SALON

Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010 7:30 PM UTC

“Real Housewives,” spare us your sex tapes

Danielle Staub, newest amateur porn star, brings narcissism to a new low

By

Topics: Sex, Broadsheet, Celebrity, Pornography, The Real Housewives, Love and Sex,

Danielle Staub

To all you reality stars, beauty queens and members of KISS out there, I have something to say on behalf of a weary world. Please, we beg you: Stop making sex tapes.

Today’s revelation that Hustler is releasing a 75-minute opus of “Real Housewives” star Danielle Staub doing the nasty is just the latest in a genre that wore out its welcome long before Dustin Diamond popularized the Dirty Sanchez. At this point, if you’re a contestant on “Survivor,” ever ran for president or have the name “Kardashian,” we just assume there’s a video out there of you making your O face. And our fatigue from your narcissism has actually finally won out over mere prurient curiosity.

Believe us, when it comes to the getting on of anyone’s freak, we give a really wide berth. But call us cynical, we just can’t shake the suspicion that what was once a private, loving act between an aspiring model and an aspiring DJ has now become something else — the pilot for a new Bravo series. Spare us the outrage at how you feel sooooo betrayed, how you have no idea how this could have fallen into the wrong hands. At least Jesse James admitted that, deep down, he wanted to get caught. This whole pretext of “I didn’t really make and distribute my own little porno here” so you can give the public something that appears furtive and dirty and secret while still showing off how weird you look in night vision? Enough. And if you are actually dumb enough to make a sex tape and think it won’t get leaked, you are too dumb to ever have sex again.

There may have been a time, long ago in the Tommy and Pam era, when simultaneous horniness and access to technology was a novelty. And there are no doubt still many, both in the celebrity spotlight and here among the rabble, who just want to mix it up a little in the bedroom now and again. There’s no shame in wanting to watch yourself blow your boyfriend, I suppose. As far as attention-getting ploys go, though, the sex tape makes going out without your underpants look downright classy.

It also speaks volumes about our cultural compulsion to not just experience life but to also document it. We get that: We like attention, too. We’re the people who upload pictures of ourselves doing things while we’re still doing them. Wow, standing here on the Great Wall of China is amazing — but how does it look on the Facebook app on my phone? At a certain point, though, if your whole sex life is one big wank, a thing to be watched rather than lived, what do you need a partner for? So, famous-for-being-famous person, consider this another of those modern era clichés: the intervention. Not everything has to be a performance; you can just let sex be sex. Please don’t go at it on our account, because seriously, we’d rather watch kittens reenact an oil spill. 

As a friend pondered recently: What happened to the eroticism of imagination? Whether you’re a Real Housewife or just plain folk, a transitory adventure, with no record beyond the smile you just can’t wipe off whenever you remember it, can be pretty goddamn awesome. And if ever there were a moment to stop self-promoting, to worry less about how cool this looks and more about how nice it feels, that’d be while you’re doing it.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 41 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations