Butt seriously, we don’t want none, unless you’ve got buns, hun. … Get behind our obsession with the booty.
Bum’s The Word
Sex acts and fetishizing body parts go in and out of vogue in pop culture. In the ’90s, we were all about blowjobs and big boobs, but these days, we’re all about the booty. Bums aren’t just having a moment, though — our obsession with the ass runs deep and has reached fever pitch. Welcome to 2021, where having a shapely derriere is in fashion, anal sex is mainstream and rimming is the new second base. We’re in the age of the ass, and there’s no escaping it. Not that we’d want to.
Whether it’s the “forbidden fruit” taboo aspect of sticking our tongue in someone’s backdoor, the potential for both pain and pleasure that can come with a touch of backdoor sex, or the simple fact that we like to admire butts, so it’s expected that we would want to touch them — asses have a universal desirability among both men and women.
A survey conducted by The Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2010 found that 40 percent of women aged 20 to 24 had tried anal sex, up from 16 percent in previous years. More recently, a 2017 study of more than 3,000 sexually active Millennials found that 36 percent engaged in female anal sex and 15 percent in male anal sex “at least some of the time.” One 2018 study published in the journal of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association even suggested that “anal sex is more common than having a Twitter account in the United States.”
PornHub data also shows that the number of searches for “anal” increased by a massive 120 percent from 2009 to 2015, suggesting that our obsession with watching anal action is continually growing. Especially in Russia. Apparently, internet porn users in Russia are more likely to search for videos featuring anal sex than people from any other country.
Prolific porn star Asa Akira even once tweeted, “Ass is the new pussy.”
But it’s not just porn (and the Russians) that are focused on the female derriere, though — asses have also heavily infiltrated pop culture. Throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s, we all gawked at Jennifer Lopez’s ass like it was a mystical creature, yet a decade later, celebrities and influencers are tripping over themselves in an attempt to get the biggest, roundest bum.
We see anal sex and rimjob references in TV shows and movies like Narcos, Sex and the City, Broad City, Bad Santa, Girls and How to Get Away with Murder. Butts have also had a long history of being idolized in song, from Queen’s 1978 ass anthem “Fat Bottomed Girls,” to 1992’s “Baby Got Back” and Nicki Minaj famously singing, “Somebody point me to the best ass-eater” in the song “Dance (A$$)” by Big Sean, and in “Anaconda” she sings “toss my salad like his name Romaine.” Hell, popular musician Flume was even filmed eating ass on stage at Burning Man in 2019.
In the last few years, there’s also been a shift in sex toy companies focusing on more creative and ergonomic toys for anal play. Anal toys come in various forms now and often include vibrators and various attachments, with some having the ability to be controlled remotely via apps. You can buy lubes specifically designed for anal use. And interest in pegging and strap-ons for straight couples has been increasing.
Forrest Andrews, a product developer at Aneros, the world’s first dedicated prostate massage maker, said, “The market for prostate products has been steadily on the rise.” A decade ago, sex toy shop Babeland only carried a few prostate-focused toys, but today they stock almost 30 different models by a bunch of different companies.
Just for fun, we looked up the history of butts on Google, and you might be amazed and the number of responses returned (566,000,000). We liked the Allure article the most, probably, but we did not quite make it through that entire list, truth be told. Mostly we all sat back in wonder and awe upon reflection of the modern world. Before Google, you see, one would have had to use a card catalog at the local library to do a search like this, which would be a bit like using a screwdriver to paint your car. Proper tools are important, as you may learn someday in your own lives. Then a few of us spent the next few minutes trying to explain to all the younger members of our group what a card catalog was — and a library. We’ll leave out that part of the conversation, because there may have been a lot of cursing.
The bottom line (according to Ms. Wee) would be: We’re in an anal revolution — no ifs or ands … just butts. Ya bum.
