LOS ANGELES — Actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Jada Pinkett Smith launched into a discussion of “how pornography is harmful to women” on the latest episode of Pinkett Smith's chat show, “Red Table Talk.”
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, today given exclusively to “Entertainment Tonight,” Pinkett Smith, who on a prior episode of “Red Table Talk” discussed having had what she termed “an unhealthy relationship with porn,” said that pornography “‘really messed us up’ because it almost exclusively focuses on the man's pleasure.”
Neither actress specified 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” — which depicts gruesome murders and features 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 self-discovery for 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” that 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 estimated at $150 million; the private schools her offspring attended offer a level of sex education that is not available to the vast majority of Americans, or around the world.
