In today's world, the highest calling left to the sex film is reality. Video technology is so impressive that pretty much anyone can shoot anything, anywhere. It seems like it ought to be easy to take a video camera and capture something wonderfully sexy and beautiful and engaging, but apparently not so much, because modern video porn is mostly dull and ugly. It seems the world isn't quite as sexy and delightful as one might hope.

So what does this have to do with The Girls Gone Wild series? GGW runs endless ads and infomercials on late-night cable TV, so I've had some concept of the series for years. It looked to be exactly the sort of dumb insincere smut that blights the modern videoscape. But I picked up one of the discs out of curiosity and got a real surprise. It was really good... as sexy and engaging as any video-era adult product I've seen.

The magic ingredient is that the girls' motivations are real... they are not just pretending to be wild, they really are wild! The franchise started out, years ago, cashing in on a contemporary exhibitionist party culture, but the franchise was so successful that it ended up defining the social (anthropological?) phenomenon it sought to exploit.

So the series has evolved into a documentary series about what girls would like to do on a Girls Gone Wild video. These girls are ordinary young women for whom appearing in Girls Gone Wild is a real personal sexual fantasy. Because of the infomercials, Girls Gone Wild as a de facto TV show and everybody wants to be on TV. The girls want their beauty or sexuality to be validated. On the surface it seems unlikely that "real" girls would masturbate on camera for a total stranger, but this is GGW, not a stranger. And today's twenty-year-old has been videotaped endlessly throughout life... every special event and life passage is videotaped. So why should this be any different?

The set up is that the Girls Gone Wild bus drives around to party spots, spring break, etc. and looks for girls with an exhibitionist streak. They are invited into the bus (or sometime their own hotel rooms) to trade sexual displays for tacky items of clothing. It seems like the girls are dummies, able to be persuaded to do anything if you tell them they're sexy, but the girls have a good idea of what they want to do (or not do). The interplay of modesty and cajolery is just an accepted part of the game. It calls to mind ancient festivals where normal rules of sexual propriety were suspended one day a year. Modern porn stars are utterly boring, but tipsy nursing students and paralegals egging each other on to play at being porn stars because it's Mardi Gras or Spring Break (or just Saturday night) is delightful.

It took me a while to figure out why these videos are so mesmerizing: the girls are having FUN. They giggle and blush and squeal with excitement. Until you hear the laughter you don't realize what's missing from other videos. Typical modern sex videos are repulsively grim, with the actresses playing the role of a phony femme fatale and treating sex as ritualized combat. But the GIRLS GONE WILD formula captures the silliness, bubbly joy, discovery and surprise that mark most of our most memorable sexual experiences.

The sessions are suspenseful. You may find yourself watching the interviews and fast forwarding through the sex play, rather than visa-versa. It's interesting hearing the girls talk about what they like about sex, or what they like about their bodies. You never know how far each young woman go... it's a game, playing "chicken" with their own impulses. They demurely proclaim they will only go so far, then, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes they willfully seduce themselves... there's no other way to put it. Some girls negotiate the labyrinth, merely showing their breasts (almost always natural) before fleeing with their hard-won Girls Gone Wild tank top to brandish, like the gorgon's head, as a trophy of having braved the test. Other girls (and pairs of girls) enter the lair for sexual gratification, stimulating themselves to  genuine orgasms. (the flushed breasts and cheeks kind that cannot be easily faked) Roommates out for some laughs end up in vibrator sessions with each other. There are some ringers, of course... strippers and others who are stagy and false. But most of the girls are utterly real hair-dressers and nursing students playing out personal fantasies.

And the girls are Cute as can be. Mister Girls Gone Wild has a selective eye for pretty, perky, toned and tanned girls with natural breasts. GGW really brings home the charming fact that almost all physically fit young women are cute in their own way.

Another highly sexy aspect of the series is the oddly non-pornographic approach, harkening back to the highly erotic transitional Soft-X films of the late 1960s. There are no men, only solo girls and girls with girls. Though many sequences are technically explicit, things are shown in passing; close-up genital zooms are brief... penetration with fingers and toys is oblique. It's sort of like being at a swingers club. (Seeing people have sex in real life is surprisingly non-pornographic... you don't see all that much.) The approach does not, however, come off as a tease because you find that you really WANT to see the girls' faces and their whole bodies. Because it's real.