The Bovine Gaze

There’s something I can’t stop noticing. It happens at the end of porn videos, in that moment when the camera keeps rolling after the climax. The guy finishes, the scene ends, and there it is—the woman’s eyes. Dead. Empty. A blank, bovine stare into a corner of the room or into nothing at all. That expression isn’t just exhaustion or disinterest. It’s something deeper, something resigned. A surrender.

I feel bad for pornstars. Not in the performative, pearl-clutching way, but in a real, uncomfortable way. In a way that makes me sit with the implications. What happens to intimacy when it's turned into labor? When physical affection becomes a paycheck, what does that do to the soul?

I picture them in relationships, if they even still have them. Some poor soul on the couch, loading up NBA2K, asking casually, “How was work?” without looking up. And the pornstar, scrolling through their texts, replying, “Same old—got railed by a fifteen-inch horse cock.” He’d probably laugh. Probably feel small. Probably think twice before asking next time.

It sounds absurd, but that absurdity is real. Realer than we’d like to admit. And before you say, “Well, they chose that life,” let’s be honest: many didn’t. Plenty of these women (and men too) were recruited at the edge of legality—sold a dream of fashion shoots and TV shows. Then chewed into a system that capitalizes on the fantasy of youth and the brutal efficiency of exploitation. The sexualization of young girls is its own epidemic. Porn is just where the fantasy cashes out.

And it’s not just about porn. It’s about what it reflects. This sterile, algorithm-fed intimacy that doesn’t touch anything real. These aren’t people on screen; they’re avatars. Brands. Content. We scroll, we skip, we consume, and in doing so, we deaden our own sensitivity to real touch, real connection, real humanity.

We’re not exempt either. The viewers. The guys on the couch. The people trying to escape into fantasy because real connection is either too hard, too rare, or too painful. Watching porn often doesn’t make you feel connected or turned on—it makes you feel lonely. Because somewhere deep down, you know: this isn’t love. This isn’t intimacy. This isn’t real.

And that’s the saddest part. We’ve made a whole economy off pretending it is.