Why we like giving facials!

[iluvbonobos]

Below is an excerpt from the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

[iluvbonobos]

Back when men had to trek all the way out to a gritty downtown movie theater in order to watch a 16mm skin flick, the money shot landed on a variety of places, including—once in a while—a woman’s face. In internet porn, however, facials are the most common money shot by a wide margin. On Fantasti.cc, out of the one hundred top rated videos that show ejaculation, fifty-four of them are facials.

The facial is an erotical illusion that merges the visual with the psychological. Specifically, facials juxtapose three sexual cues with a single stimulus: the penis (a visual cue), the ejaculation (which may be a sperm competition cue or possibly a cued interest in some men), and—most important—the woman’s emotional reaction, which may be a psychological cue for female pleasure (if she expresses delight) or a psychological cue of sexual submission (if she expresses surprise or dismay).

It’s a way of adding an emotional commentary on the ejaculation, a kind of pornographic emoticon that guides and enhances the reaction of the male sexual brain. In contrast, ejaculating on a woman’s stomach, chest, or butt does not provide the same psychological cue, even if the woman is moaning with pleasure.

This juxtaposition of psychological cues with visual cues has been developed into a cinematic technique adopted by more sophisticated pornographers, such as the French director Herve Bodilis. He frequently uses split screens to simultaneously show close-ups of female anatomy or male ejaculation on one side and a close-up of a woman’s facial expressions on the other. In his Russian Institute series, there is a scene where the left screen shows a close-up of two women’s hands masturbating a large penis, while the right screen shows the two women’s faces pressed together, smiling with delight at the unseen man—a Mona Lisa—like illusion that induces a perceptual shift depending on exactly where you look.

One type of porn intensifies the effect of the facial erotical illusion: bukkake. Bukkake consists of multiple men simultaneously ejaculating on one woman’s face. Bukkake offers the same sexual cues as a one-man facial—namely, the penis, the ejaculation, and the emotional reaction of the woman—but adds two more. First, bukkake repeats the same set of cues each time a new man ejaculates on the woman, repeatedly activating the novelty cue in quick succession. Second, the multiple men likely trigger sperm competition cues, and perhaps the copious semen does as well.

A similar effect is achieved through video editing. The seventh most common search on PornHub is for “compilations”. A compilation is an edited collection of brief clips around a theme, such as facials, large breasts, or anal sex. “Cumshots” are the most common theme for a compilation; the most popular cumshot compilation on PornHub consists of thirty separate ejaculations edited into a three-minute video. A compilation is basically a staccato succession of similar cues.

[Juliette et Franklin]

So THAT'S why I'm so into facials! Phew! I thought it was because I'm a little bit twisted. Good to know. Thanks, iluvbonobos!