under the video were of men like me bearing out our insecurities to the full glare of the world by making jokes about how her boyfriend must be a "simp" to be in a committed relationship with someone like her or have someone he claims to love to be in the Adult Entertainment business and say he had no issues with it. Pfft
To us, it didn't matter that the person who actually lives this life and chose to tell us about it was saying that she and her boyfriend were in a happy relationship despite her kind of work; all that mattered was how we perceived the supposed bruising of our own individual egos, simply because we could never see ourselves as being that "stupid" or that much of a "simp" to stay committed to a woman that makes her living from having sexual intercourse on camera.
By the time, Abigail Mac was done talking about how far she and her boyfriend had come since she began her acting career in the Adult Entertainment Industry, I was already lost in the comments sections of the video, going through the disturbingly cynical thoughts of people like me (mostly men) who assumed that because something as harmless as another person choosing who to love was not something we saw ourselves doing, then the onus was on us to set them straight with banter, insults, jokes and cynical predictions of how soon enough, things were sure to end badly. And it was at this point that I had to pause the video and take a moment to ponder on why, even without putting down a comment like the others, I felt the same way as many of the vicious nitwits that did.
The question, "would you be able to date an adult film star?" at first felt tough to ponder because I went off on a re-imaginations journey of what it must be like to be Zack. I imagined myself waking up in the morning with her and as soon as we had done all our morning routines, I'd have to watch her pack her bags or luggage to head out for a video shoot where she would be expected to perform sexual acts on her male co-star. I imagined wishing her a good day at work and realizing what the word "work" meant for her and then coming home in the evening to have her already home, making dinner and then kissing her on her lips as I sat for dinner before suddenly an awareness of what she may have done with her mouth hits me. I imagined making love to her later that night only to be somewhat caught in a trance, wondering if her moans of pleasure came from any real satisfaction with me or from a rehearsed script that she's perfected on-set or from the recollection of how good it had been with her male co-star earlier on the set that day. I mean, I imagined a lot as Zack, not even including how it would be awkward introducing her to my family and friends, and the truth is, none of it seemed like something any man in his "right senses" would be able to put up with unless he was hoodwinked on some kanyamata shit.
But soon enough, a certain truth about these re-imaginations started to dawn on me. Indeed, I could re-imagine from today until the next, as well as posit into oblivion about how wrong a guy being in a relationship with an adult film actress was, but the truth remained that regardless of what my thoughts were, it had no bearing on whatever understanding and balance Abigail and Zack were able to find with respect to their relationship. Basically, with my re-imaginations, all I did was nothing more than project my own deep-seated insecurities, not to talk of just how patriarchal it sounded even thinking I had the slimmest chance of dating a gorgeous woman like Abigail. However, since as a man, a huge chunk of my life has been one where society has portrayed relationships as more about ownerships as opposed to companionship, I wasn't so surprised as to why I felt such an aversion to another man's choices.
Truth be told, I believe that the idea of ownership is why, whenever we hear or bear witness to anything that strays from the norm in terms of a relationship between two consenting adults, our first instincts (especially as cis-men) is to assume the absolute worse. It is this same stereotype that continues to plague the Adult Entertainment industry to this day. For the life of some of us, we cannot seem to understand why two or more adults would willingly choose to have sex in front of cameras for a butt-load of money. So, instead of doing any valuable research to find out why people make these choices or why theatrical sex has become such a huge part of humanity’s evolution, we easily choose to assume that it must be that these folks who are part of the industry were somehow coerced into doing what they do or that they all have some deep-seated childhood trauma of rape and abuse that have pushed them to the brink, so much so that they chose to waste away their life doing such demeaning work. But nothing could be farther from the truth if we are being honest (and this is not saying there are no cases of women being trafficked to work as sex slaves). Also, I must say it is kind of ironic that most (if not all) of these assumptions are only ever made in relation to the women in the Adult Entertainment industry and never to the men (tsk).
It is also somewhat funny that today, people still feign shock at adult film actresses choosing to do what they do for a living. More so sad because if most of us would only choose to take a step back from our lofty horses, we would realize that even as the everyday sexually curious people that we are, most of us are self-conscious of how we look or perform during sexual activities. In fact, the whole point of the asinine question that most men have come to ask their female partners after a mediocre sex romp, "Did you cum?" stems from a need for feedback on our performance under the sheets. Now, tell me how that's different from the Adult Entertainment folks putting on a show in front of cameras? Furthermore, I know for a fact that there are people who enjoy recording themselves and their partners during intercourse as well as some who would prefer to have a mirror close to their beds just to get a glimpse of what kind of orgasmic faces they made during intercourse. In fact, what else would we say has been the cause of the huge spike in more amateur porn videos hitting the internet these days than an innate desire by the regular Joes and Joannas, like me and you, to be able to record and rate our sexual prowess for posterity's sake and maybe some cool cash too (amateur porn pays well, by the way!)
But that is all beside the point I am trying to make here because to be fair to anyone like me whose first thought on watching that interview had been one of disbelief, I do understand why I felt some type of way about a regular guy dating an Adult film star and being okay with it, mainly because as a man, we have been led to believe that we are God's gift to every woman on the planet. Thus, instead of realizing that even if we don't see how being in a loving and committed relationship with an adult film star can be something we would be able to cope with, we are unable to permit the idea of there being another man, out of our manliness club, who would be just fine with it. And the truth deep down, I believe, is that despite how liberal things have become in the world, we are still ruled by a very conservative set of morals ingrained in us, so much so that we see things like a regular guy dating a porn actress as a deviation from the norm; something that is bound to end in tears, when in fact we should only see it as two people in a relationship, loving each other and finding ways to make life meaningful. In fact, I could bet you a thousand bucks that if tomorrow, Abigail Mac was to come back on an interview and say that unfortunately, her relationship with Zack had ended, a lot of us would feel like our initial thoughts about the relationship had been vindicated, forgetting that even our own "typical" relationships of seeming perfections, seldom last for a lifetime.
Basically, I believe that as men, when it comes to relationships, most of us only think of its apex benefit as the exclusivity of the sex that we have with the person we are with – an escape for our primal recreational needs. This is one of the reasons why men are more likely to feel deeply hurt by a cheating partner than we assume women would be, but even that is a projection of our insecurities (topic for another day). Sadly, I believe that as men, we have been taught, in one form or another, the childish but age-old rule of ownership, which is "If it lays next to me, unmarked or unnamed, then it's mine." It is why most of us walk around like kings on a throne where every woman must pay obeisance to us and do things just as we see them fit. Therefore, armed with this realization, it became easy for me to see just why my attitude of unbelief to hearing about Abigail Mac's relationship had gotten such a ridiculously naive reaction from me when it shouldn't have. It was simple: somehow, someway, on hearing her story, I had subconsciously projected a claim of ownership onto her. This was ever so clear in my little re-imaginations of what it would be like to be in her boyfriend's shoe, dating her and having to witness her do what she does for a living. In those seemingly harmless scenarios, I was actively flexing my "privilege" muscles like a man, claiming ownership towards a woman whose daily reality I had no fucking clue of.
Sadly, a lot of us men do this even outside of our reaction to Adult film Actresses choosing to do what they do or daring to have a normal life (I once naively assumed that as an adult film star, every waking hour of their lives would be about sex, nothing more). Some men even project this sort of ownership on their widowed mothers. It is why you'd hear of men saying they wouldn't stand to see their mothers get remarried if their father was to pass away or maybe if both were to get a divorce. In a way, society has raised men to feel emboldened enough to feel like we have a say on how women should conduct themselves. We act as the moral police whilst keeping a blind eye to our own hypocrisy.
I still think back to that interview and feel sad at the fact that I could not let go of my insecurities to just see Abigail Mac as just another woman trying to make her relationship work. I reduced her to my own reservations of what she does for a living despite being one of the men who benefitted from her screen presence. And I must say that it is such a sad and tragic way to see another wholesome individual, simply because they dared to do what most of us, thanks to societal conditioning, have come to perceive as wrong or sinful.
I remember when the famous "Silhouette Challenge" hit the internet and women who were comfortable in their own skin and sensuality chose to hop on it, only to be insulted and debased by men who believed for some reason that they had the authority to shame these women for daring to embrace their own sensuality and share these moments with the world. I remember one common retort during this period was something in line with people saying "Oh, no decent woman would ever do that challenge, it's trash." or a contact of mine saying "These women all have low self-esteem" as if to say sex and sensuality was something only indecent and low self-esteem women would partake in. It was a sad sight to behold, and I believe that it is in those moments that you can get a sense of just how much the conditioning of religion about sex and sensuality has really thrived in perpetuating the very idea of ownership of women by men.
Nevertheless, the point of this piece is not to tell anyone what's wrong or right as per their morals or what they choose to permit into their circles. Far from it. The point, I would think is to bring to light the fact that as men, we sometimes need to check ourselves and actively stop ourselves from falling into the pit of thinking we have a say in the lives and choices of women. You may not be a fan of the Adult Entertainment industry and that's fine. You may have your reservations about women participating in sensually charged dance challenges on the internet and that too is fine. You may even, like me at the start of this, feel some type of way about the feasibility of a guy being in a committed relationship with an adult film star, and that also is fine. However, what isn't at all okay is thinking that somehow your sense of morality, which most likely comes from a projection of your insecurities, should dictate how others live their lives or who they choose to love.
If you're anything like me, then after watching that interview with Abigail Mac, you'd do the next best thing which is to Google her and learn more about her life as well as see some of her works. Her being an adult film actress is not a threat to your life or sanity. It's just her own way of making her mark on the sands of time and for as long as the internet and adult-sex-themed movies are still a thing, she's always going to be remembered by millions of adoring fans of which, I am one.
You, oh mighty moral one, what have you done with your life, if I may ask? Biko, live and let live, people. That's the only true way.
Cheers.