Generation XXX Gets Sex Education From Porn, Says Film

Oct. 18, 2012— -- Three young women from disparate backgrounds have one thing in common: They are bombarded daily by a culture that is saturated with sex -- from rap lyrics to the fashion industry to cyberporn.

Winnifred, 12, a precocious New York City girl on the cusp of adulthood, wears fish-net stockings and low-cut tops, striving to emulate her musical idol, Lady Gaga.

Laura, a 22-year-old kindergarten teacher from Alexandria, Va., saves her money for vaginal plastic surgery, convinced reducing the size of her labia will change her life.

Nichole, 32, of Clearwater, Fla., was once Nikita Kash, a stripper and pole dancer, but now, all she wants is to have a baby with the husband she met in the porn business.

Perhaps they do not represent typical American youth, but they all feel the pressure to be beautiful and to be sexy.

All three stories are intertwined in "Sexy Baby," an award-winning documentary about how technology and pornography are shaping the sexual identity of young girls.

With Facebook, smart phones and instant access to the Internet, a generation of children is getting their sex education from online porn.

The film, a first from former Miami Herald journalists Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer, opens Oct. 19 in both New York City and Los Angeles before being released on VOD in November. It had its world premiere earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival.

"Porn isn't video anymore, it's on the Internet," Bauer, a former feature writer, told ABCNews.com. "It's one or two quick mouse taps away. And it's very different porn than it used to be. It's really, really angry and not for a woman's pleasure."

"We created the film for one thing -- to be a conversation starter," she said.

The directors avoid preachy judgment. Filming for three years, they heard from tweens, college students and parents who feel a sense of confusion in a world where sex means power.

The idea for the film began when Gradus, a photographer, was shooting a story on college bars and she noticed even the mainstream ones had stripper poles.

"All the girls were pole-dancing and their guy friends were treating them like strippers, putting dollar bills in their shorts," she said. "It was weird. No one was having fun -- it was autopilot behavior."

"We are all so desensitized," said Gradus. "To get any sort of attention, they have to put it all out there and one person works so hard outdoing the next."

In the film, viewers watch the maturation of Winnifred, the oldest of the three girls of Jeni and Ken. At 12, she is an agile gymnast and social justice advocate.

"We know more about Lindsay Lohan than Susan B. Anthony and Ruth Bader Ginsberg," she says confidently, acting out her own play in a middle-school theater group.

"We are the first generation to have what we have and no one to guide us," says Winnifred, a sassy tween. "We are pioneers."

Winnifred's 4-year-old sister Myrtle follows in her older sister's footsteps, lip syncing to Britney Spears and writhing her little body on the floor.

Their mother Jeni is part-amused, part-horrified raising her old-beyond-their-years daughters. "It scares the bejesus out of me," she says in the film.

Winnifred insists she is too scared to look at pornography, but her 12-year-old friend Danielle says she "bawled her eyes out" when she got a glimpse online of two men and a woman "ferociously banging each other."

By 13, Winnifred is consumed with her looks. The skirts get shorter and tighter. She primps for a seductive photo shoot with her girlfriend Olivia, later posting the images online.

"Every girl wants to feel sexy -- like Megan Fox," says Olivia, but after seeing a photo of herself in a bra go viral online, confesses, "I felt dirty afterwards."

Winnifred admits to spending "30 percent my life" on Facebook. Her parents, who are separated, ground Winnifred eight times in six months for abusing her computer privileges.

"Your Facebook photo isn't who you are, it's who you want to be," says Winnifred. "We make ourselves seem like we are up for anything, and in a way, all of this Internet stuff kind of traps you. You started an alter ego that has to be maintained and in a real way, it does kind of shape how you end up and how you actually are in real life."

"Sexy Baby" also follows Laura, a teacher who has been told by a former boyfriend that her labia looks like "roast beef -- a meat curtain."

She preps for a labiaplasty with Virginia plastic surgeon Dr. Bernard Stern, who says he performs five procedures a week.

"I have dreamt about this for two years," she tells him, hoping that the surgery to cut back her labia will make her more attractive to men. "I know I am doing the right thing."

Her mother comes along to support Laura, but is ambivalent. "You are perfect the way you are," she tells Laura, crying about her daughter's loss of innocence.

Pornography Confuses Young People

The young men who influence women like Laura have an unrealistic picture of what is normal, according to the film makers. "Some tell us they have never seen a bush (pubic hair)," said Bauer.

Laura never hesitated to participate in the film, even allowing them to film vaginal surgery, according to the directors.

"One would think it's so bizarre that someone would give you access to something like that, but it's emblematic of the day and age of reality TV we live in," said Bauer. "She didn't even think twice -- really."

Gradus said college men interviewed in the film were "seriously confused" and reported they often have "drunk sex" because they are "so afraid of it."

Because of their own age differences, Bauer and Gradus say their own lives are witness to the culture change.

"Both of us date, so we have a pretty good barometer," said Bauer, 49. "Our experience when we tell guys about the film is vastly different."

"You inevitably say it's about three women and one has surgery called labiaplasty," said Gradus, 34. "When Jill reports that to her dates, they ask, 'What's that?' and 'Why would anyone want that?' When I explain it to them, it ranges from "Oh, yeah, I know exactly what that is,' to 'My ex-girlfriend had that.'"

Even Nichole, the jaded stripper, who with her husband recruits talent for the industry, laments the prevalence of Internet porn.

"The adult entertainment world is infiltrating everything," she says in the film. "Billboards look like pornography and regular guys pull porn moves in bed. By high school they are stripping."

Teaching pole dancing to college students and young mothers, Nichole says her students, "want to be like Nikita Cash, but Nichole wants to be just like them."

Porn is "sport" sex, according to Nichole. "It's not making love, where you want to cry afterwards, it's so powerful."

And she has clear ideas about raising the child she delivers by the end of the film. "Porn is for adults, not for kids to learn about sex," she says. "It can't be their first experiences."

The directors were happily surprised by the positive reaction to their documentary, especially from Winnifred's mother Jeni, who exposed her family to intrusive cameras.

Jeni, 42, told ABCNews.com that parts of the film were hard to watch, but she thought it was "honest" and a good message for other parents struggling to raise children in the Internet age.

"It's naive as a parent to think you can completely protect them from the messages they receive, whether from Facebook, TV or advertising," she said. "You want to protect them because you know better and you don't want it to shape them and their viewpoints. But I have taken the opposite approach. If you can't beat them, join them in the discussion."

"When you have a 15 or 16-year-old, you can't always be looking over their shoulder," Jeni said. "It may be harder to do it that way than sticking your head in the sand."