Nina Hartley made her first porn film the year I was born in 1984 in the town of Seinäjoki, Finland. Starring in “Educating Nina,” she launched a career that is still going strong. At 58, she calls herself a pleasure activist, a sex educator and an adult performer, who nowadays makes clips for her own website in a studio she built inside her DTLA apartment – a 1,200 square foot space dubbed, “the sex garage.”
The American porn industry influences music videos, commercials, movies, and TV shows. Now, perhaps more than ever, when finally, it seems to me from my Finnish perspective — in Finland many of us prance around topless and naked with nary a thought, including on TV — America is catching up.
And, with customary clout, it’s mainly catching up through television. Shows like “Girls,” “Broad City” and “Transparent” bring new types of female bodies to our TV screens — bodies more varied than the traditional ideal of porn and bodies shown in non-sexualized ways.
Nina Hartley talks about how porn paved way for this change. How? Listen, and find out.