LOS ANGELES — Actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Jada Pinkett Smith have touted the latest episode of the latter’s chat show, “Red Table Talk,” as a discussion on “how pornography is harmful to women.”
Paltrow is currently promoting her Netflix series “Sex, Love & Goop.” Neither actress has any training on health issues or sexuality studies.
According to a promotional preview piece exclusively given today to “Entertainment Tonight,” Pinkett Smith, who previously acknowledged having “an unhealthy relationship with porn” on a prior episode of “Red Table Talk,” said pornography “‘really messed us up’ because it almost exclusively focuses on the man’s pleasure.”
With that generalization, the actresses do not proceed to specify what kind of sexual content could be broadly classified as “pornography.”
“I’m supposed to be there for every whim, every pleasure, it’s like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa,'” Pinkett Smith continued. “And the women’s pleasure doesn’t even matter! It’s not even thought about!”
Paltrow, Entertainment Tonight reported, agreed with her colleague, noting that “another reason why pornography is bad for women is because it gives the message to young women that being sexually desirable is the most important trait to have.”
The lead actress of the mainstream movie “Seven” — involving the depiction of gruesome murders and an iconic decapitation — says she finds porn “disturbing” due to “the imagery that comes out and the consciousness that comes out around porn.”
“I feel like girls,” Paltrow shared, “young girls — are getting the message that they have to be fuckable. Like, that’s the number-one priority, right? It’s so awful, right, and it’s like, it’s doing such a disservice.”
The conversation appears to be entirely focused on the sexual development of cis straight women. Neither actress discusses the role of porn in the self-discovery of queer or trans people.
Paltrow ‘Neutral About Sex,’ Stigmatizing About Sex Work
“It’s so weird, I don’t know, I feel like we’re living in a such weird time because we’re making all these incredible advances and then we’re going backwards with all these other things,” stated Paltrow, who owns a website that sells the most expensive versions of pleasure products and was successfully sued for making false pseudo-medical claims about them.
Paltrow also told “Entertainment Tonight” she strives “always to be neutral” on the topic of sex.
“I think my generation, we got a lot of messages around sex that made us feel bad about it,” the 49-year-old continued. “I try to just be curious, and teenagers are never going to want to talk to their parents about sex, ever. I sort of follow their lead and luckily, in middle school they had a very thorough sex education, so the school handled the kind of birds and the bees parts. Then I am there for any questions, but the questions are pretty minimal.”
Paltrow’s net worth has been calculated to $150 million; her offspring attended private schools with the kind of sex education that is not available to the vast majority of Americans, or around the world.
