Sunday Reads: A Day in the Life of a BBW Porn Star, the ‘Jesus Is My Homeboy’ Origin Story You Won’t Believe and Men in Kilts

Word on the street is the 1980s sucked, but I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t even an itch in my daddy’s pants. Perhaps that’s why I loved watching the new Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt on Netflix so much. I like kitschy nostalgia for which I have no contemporary comparison. Sure, the film is tacky af, and has shitty representations of women, but Machine Gun Kelly as Tommy Lee? Hooooooooooo mama. In any case, MEL’s resident film critic and person-who-knows-more-about-movies-than-me Tim Grierson thought that, like the 1980s themselves, The Dirt is truly the epitome of “suck.” But who are you going to trust, a professional film critic who was actually alive in the Crüe era or me, a 22-year-old with aggressively bad taste?

Must Reads

“Don’t Call Sofia Rose a Fetish”
In February, contributing writer Tierney Finster went down to Miami to spend a couple of days with Sofia Rose, the 43-year-old queen of the BBW porn genre. Rose’s skyrocketing popularity, however, is proof that being attracted to “fat” women is much more than just a fetish. In fact, it’s forcing the entire adult industry to question how it better represents “thicc” bodies that it’s typically degraded and/or ridiculed.

“I Created the ‘Jesus Is My Homeboy’ T-Shirt After Surviving Two Muggings in 10 Minutes”
“Jesus Is My Homeboy” wasn’t born in some graphic-tee pitch meeting at the Urban Outfitters corporate headquarters. It came to 65-year-old L.A. transplant Van Zan Frater in a moment of life-or-death. While the “Homeboy” story is a wild tale all its own, how it ended up on a T-shirt is a cynical ride into the gossip rag craze of the early aughts. Thought to be lost in a fire after the Rodney King riots, the original print resurfaced in the early 2000s and went on to be silk-screened on shirts worn by numerous celebrities (from Madonna to Ben Affleck) — without Frater’s credit (or at first, even knowledge). Trust us when we say that you haven’t read anything this bonkers in a long time.

The Week in Features

Porn Pals
Porn is a job that requires its performers to feign intimacy, but that doesn’t mean the intimacy you see in scenes is always just for show. According to Isabelle Kohn, porn sets are often fertile ground for bromances as straight male stars are frequently united by their work-related struggles, like low pay and constant (read: inhumane) boner-related demands. “There’s a small, tight-knit community of male performers in this industry,” says one male performer Kohn spoke to. “We stick together. Those guys are like family to me, and I’d do almost anything for them.”

I Love My Kilt (And My Kilt Loves Me)
Pants are so passé. That’s why a breed of comfort-craving American men are onto something old-yet-new: Kilts. For good reason, too, they claim…

• They’re comfier than pants (Zero constriction!)
• Not only is underwear not required, it’s actually frowned upon (That’s how they do it in Scotland!)
• They’re much cooler in the summer months (Feel that breeze!)
• They challenge gender conformity in fashion (Thanks, Billy Porter!)
• Depending on how you style it, they can look pretty badass (William Wallace sacked York in a kilt!)

As such, C. Brian Smith rocked a kilt for two weeks in hopes of better understanding why some guys see it as “what’s next” in American fashion.

Pot Protocol
The do’s and don’ts of smoking weed are usually learned through experience, but until now, the finer etiquette of blazing has never been codified. For example: Do I ash this joint before passing it? Or: Do I need to tip my budtender? And so, channeling her great-great-grandmother Emily Post — America’s most famous etiquette writer — Lizzie Post has tried to do exactly that with her new book, Higher Etiquette: A Guide to the World of Cannabis, from Dispensaries to Dinner Parties.

A History of Horniness
If you want to figure out what kinds of sex people are into today, the best place to start is Pornhub’s data dumps. Figuring out the sex lives of people in ancient Babylonia, however, is obviously a bit more complicated. While we don’t have statistics to prove how many people were into orgies circa 2000 B.C., there are a few tried-and-true methods (from gene-mapping to analyzing ancient art) sex historians use to try to understand the horny habits of the past.

The ‘Flow’ State of Mind
Ever noticed how being in “The Zone” can make you act a little weird? Maybe when you play video games, you end up repeating nonsensical phrases or rhymes. Or maybe you end up cursing out your teammates on the basketball court when you’re normally a cool, calm, collected guy. Well, there’s actually science that explains why being super engrossed in an activity makes you act a fool.

But Don’t Just Take Our Word for It…

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Magdalene Taylor

Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.