Most of the American Apparel girls were relative unknowns, and the company prided itself on casting “regular” people in its campaigns, though the porn actress Lauren Phoenix posed for one especially memorable ad.Īs American Apparel’s profile rose, scrutiny over the company’s ads intensified, and it didn’t help matters that founder Dov Charney was accused ad nauseam of sexually harassing employees, to the extent that he was eventually fired by the board. The girls wore next to nothing, presumably to accentuate the one thing that they were wearing, like thigh-high tube socks or a see-through bra or a crop top emblazoned with the words “Legalize L.A.” Some of the ads included brief bios of the models that read like a dating profile or a trading card or a blurb for a back-page escort service. You could see them on billboards, wheat-pasted to construction sites, printed on the back cover of Vice magazine. If you lived in a major city or frequented the “hipster” corners of the internet ( Carles, r u there?) in the 2000s, you’ll remember that the American Apparel girls were everywhere. They weren’t wrong, but they were admitting to feeling sexually confused about a ten-inch plastic doll, and that is a testament to Bratz’s role in horny-culture history. Parents expressed concern over the dolls’ oversexualized look and unrealistic body proportions. Yes, “the girls with the passion for fashion” caused quite a stir in good ways and bad. By 2006, Bratz had roughly 40 percent of the fashion-doll market. In 2005, four years after Bratz launched, global sales were $2 billion. (Footless legs and detachable shoes have yet to make it into mainstream pop culture.) Their tiny noses, huge glossy lips, and bedroom eyes mirror the rhinoplasties, fillers, and premature face-lifts that have become commonplace among models, influencers, and airbrushed regulars. Years before Kylie Jenner tightened and plumped her face to resemble that of a sexy alien cub, Bratz dolls were drawing the Instagram Face blueprint. (You can measure your boob size by comparing them to fruit Katy Perry allegedly has C-cups, or, grapefruits.) This list is an exercise in horny anthropology, an attempt to establish the 2000s Horny Culture canon - the good, the (mostly) bad, and the absurd.
The following list is a taxonomy of the aughts’ horniest pop-culture moments, forgotten formative memories, the Cosmo tips that are forever burned into our brains. The bygone era, which for the purpose of this list will be referred to as Horny Culture, was tainted by exploitation, and it’s worth exploring how we got there and how we got out. Everyone can have their own personalized, algorithmically curated e-stash. As porn and porn-adjacent content became available at the tap of a touchscreen (Pornhub launched in 2007, Instagram in 2010), sex bled into pop culture with less frequency.
It was a slow death, brought forth in part by the internet’s tightening grip on our personal lives and the media’s recognition of women as … people. The decline of early-aughts horny culture can be attributed to a few main developments. Both shows employ intimacy coordinators, whom directors routinely bring in to protect actors “ doing hyper-exposed work.” Euphoria takes the opposite approach with flashy soft-core cinema, Skinemax with an HBO budget.
Shows like Normal People are lauded for their “realistic” sex scenes - slow to start, sometimes nervous, and free from cinematic orgasms.
Sex still sells, of course, but it’s packaged in self-awareness, layered with years of internet discourse about consent and kink and modern intimacy. Think: Axe commercials where women want to have sex with you at the grocery store, buddy comedies about taking a road trip to lose your virginity, Maxim covers teasing a list of the best outdoor gear with the tagline “ Spank Mother Nature!” Women sported low-rise pants and high-rise thongs, and men wore trucker hats that suggested careers in adult film. The sheer horniness of the aughts was unique from other eras in its total lack of subtlety, distinctly raunchy in a way that has fallen out of vogue. Photo-Illustration: by Vulture Photos by Warner Bros, Kevin Kane/WireImage, K Wright/New Line/Kobal/Shutterstock, Moviestore/Shutterstock and Summit Entertainmentĭuring the 2000s, pop culture’s depictions of sex tended toward goofy, as if Hollywood had been run by teenage boys with cartoon eyes popping out of their skulls and mile-long tongues hanging out of their mouths.