By PATRICK JANECZKO
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Apparently we are still the city on a hill. America’s paradoxical take on porn and sex echoes through the voice of a media with less and less to say.

Last week, rumor broke that  a student at  Duke University was working as a porn star.   The students of Duke conducted a “witch hunt” to identify the heretic,  an action expected of any student body  attending one of the nation’s most prestigious universities.   The students’ investigative methods (following various leads on Facebook and Twitter)  proved successful, and our Hester Prynne was forced into the light.

“Lauren,” the name she uses to protect her identity because of increasing online harassment, became aware that her secret was known when she began receiving friend requests from random male students on Facebook and Twitter.

Understandably, Lauren was horrified about the negative attention she was receiving which included threats, suggestive comments and behavior that can only be labeled as criminal harassment.

Notably and bravely, Lauren gave consent to The Chronicle, Duke University’s student newspaper, to interview her to, in her words, “start a dialogue” regarding the ethical implications and social stigma attached to a profession in pornography. She maintains that her choice to do pornography not only allows her to control her sexuality but also that the proceeds go towards her education.   Duke’s tuition is over $60,000 a year, roughly a third more than the average American worker makes in a year.  The ridiculously high numbers on a tuition bill are something all college students understand. So what separates Lauren’s method of paying for her dream school from delivering pizzas, spending summers lifeguarding and manning the cash register at the local grocery store?  Sex.

Sex is everywhere.   Sex is on TV, in magazines and on that enormous billboard in Times Square. American culture is a sexualized culture. Gone are the days when a boy becomes a man on his wedding night. College life is defined, at least by the media, as the “hookup” culture where casual encounters are the only encounters. Whether or not this is a good thing is not the subject at hand.

Strangely enough, we are also the slut shamers.  When America embraced its “sex sells” attitude, it did not bother to adopt the free-thinking open-mindedness that should have come with it.   Instead, a twisted love child between American “bare leg” pop culture and the Scarlet Letter Puritan principles this country was founded on was born.

As a result, our society follows a set of strange rules when it comes to explicit sexuality.

Posing for nude photos has become the new trend for celebrities. Sports Illustrated publishes an annual issue of nothing but models posing in bathing suits that get smaller and smaller every year, and Cosmopolitan sells their magazines by proclaiming that they have the best tips for the bedroom.

Yet, porn stars are labeled, insulted and then promptly dismissed by a media that has likely already found a new Hester Prynne to chastise for her ungodliness.  No one seems to bother to stand up for Lauren, a young woman trying to pay for school, whose future may now be compromised.

This was never a story, at least not in regard to the obligation a publication has to its readers.   It neither improves their lives nor informs them of the key events, people or trends that could impact their lives.

But it does entertain, at least in the debased way that the suffering of other people does: Poor Lauren. She got into her dream school only to find that it does not want her anymore.

The sleaziness in this story is not the pornography.  It is the editor picking up this story and thinking, “this will sell.”

After all, sex sells.

Patrick Janeczko, FCRH ’17, is an undeclared major from East Rockaway, N.Y.