When Did We All Start Chasing the Same Look?

Reflections on authenticity, amateur porn, and the aesthetic that took over

When “Amateur” Meant Looking Like Yourself

I’ve been creating adult content since the late 1990s. I was twenty-seven, with A-cup breasts, when I discovered what we called “amateur” XXX back then. It was a revelation. Women and men who looked like your neighbours rather than “down in the valley” porn stars. I realized I could document the exploration of my sexuality without having to conform to the mainstream studio aesthetic. My presentation was simple. I looked like myself. Brunette, no implants, a triangle of pubic hair. It wasn’t radical, but it was the entire point of amateur content. I was me.

And here’s the truth. The alternative aesthetic was never the top seller. The mainstream look dominated adult content then just as it does now. Blonde with large breasts, usually implants, and a small waist. Always. But the amateur world created space for alternatives, and I built a loyal fanbase by looking different. It was smaller, but it was mine. Still is.

I looked like myself. That was the point.

So why do I feel this resentment I can’t quite shake?

The Professionalization of Independence

Here’s what I’ve noticed. We don’t use the word “amateur” anymore. Somewhere along the way, it disappeared from our vocabulary. Now we say “independent” or “creator,” and that shift makes sense from a business perspective. What we once called amateur is now fully professionalized. Independent creators manage their own brands, production schedules, marketing, distribution, and customer relationships. We track analytics, optimize conversion, reinvest earnings, and think strategically about growth. We didn’t stop being amateurs because we got worse at what we do. We stopped because we became better. The word “amateur” no longer fits a group of people running sophisticated, data-driven businesses built around their own labour and image.

More Diversity on the Surface

At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge the ways the landscape has diversified. There is far more visible diversity than there once was. Body shapes and sizes have expanded. Hair colour and length now vary widely, where in the 1990s even a woman with short hair was a rarity and limited to portraying a lesbian. Tattoos, piercings, and alternative styling are common. The age range of creators has widened dramatically, from a scene once dominated by women in their early twenties to one that now includes women in their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond. While opportunities for women of colour and performers from marginalized ethnic backgrounds remain more limited than they should be, there are undeniably more pathways and visibility than existed in the 1990s. On the surface, this looks like genuine aesthetic pluralism, and in many ways it is.

Standardized Faces in a Supposedly Diverse Landscape

But beneath that surface diversity, a different kind of standardization has taken hold. Cosmetic alteration has become normalized across nearly every style, niche, and age group. The Kardashian effect, Instagram face, and Real Housewives aesthetic didn’t remain confined to celebrities or studio porn. They filtered outward until fillers, implants, sculpted proportions, and filtered skin became baseline rather than exceptional. Critics have described this look as uncanny, even eerie, a face that appears carefully assembled rather than lived in. In my observation, this pursuit of perpetual youth often makes women in their twenties look older, while rendering older women generically ageless. The result is not that everyone looks identical, but that visible alteration has become expected, flattening age and individuality at the same time. Even when creators occupy different niches, the shared visual language of modification is hard to miss.

Cosmetic alteration hasn’t made everyone look the same. It’s made alteration itself the baseline.

The Uncanny Flattening of Age

Twenty-five years later, I watch independent creators over forty invest heavily to achieve the exact aesthetic studio performers have always embodied. Huge breasts, tiny waist, and now an exaggerated butt, faces shaped by fillers and procedures that aim for youth but often land in that same uncanny, eerily standardized look. The result is not that these women appear younger, but that age itself becomes visually indistinct. The line between mainstream studio and independent creator has dissolved. Not only in production value or business model, but in physical presentation. And unlike the amateurs of yesteryear, we’re doing it under the banner of “authentic sexual empowerment.”

That’s the part that makes my brain itch.

And it’s not just adult content. Scroll through Instagram. Watch reality TV. Browse any creator platform. Everyone looks the same now. The Kardashians modeled it. Reality TV normalized it. Instagram filters democratized it. And now it’s everywhere. Lifestyle influencers, fitness accounts, mom bloggers, and especially independent adult content creators over forty. The mainstream aesthetic isn’t just dominant. It’s become almost universal.

I want to be clear. I respect every woman’s bodily autonomy. These are smart business decisions. These women looked at the data, saw what gets engagement, and invested accordingly. That’s not delusion. That’s strategy. And it works. The mainstream aesthetic gets clicks. It converts to dollars. I understand the economics completely.

I also want to acknowledge something else. Just because a woman is an experienced model, performer, or creator doesn’t mean she’s immune to the influence of media standards of beauty. We’re not standing outside the culture. We’re swimming in it, often more intensely than most. It’s difficult to hold strong against those standards when you’re earning a living on your image, when your body is your business, when every day you’re confronted with what performs better. The pressure isn’t just external. It becomes internalized. I get that too. I feel it too.

The result is not that these women appear younger, but that age itself becomes visually indistinct.

When Authenticity Starts to Feel Constructed

So here’s my struggle. We’re supposed to be selling sexual authenticity and vitality, especially those of us who are independent creators. We’re supposed to be offering something real, something different from the mainstream studio ideal with their scripts and MILF and step-family concepts.

And yet we’ve all converged on an aesthetic that is clearly, visibly, and expensively artificial. Faces without filler that show natural bone structure have become rare. Bodies that defy basic physics are standard. Skin with texture has disappeared. We’re performing “authentic sexuality” in bodies that announce their construction.

There’s a cognitive dissonance I can’t reconcile.

We’re performing ‘authentic sexuality’ in bodies that announce their construction.

What Happened to the Desire for the Real?

When I see an independent creator my age with a face frozen smooth, breasts that sit like spheres, and a waist-to-hip ratio that can only come from surgical intervention, I’m told this is authentic sexual expression. That this is what independent content looks like now. They’ve always sold fantasy in studio porn. That part was never in question.

What amateur content offered, back when we used that word, was something else entirely. It wasn’t about fantasy in the traditional sense. It made the everyday woman erotic without transforming her into something unrecognizable. The appeal wasn’t that she was unattainable, but that she was familiar. She looked like your neighbour, your coworker, someone you might pass in the grocery store. Sexuality wasn’t staged as spectacle. It was presented as something that could exist in ordinary bodies, in ordinary lives.

Except now, what does that even mean? The everyday woman has access to cosmetic interventions, filters, and photo editing. The married men in our fanbase have wives who also get Botox, fillers, surgeries. The line between performer and civilian has dissolved. I don’t think performers look different from most women anymore, whether they’re making mainstream studio content or independent content.

When everyone is altered, what’s the fantasy? What’s reality? What’s sexy versus what’s just standard?

The appeal wasn’t that she was unattainable. It was that she was recognizable.

The Market Still Exists, Just Smaller

Maybe this is my own baggage. I know logically that my niche still exists. There’s still a market for what I’d call the alternative aesthetic. My fans appreciate that I look like a fifty-something-year-old woman with small natural breasts and a soft tummy. That authenticity is exactly what they’re seeking, and they’re loyal because of it. The market hasn’t disappeared. It’s just smaller than the market for the mainstream aesthetic. That’s capitalism. That’s consumer preference. I get it.

What Did We Lose Along the Way?

But I’m still sitting with this resentment, and I think it’s because the entire premise of what we used to call amateur content has been undermined. It’s one thing to accept that mainstream studio porn would always chase a specific ideal. It’s another to watch independent creators adopt that same ideal wholesale. The space that existed as an alternative has narrowed. We’re told that women choosing cosmetic enhancement is feminist self-determination. We’re told that independent sex work is empowering when we control it. And then the “empowered choice” looks identical across thousands of women, across every platform, across every age group, and exactly like what independent performers once positioned themselves against.

When everyone who creates sexy and sexual content is investing thousands to look like mainstream studio performers in their twenties, what does “independent” even mean anymore? Just that we manage our own content? That we shoot in our bedrooms instead of on sets? The physical distinction has evaporated. The alternative aesthetic that justified the existence of amateur content in the first place has nearly disappeared.

Still Here, Still Alternative

I don’t have solutions here. I have a small, loyal fanbase and a career I’m proud of. But I also have the uneasy feeling that something essential has been lost in translation. The space that once existed for sexual authenticity and alternative aesthetics has been quietly overtaken by the same mainstream ideal it was meant to resist.

Maybe this is what empowerment looks like in 2025 (almost 2026). The freedom to all make the same choice, even when that choice erases the distinctions we built our careers on. The word “amateur” didn’t disappear by accident. It disappeared because what it represented no longer exists.

And I’m still here, looking alternative in a world that’s decided there’s only one way to look.

Maybe this is what empowerment looks like now: the freedom to all make the same choice.

What do you see in your feed? Does the gap between “authentic” and “artificial” bother you, or am I overthinking this? I’d genuinely love to hear your perspective.