Australian Girls with Pubic Hair Reclaim Amateur Porn

At her first shoot for amateur-porn site AbbyWinters.com, 19-year-old Chloe B. stripped in front of a camera crew in her university dorm room, rubbed lotion all over her body, then sang her favorite Australian soccer team's anthem. Dirty blond, curvy, and now 23, Chloe loved the experience so much she’s come back to do more than 20 shoots with Abby Winters—a site from Down Under that emphasizes happy, healthy female models who express their sexuality by expressing themselves. Since her nude-singing session, for example, Chloe has done porn shoots while driving, cheerleading, even demonstrating how to tackle a soccer opponent, Aussie-style.

Chloe (like all models on Abby Winters, she doesn’t use her real name) first heard about the site from a “mate” who recommended its welcoming, laidback attitude. After an encouraging interview, she decided to give amateur porn a try. “I’m SO glad I did!” she e-mails. “Abby Winters treats me, along with all the other models, with a great respect… I’ve never felt so comfortable getting naked before.” Of course, as a regular Abby Winters spokesperson, Chloe gets paid to say how much of a blast she’s having earning extra cash—but the site is packed with testimonials from other models who agree that shooting with Abby Winters is “fantastic” and “mind-opening”—so fun, one woman suggests, it could even make a unique “porno-cation” vacation for American girls visiting Australia.

According to the site’s founder and namesake, Abby Winters, what makes her models so enthusiastic—and her porn so sexy—is her emphasis on “naturalness.” Unlike most pornography, where even amateurs get dolled up with makeup and “six-inch plastic high heels,” Winters says her models have regular clothes, no fake boobs, and plenty of pubic hair. (“Shaving is so '90s,” declares the “Be a Model” section of the site.) She only hires women between the ages of 18 and 25, and proportionate figures that promote “a positive body image” are a must. “We’re basically subverting the porn paradigm,” Winters explains. “All our models are just normal women.” In fact, before working for the site, Winters says most have never been naked in front of anyone before besides their boyfriends.

Concurrently, the role men play behind the scenes is one major difference between a nontraditional site like SuicideGirls and Abby Winters. “The shoots are all shot by young women, some of whom have been models themselves,” says Winters. Unlike SuicideGirls, which often encourages models shoot sets with SG-approved, frequently male photographers, no men are allowed on set, and models are given a lot of freedom to explore their own ideas about what’s sexy.

“They like to let us be ourselves,” says Chloe, which makes the end result “so passionate and real, and . . . the orgasms so much more intense!”

Winters started the site back in 2000 with “a digital camera and some random women” in a “dodgy hotel room.” Though she's never modeled herself, she says she’s learned a lot since then—like professionalism—but her goal is the same. “As a consumer, I was always disappointed by the quality of erotica. I had a thing for amateur models—real girls are accessible and much more appealing—but was disappointed how sites always tried to make amateurs look [like professionals]. They totally missed the appeal of an amateur model in the first place!” So Winters took matters into her own hands. “Originally, I planned to sell my shoots to other sites,” she says, but mainstream porn buyers weren’t interested in her “natural” look. “Satisfyingly,” she says, “those other sites are out of business now.”

Porn as an industry has an infamously fast turnover rate, and Winters knows it. Companies disappear, models quit. Amazingly though, her site has been going strong for eight years, and without any of the scandals or nasty ex-model testimonials that seriously changed public perception of SuicideGirls. Wired.com’s sex columnist Regina Lynn attributes its ongoing success to its naturalness. “Fakery—fake scenarios, fake chemistry, fake body parts and fake orgasms—is an integral part of the porn monolith,” she wrote in a recent column, but the “secret to longevity in an industry known for its lies” is an “emphasis on genuine sexual experience…. Abby Winters showcases the first blush of young womanhood in all its natural beauty,” and that’s what makes it stand out.

To hear it from Abby Winters CEO Garion Hall, the site isn’t just providing more earnest porn, it’s also a “huge bargain.” With twice daily updates of unique content, 2,374 image sets, and 357 hours of video from 1,379 models, the site does offer a lot for its $17.99 a month basic membership. “It’s all shot in-house,” says Hall, “so [we] can be sure of the quality.” The photo sets themselves range from sweet and sexy (a model explores her sensual side on a grassy hill) to seriously hardcore (two girls fuck each other with glass dildos). During the shoots, models sometimes just strip down and talk about their hobbies; other times they’re left alone to masturbate in front of cameras. The shoots most popular with members, says Winters, are girl-on-girl—which pay models about $1400 a pop, nearly double the $800 amount for solo sets. Whether it’s a two-person make-out session or a 16-person nude-yoga class, these images of women enjoying each other’s bodies attract a lot of attention.