Is porn making men too picky?

 Just when you thought porn may have fallen off the radar, it gets a good kick up the proverbial butt thanks to a bunch of scientific researchers and loud-mouthed feminists. Yep, the porn debate has been ricocheted right back into the headlines with scorned women leading the way ...

"Why porn turns men off the real thing". By reckoning, the increased usage in porn (a staggering 1000 new porn websites are created each day), is not making men into raging sexual beasts as once predicted but rather into the exact opposite: it's making the blokes a little too picky. "The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women. (It's) " leading men to see fewer and fewer women as 'porn-worthy.'" In other words, the more that men are subjected to abnormally large-breasted women with chiselled abs and perfectly manicured pubic hair, the more unrealistic their expectations of the average woman becomes.

When men view images (both naked and fully clothed), their expectations of us average femmes climb accordingly. Subsequent studies that they've conducted have also found - and here comes the biggie - that when men viewed pictures of Playboy centrefolds, they subsequently felt less in love with their partner/wife/girlfriend than they did before. No wonder women the world over are so adverse to their blokes getting a little visual stimulation! (Although ladies, a quick word of advice: never ever attempt to part a man with his porn. It just won't work.) Of course it's not only the blokes whose opinions are swayed by what's on the box. Women are often picked on for having unrealistic expectations of romance, love and sex, although ours comes in the form of Hollywood.

But no matter where the influence stems from, a psychologist friend of mine explained to me that two most prevalent problems he sees in today's relationships are the problems that pop up on this blog time and time again: unrealistic expectations and the "Too Picky" syndrome. "Everyone complains about relationships not working, women not being able to find a decent man and men only interested in casual sex," he explains. "But if we eliminated all the Hollywood gaff and the internet porn, we probably wouldn't have these problems in the first place."  "For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images' power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn."

Ouch. Somehow don't think men are swapping us for more porn-like women either ... After all, nothing is better than the real thing, is it?