“Every day, a new girl turns 18.”
If that line fills you with a chill you can’t quite explain, then good. It should. It’s in the trailer for Rashida Jones‘ documentary ‘Hot Girls Wanted’, a disturbing and confronting look at the amateur porn industry.
The film follows five different young women, mostly 18 or 19 – “teeny boppers”, as the creepy voiceover calls them – as they are introduced to and work in the booming Florida porn scene.
“A lot of them know it’s a trap, but the money is in there in their face, right now,” says one of the sleezebag ‘talent agents’, over shots of girls with cash actually right in their face, just to get the message across.
“I was terrified,” says one of the amateur porn stars in the trailer. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I could tell him no.”
If you needed any justification that this industry is unsafe and exploitative, that’s it. Right there. And we know – NOT ALL porn stars are exploited, NOT ALL porn stars feel unsafe at work, but this is about amateur porn, not the porn industry as a whole. And this is evidence that some do.
Watch the trailer here:
The film was part of the official selection of the Sundance Film Festival, and will “shock and outrage audiences in equal measure,” writes Variety.
It’s not an anti-porn documentary (nor is this an anti-porn post), but an unfiltered, unprecedented look into the hugely growing amateur porn industry that exploits young, vulnerable women.
“The shelf life of a girl?” the talent agent asks, like there’s an amateur porn star aisle right next to the frozen goods. “Best case scenario – a year, tops.”
[Takes hot shower from now till the end of eternity.]
‘Hot Girls Wanted’ was co-directed by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, who were behind the critically acclaimed 2012 documentary ‘Sexy Baby‘, about sexuality and the internet age.
“The whole genesis for the film was that Ronna and I had an argument about the girls,” Rashida Jones told The Takeaway (listen to the whole interview here).
“Ronna was saying ‘Who are the girls? Who are the girls? They look like the girl next door, they look like they’ve just graduated from high school.’ So I said, well, when you’re 18, you know what you’re doing, and she said ‘Are you kidding me??! Who were you when you were 18?’”
Something to think about next time you’re one handedly typing the words ‘amateur’.
‘Hot Girls Wanted’ launched on Netflix Australia last Friday night, so you can watch it now.
Image: Anthony Harvey via Getty Images
