If given the chance, most of us would not have sex with our stepmoms. That’s not just because many people have a deep and abiding respect for their parents’ relationships, but also because it’s just an icky thought. Have sex with the woman who regularly beds down with your dad (or mom)? No! Gross! Let’s move on! Right? Wrong. Because, friends, here’s an important thing you need to know: Regardless of our feelings about our stepmothers in general (and they tend to be complex, at least according to that one movie with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon), people seem to really love porn that centers on the stepson/stepdaughter/stepmom dynamic.
How much do people love stepmom porn? Enough that it topped the list of PornHub’s most searched keywords, making it the most popular theme users searched for. Everything else? Passe. And even adult performers are getting into it. When I talked to Alix Lynx at the Adult Entertainment Expo she said that a lot of the content she creates is labeled with the “step” prefix because she knows that incest is what consumers crave (much like plants crave the electrolytes found in Gatorade.)
So why the love? Are stepmoms no longer safe? That isn’t quite the case. Just like the whole “calling your partner ‘daddy’ in bed” thing the desires for one’s stepmom have nothing to do with actually getting it on with someone who’s almost like family (“She is family, son”).
From Glamour, which sent a reporter to talk to Tina Horn, who hosts the podcast Why Are People Into That?!:
“There’s an element of voyeurism,” says Horn of porn. “What people are curious about in porn…versus what they actually like to do or want to do” don’t always match up. You could go on your partner’s laptop and discover a bunch of videos of spanking, for example, but that doesn’t mean your partner necessarily wants to try that IRL. “They might just want to know what’s that about,” says Horn, adding that the same could be said for pretty much any fetish.
And that includes stepmoms. Sure, it may be weird to find that your partner has a lovingly crafted playlist of SMILF videos on their ‘puter, but it also doesn’t mean that you have to sit down and have a chat with them about their interests (or call their stepmom to let them know that, hey, no big deal but someone’s hot for a non-blood relation who has made their dad feel things no one ever has before).
And here’s some analysis of the stepmom fetish, specifically, which appeared on the scene in 2016 and just massacred the competition (just like your stepmom did when your dad remarried and you had to deal with the fallout of deciding whether you were going to go to the wedding and put your mom in that early grave she’s always talking about):
Horn calls it a work-around to an incest fetish. “Incest, but it’s technically not incest. She’s not your biological mom. As if that matters in a fantasy,” she says—a way to play with the idea without the attendant guilt. It’s also related to the “MILF” fetish.
But even incest fetishes are generally harmless because they’re nothing like, and not nearly as common, in real life as they are in pornography. And even if they were, you’d probably be hearing about more awkward failures — and probably a few calls to the police — instead of stories of that one time one of your friends totally did it with their stepmom who just isn’t being satisfied, you know? What other choice did he have?
So that’s one more mystery solved. Watch all the stepmom porn you want, don’t proposition your actual stepmom, and everything will come out right in the end. (Sorry.)
