Here are some Happy Mother’s Day facts: MILF was the 3rd most searched term on PornHub in 2017. The 4th term was stepmom and the sixth was mom. When divided by gender, MILF is the 5th most searched term among women and 3rd among men.
One of the Internet’s first victories was coining the term MILF in the 1990s. Prior to the ’90s, though, the most famous MILF was Anne Bancroft. You might know her as Mrs. Robinson in 1967’s The Graduate, the much older and married neighbor who seduces a young Dustin Hoffman.
Lisa Ann, a performer, producer and director of award-winning adult movies, claims that the birth of MILF pornography happened in 2005. The category was spearheaded by Reality Kings at a time when some of the most popular adult performers were turning 30. The success of this new category led to the continuation of their careers. Prior to people’s obsessions with naked women playing mothers, a woman’s career in pornography ended when she reached her late 20s to early 30s. MILF porn also raised the age threshold for the beginning of a career. Take for example, Tanya Tate, 11-time MILF of the Year winner who began her career in 2009, just as she turned 30 herself.
MATERNAL ILLUSIONS
So what is the MILF fantasy about? MILFs are usually older than their onscreen partners. They tend to be aggressive. They’re women who know what they want and go after it. And they happen to be mothers.
While there is an interest in incest porn, MILF pornography is rarely a placeholder for the viewer’s actual mother. The attraction is to any mother. A maternal figure.
Most of it boils down to an illusion. The attraction to the MILF is that she is so sexy, you can’t believe she’s ever given birth. She’s “taken care of herself” and now she can compete with her just-turned-eighteen counterparts. In fact, the only giveaway that she’s ever been pregnant would be her large breasts. There’s an almost caricature emphasis on her breasts, primarily in the scenes where the MILF is playing the wise older woman who just wants to teach The Kid a thing or two about sex.
And that’s the other thing. The Kid. The audience watches pornography from professional companies with the understanding that all the performers are at least eighteen years old. However, MILF pornography also toes the line with uncomfortable lapses in logic. Just as performers sometimes act older to play the MILF character, other performers act younger. They are immature. They throw tantrums. They are “of-age” bodies with an underage mentality. While no one says it, the character they play is young enough to live at home and be grounded by the MILF. The Kid, who can be male or female, is as important to the fantasy as the MILF herself.
This is an uncomfortable fact, but people who enjoy this fantasy say it brings it back to when they were teenagers and had crushes on neighbors, teachers or a friend’s mom. Just think of the mom song “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne. It’s just a fantasy that would never (or should never) happen in real life.
OLDER MOTHERS, YOUNGER MILFS
If the MILF fantasy were just about age, then we would be talking about cougars But a cougar doesn’t have to be a mom and a MILF doesn’t have to be that much older. In the real world, women are waiting longer to have children. The MILFs in pornography, however, keep getting younger. So much younger that it would be impossible for them to be the mother of the viewer, whose average age is 35. Take Jasmine James as an example. She played a MILF in 2016 when she was only 25 years old. It still works when you consider what I said before, it’s not about YOUR mother, it’s about ANY mother. It’s plausible for a 25-year-old to be the mother of a child.
Mark Spiegler from Spiegler Girls claimed that the demand for MILF content reached such a high point, they simply ran out of older women. Their solution was to start filming women in their 20s and claim they were in their 30s on their website. This was the start of the younger MILF.
Whether or not that’s the reason, there is still a market for younger women representing mothers old enough have teenagers. This has created a fantastical realm where 30-year-olds have the body of a 20-year-old who perhaps has never had children.
MOTHERS NEED LOVE TOO
I like to look on the bright side. I’m just happy that we’re finally waking up to the fact that mothers can still have sex lives. A lot changes when a woman has a baby. Resuming a sex life after giving birth can be complicated and painful. There’s also an emotional and mental strain that comes from this new role, be it a first-time mom or the mom of one more. It may take some time for mothers to feel desirable again, but that doesn’t mean they’ll never reach that point.
I hope that the obsession with MILFs means that the partners of real-life mothers are becoming more appreciative of the MILF they have at home.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Gem Blackthorn is QMT's Sex Columnist, and the author/curator of Lust Thrust Thursdays. Send her your submissions and questions at sexsexsex [at] queenmobs.com