Quote:
LOS ANGELES, CA - A thriving new area of the sex industry is searching for "talent" - qualified men willing to perform sex acts on screen for money. The varied positions are full-time, and compensation is generous, with hazard pay.
But there's a catch: actors must have a manhood of no more than an inch in length and a quarter of an inch in width, just small enough to fit into the auditory canal.
"It's good work," says one actor, whose stage name is Pip Boy. "Hard work, but good work. I perform male exercises daily to keep my size down to make it easier for the ear girls. And I try to eat as much junk food as possible - you want to keep circulation to your lower body down.
"It's not for everyone," said the stocky, bearded 300-lb man, wearing only a black leather thong as he sat in the break room at the studio and gulped down what he claimed was his fifth bag of Cheetos today.
This new field of sex work is heralded as a success story for federal equal opportunity in employment regulations. In 2007, in Big Little Daddy P v. Ex-E Studios (the plaintiff had legally changed his name prior to the proceedings), a federal court ruled that there was "ample reason to believe" that adult film studios had been engaging in "a systematic pattern of discrimination in employment and advancement against men with smaller-than-average genitalia." The dissenting opinion, by a lone judge, argued that the defendant had proven that the management the firm had below-average penis size and therefore there was, in fact, vertical opportunity in the adult film industry for men of below-average size.
As a condition of the 2007 ruling, Ex-E studios was required to hire male talent such that the mean length of their actors' genitalia would be "commensurate with the average of those seeking employment", and to do so with minimal expense, says adult industry expert Niles Mackenzie, "they decided to hire as few men as possible, with as small penises as possible. They put out a series of recruitment advertisements in periodicals read by bodybuilders, law enforcement, white supremacists, online gamers, and even Popular Science.
"The response was overwhelming - the federal investigators charged with monitoring Ex-E's compliance with the court ruling were backlogged for weeks, measuring these men with tweezers and magnifying glasses. All at taxpayer expense, I might add."
What happened next after Pip Boy and two other male actors were hired on, says Mackenzie, was a classic tale of lemons-to-lemonade.
"So they got these guys. Real great talent, just not the kinds of guys they had been open to working with before the ruling. The court didn't actually tell the studios what kind of adult films to direct, just that they had to hire on talent. That was up to them. So someone said, 'Well, what can you do with a penis the size of a pencil erasor? Where's it gonna stick, in some girl's ear?' 'F--- it, why not?'
"They tried it. It took the male lead, who was new to the job anyway, forty minutes to climax, which is actually pretty good for a new name in the sex industry. It was an auspicious start.
"Early on, Ex-E Studios didn't have much experience with this kind of thing, they didn't really know how to go about it. So, with the court's approval, they invoked Rule 34 of the Internet. Big Little Daddy P v. Ex-E Studios is memorable as the case where Rule 34 was first officially recognized by a federal court of the United States. And what Ex-E found, was that there was a massive, unsatisfied market, for ear sex porn."
Today, Ex-E Studios is the foremost producer of auditory canal porn, exporting US$720m of DVDs, streaming video, magazines, and assorted paraphernalia and merchandising rights to to 30 countries (they say their biggest market is South Korea). Recent releases include Three Men & Only Two Ears, Help, There's A Black Man In My Ear!, and My Other Ear Is A Virgin.
Male rights advocates approve. "We want people to see different penis sizes the same way educators have come to see different levels of intelligence or intellectual ability. Having less doesn't make you a 'bad person', it just means you're different, with your own wonderful, special contributions to society," says Benny Jameson, a spokesman for the Male Empowerment Committee.
"Instead of telling these these human beings that they have a 'condition' that needs to be 'cured' with Viagra, they should be told that they're just as much a man as anyone else - even a woman, or some combination of both, if that's what they want to be. If a man has a dream of being a porn star, he should feel that he is capable of achieving his dream, regardless of the size of his manhood.
"Ex-E Studio's compliance with the 2007 ruling, and the great products they've made since then, have brought us one step closer to equality."
