Janine Stephen
‘I tell you what,” said local resident Jean George in a hushed tone, “that American lady was half bare.” Nominated for the 1997 Adult Video awards’ Best Group Sex Scene and Best Female Performer of the Year, United States porn star Christi Lake brought reporters flocking to Parow Industria on the dusty outskirts of Cape Town.
Here, Adult World basks in the rosy glow of public controversy, and therefore publicity. Opened last week and claiming to be the largest adult sex goods warehouse in Africa, it boasts shelves of titillating, pricey objects which the owners say will do everything from broaden public attitudes to sex to rekindle the passion in a droopy sex life.
Used as the human face for the promotion of Adult World, Lake received the bulk of media attention: front page articles, talk radio and the eight o’clock news. Yet in person, Lake is surprisingly two dimensional: slick, articulate and blasély professional about a job in which she’s had over 500 on-screen partners in three years. She sprinkled talcum powder over the sex industry until it appeared as innocent as a baby’s bottom.
Emanating American-clean, she masked telling facts in normalcy and upfrontness and so some questions weren’t asked. Even during the photo session, where Christi posed in a black leather swing with her legs held open by two blokes in masks and thongs, exposing a knickerless and smoothly shaven bum, she didn’t seem quite real.
On opening day, Lake was sitting pretty on the Adult World counter, sequins sparkling, signing autographs. She gave a radiant account of sex industry life. Great people and promoters, and absolutely no drugs. “I’ve never even seen anyone snorting a line of coke!” She claims nobody has brought Aids into the industry. Also, she always feels like going to work in the mornings and orgasms every time.
In fact, Christi Lake is any public relations officer’s wet dream. She’s sharp; a businessperson. She is a good actress, she hugs her fans, shows a bit of ass and believes in people’s right to choose – all of which made her more than a match for the largely Christian protesters outside the warehouse. Sex shops aren’t illegal in South Africa and it’s unlikely the locals will succeed in downing this threat to their moral fibre.
Feminist Andrea Dworkin believes “male power is the raison d’ètre of pornography; the degradation of the female is the means of achieving this power”. Could Christi comment? She paused: “Women have all the control in this industry.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I know it. When a woman’s in a strip club dancing for a gentleman, who is forking out the money? Who’s saying ‘give me’?” Yet Lake admitted that “unfortunately [the industry] is controlled by men; men own the companies who produce the movies and hire us”.
She also says that she chooses what she does and doesn’t want to do – just as people can choose to watch porn videos or not. Lake and the owners of Adult World believe that using pornography or sex products is a person’s individual choice.
And in fear of sounding conservative and hung-up about sex, nobody dared to suggest that – even in an ideal world – it wouldn’t be that bad if there was no market for pornography. In the shop, tills were tinging as customers loaded up.
“There’s a market for everything; that’s the beauty of human beings,” said Lake in all sincerity.
Adult World’s PR people have done their job well. They’ve meticulously wed a bland, pro-choice rationality to a business that has difficulty claiming the moral ground. The result? A sanitised picture of the porn industry in the local press that advocates porn as a sex aid and even educational.
Christi: Born free, but everywhere in chains. photo: justin sholk