Angie Rowntree was looking for aspiring porn stars for her next feature film. Specifically, she was looking for a couple. Even more specifically, a couple over the age of 50. The founder of Sssh.com, one of the Internet’s longest-running porn sites for women, thought that a well-made feature film about real people getting it on later in life was important—and rare.

“For the most part, the porn industry treats older performers like novelty acts,” says Rowntree. “They’re presented as though their sexuality and their desires are something abnormal or unusual, as though older people aren’t supposed to want to have sex…That attitude just bugs the hell out of me.” She also knows that that porn viewers disagree with that idea. At Sssh.com, where she takes suggestions from her site’s members, she says, “I get a huge number of requests for performers over 50.”

So she started writing an as-yet unnamed movie that would include explicit sex, and she put out a casting call for “a couple aged 50+ to star in [Sssh.com’s] newest erotic film.” In a press release about the project, Rowntree elaborated, “Ageism is a problem—not just in adult entertainment, but also in the broader context of film and society in general.”

But in porn, the fetishization of age can be particularly egregious. Recent offerings like Horny Grandmas in Heat #9 (from Channel 69) and Big Tit Anal MILFs #2 (from Evil Angel) don’t exactly set out to break down ageism so much as exploit it—and there are lots of similar titles out there. Porn has never been known for its delicate treatment of marginalized groups—and that clearly includes older performers.

But that doesn’t mean porn isn’t doing important work by providing fantasy scenarios that feature age as a major component. Adult films starring older women—particularly MILFs (That’s “Moms I’d Like to Fuck,” a term popularized by John Cho’s character in 1999’s raunchy comedy American Pie) is perennially popular because, frankly, a lot of people are into the idea.

Erica Lauren, a 62-year-old performer who’s appeared in MILF and Honey, Older and Anal, and Boy Meets Granny (among others), says, “In real life, people tell me that, when they were younger, they had sex with an older woman and it was amazing.” She believes that both the reality and the fantasy of coupling with an older partner hold a certain allure. “Here’s someone who’s experienced, who’s confident, who knows her own body, who knows what she’s doing. And that’s pretty sexy.”

Sexy enough to make MILF porn the second most popular genre of porn worldwide on the biggest porn streaming site in existence, Pornhub. MILF porn is so massively popular that it’s only eclipsed by lesbian porn, and it’s been that way for the entire decade that Pornhub’s been collecting data. In fact, Pornhub reported that search terms referring to moms accounted for four of the top 10 terms men searched for on the site in 2016. That’s a lot of fans of MILFs, moms, stepmoms, and older women in general. Even more illuminating, when men were looking for porn, searches for “teen” came in a distant sixth place, after MILF (#1), stepmom (#2), and mom (#5). (Women’s search terms didn’t show nearly the same interest in their older porn counterparts.)

Nina Hartley, a legendary porn star now in her late fifties, has been performing since the 1980s. She tells me that, in her experience, “all ages” are interested in sexy older porn stars. “Some younger people like older partners, or are just curious,” she says, as well as “age-appropriate partners who feel uneasy watching players who are the same ages as their children.”

As the founder of Evil Angel and an active performer for much of his three and a half decades in the porn industry, John Stagliano has seen it all. “There is a great variety of preferences out there, and some people actually seem to like us old folks,” says the 65-year-old pornographer. “Older women [are appreciated] for their skill and enthusiasm” onscreen—hence the overwhelming popularity of the MILF genre.

But while the term “MILF” originally referred to mothers, these days its popularity has led pornographers to apply it loosely to any female performer who looks like she could have had kids. “You want that more maternal, curvaceous body” in a MILF performer, says writer and director Jacky St. James, whose work includes casting the porn films she makes. “I think it’s more the energy [of the performer], and the more developed body. I’m not going to cast a flat-chested girl as a MILF, probably.”

A quick look through an adult website’s MILF offerings explain her decision: performers cast as MILFs—or labelled that way after the fact by pirates who illegally upload copyrighted content to streaming tube sites like Pornhub—are almost universally well-endowed in the chest area. This gives credence to the idea that they could have, in fact, borne children, and it’s also an indicator of age.

PHOTO: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

Nina Hartley, 58

The larger breasts seen on MILFs are often artificially augmented, and breast implants mean something in porn these days. Kayden Kross, a veteran performer and the cofounder of indie porn company TrenchcoatX, says, “Fake boobs make you a MILF, especially now. In the past, everyone had them, but now they’ve gone out of style, which actually helps in terms of hitting the market you’re looking for. Because a lot of performers who have fake boobs have them from back when it was a popular thing to have them.” Those breasts now effectively label the performers they’re attached to, regardless of what role they’re playing.

The topheaviness of MILF performers is mirrored, Kross believes, by the genre’s popularity. The term, she thinks, has become so ubiquitous that it may be losing its meaning. “Because it’s such a popular search term, porn starts attributing that tag to women who are younger and younger and younger, until you see 24-year-old women being called MILFs,” says Kross. “I was called a MILF for the first time at, I think, age 24” by pirates who reposted her work on a tube site. To date, she’s still never been cast as a MILF—nor has she ever had children. But she’s seen herself tagged as a MILF many times, and sometimes as a teen, too. These categories are supposed to be polar opposites in porn, but they’re both so popular that pirates will apply them to nearly anything just to get more clicks.

But the fact that “MILF” labelling scores clicks is a symptom of just how badly consumers want to see older bodies in their smut. You can call performers in their mid-twenties “MILFs” these days, but fans of mature women aren’t interested in younger stand-ins. The proof is in the search terms: Lisa Ann is perhaps the most famous MILF performer of all time and she’s been retired from making porn for over two and a half years—but she was still the most searched-for porn star in the world as of the end of 2016, according to Pornhub.

The pervasiveness of the “MILF” tag could actually be an indication that it’s on its way out. “Sexuality isn’t this necessarily fixed thing,” says Kross. “The things we’re into, in terms of search terms? They come in trends. There are waves.” And the MILF wave may have crested. “‘MILF’ isn’t going to fade because we get over it, because I think people are always looking for women who weren’t portrayed as teenagers. But I think ‘MILF’ is going to fade because, as we keep washing this category out by going younger with the tag, it’s going to eventually be meaningless.”

Perhaps pornographers have seen the end of MILF coming, because they’re now increasingly rebranding MILFs as stepmoms. Porn that plays with incestuous themes—alternately called “fauxcest,” “taboo relations,” and “family films” in the industry—is hugely popular right now. Directors are careful to label the films as stepfamily members, not blood relatives, but the popularity of stepmoms and their younger stepsons and stepdaughters belies the deep-seated draw of such a taboo subject.

Jacky St. James, whose oeuvre includes Sex Is All Relatives and My New Hot Stepmother, says family films are a sure thing from a production standpoint. “With age, it really comes down to the fact that everything is about niches in porn,” she says. “So when you can marry niches—you’re hitting the MILF bracket, you’re hitting the young girl bracket, you’re hitting the family bracket—it increases your odds of selling.”

Fauxcest porn has its ick factor and its detractors, of course, but it’s also providing work for a lot of older porn actors. “I can play the mom, and I can certainly play the grandmother,” says Erica Lauren. “It just opens up more opportunities. There are actresses who I’ve been their mother, and I’ve also been their grandmother. It’s great!”

PHOTO: Getty Images

PHOTO: Getty Images

Nina Hartley agrees. “Now that ‘MILF’ is a fetish of its own, there is more work to be had,” she reports. That’s wonderful for women like her, who have been in the industry since before older women were a popular niche category. “Now, some women are ‘aging in place,’” she says. “Me [and] Julia Ann, to name just a couple.” Performers in this small group, she believes, haven’t just taken advantage of trends like MILF and fauxcest, but have actively driven taste in erotic entertainment by bringing their fans along with them as they’ve aged. “There’s no doubt,” says Hartley, ”that the fact that I’ve never retired and have worked continually helped to raise age acceptance” in porn.

Perhaps due to the work of industry stalwarts like Hartley, there is also a growing number of women who start working in porn later in life, like Erica Lauren. “I got into the business right when I was about to turn 50,” she tells me. She responded to an agency’s casting call and was booked immediately, and she’s been working in porn for thirteen years now. As an older performer, she says, “You do get work! You have less competition doing these things because most think of it as a young person’s game. Once you get older, if you can still rock it and still do it, and there’s not that many people you’re up against!”

Jacky St. James agrees: “There are maybe fifteen or twenty MILF performers working in the industry now that I would hire” for the films she creates. And those performers are in extremely high demand.

But it’s not just MILFs and stepmoms accounting for older porn performers, of course. Fauxcest movies are also providing a pronounced niche for older men. There’s no “DILF” category to mirror the ever-popular MILF, but older men in porn now find themselves in demand as stepdads. It’s a novel situation for the men of straight porn who, for decades, largely evaded being typecast.

“Older guys [are appreciated] for their wisdom, experience, and skill. That can work in porn,” says John Stagliano. Mature men have always been able to get work, he reports, “because they can act and reliably perform. It is not just performing, but also charisma with the girls that counts, and older performers have built that reputation over the years.”

PHOTO: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Lisa Ann, 45

Being a male porn star isn’t easy. Before the advent of erectile dysfunction drugs, it was extremely rare for a cisgender man to be able to get or maintain an erection on camera in front of a director and crew, and even rarer for that man to be able to perform up to the standards that porn demands. Kayden Kross tells me tales of male performers getting jobs in porn after beating out literally hundreds of other hopefuls at casting calls. Because there were so few men who could do the job, Kross says, the attitude was always: “If you can get a hard-on and do a scene, I don’t care what you look like. You will have work.”

But today, with erectile dysfunction drugs relatively easy to come by, the playing field has been leveled. And with fauxcest films demanding performances by young men as well as old, the industry has gotten more competitive for guys. “Now, they’re casting based on how the guy looks, then immediately popping him Viagra,” says Kross.

To stay relevant in an industry with so many younger men who can pop a pill to do the job, says Jacky St. James, “Older performer are starting to use Caverject”—an erectile dysfunction drug that’s injected directly into the penis. “What ends up happening is, over time, it creates permanent nerve damage.”

The fauxcest films that have driven performers to such extremes are just another trend (“It’s been done to death,” says Rowntree), but it’s nevertheless creating casting opportunities. With men in straight porn now being typecast as “young guys” and “dads”—like their female counterparts have been for decades—it’s more important than ever for porn stars to know their niche, and get comfortable with it.

Erica Lauren laughs about the wild “granny” titles she’s been featured in. “They do kind of poke fun, and you do have to go along with it,” she says. “And I get it. It’s what sells.”

Not everyone chuckles about being shoved into a niche, though. The terminology can feel limiting, derogatory, and just plain gross. Still, Jacky St. James tells me, “You’ve got to kind of embrace it if you’re going to be in this business, because this business is about categorizing people, unfortunately.” In porn, she says, “You have to really know who you are and just go for it, and market yourself that way. Because ultimately that’s what is going to get you more work.”

But Kayden Kross disagrees with the inevitability of niches. Consumers, she believes, “see something they like, and they generally don’t know what it is until porn gives them a name for it. So porn gives them a name for it, and then they search it. It’s this feedback loop, where porn fans are searching it, so porn makes more of it, but porn created it in the first place.”

The company that Kross co-founded with fellow performer Stoya—Trenchcoatx—is aiming to undermine and possibly dismantle this reductive loop. Their website doesn’t use categories for performers, period. There are no MILFs, no grannies, and no teens. Just porn. “We’re not selling on any of these terms that viewers know to search for in order to find what they’re looking for,” she says. “What I realize I’m really making is an emphasis on intimacy. Intimacy is striking a chord with the people I’m doing it in front of.”

No matter what age the performers might be, that emphasis on intimacy is working and Rowntree, who runs Sssh.com from her studio in New Hampshire, has set out to prove it. Her casting call for aspiring porn stars over 50 ended on July 31st. “The response to the casting call,” she tells me, “has been in line with what we expected—not a tidal wave of responses, but very sincere.”

The erotic film hopefuls over 50 that she heard from, she says, were “from couples looking to broaden their own horizons, as well as challenge society’s expectations.” She’ll now be interviewing each couple and educating them on what it means to be forever labeled a “porn star,” before choosing her couple and beginning the filming process. “I do think [the film] will be a hit with Sssh fans and members,” she says, “just based on the enormous number of requests we’ve received to cast and feature performers in this age bracket.”

The perennial popularity of porn starring older performers, whether it’s labeled that way or not, suggests that she’s probably right.

Lynsey G. is a veteran porn journalist and author of the book Watching Porn: And Other Confessions of an Adult Entertainment Journalist. As part of our Summer of Sex, she’ll be taking a look at the ways pornography informs and subverts social issues. Her first installment, on mainstream porn and race, can be found here.

Lead image: Getty Images