Forget the Porn Scholarship, Now Pornhub is Launching a Fashion Line
Porn.
Love it or hate it, it doesn’t have a great reputation. If you fall into the latter category, Pornhub.com is trying to change your mind. On September 9, the porn company announced that they would launch a new street wear apparel line during New York Fashion Week. The next day, the site hosted a one-day pop-up store selling the “Pornhub NYC Capsule Collection,” which includes exclusive hoodies, hats, t-shirts, and tank tops for men and women alike.
Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said the company is “super psyched” to penetrate the world of fashion for the first time. Every week, 89% of Americans wears a t-shirt at least once, and the website is hardly the first company to try to brand itself with custom apparel.
Pornhub.com is one of the world’s largest pornographic websites, boasting a staggering 78.9 billion video views a year — that’s more than 11 views for every single person in the world. The fashion line is also the second time this September that the company has tried to rebrand itself outside of porn. The company’s “philanthropic arm” recently announced a $25,000 college scholarship. To win, co-eds were encouraged to submit a short video of themselves explaining how they make people happy.
“We work hard to help make millions of people feel happy every single day,” reads a statement from Pornhub Cares. “In turn, we would like to help support the recipient of the first annual Pornhub Cares Scholarship to realize their goal of doing the same.”
Many people saw the scholarship as a thinly veiled invitation for young people to send in erotic videos of themselves. Put less charitably, anti-exploitation groups say it’s a manipulative way to get poor young women to produce free pornography on the company’s behalf.
“These videos follow them the rest of their lives and affect their jobs and relationships in the future,” said Dawn Hawkins, head of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “It’s really unfortunate we’re forcing our kids to sell their bodies to get an education.”
But while anti-pornography activists rail against the negative consequences of pornography, Pornhub continues to draw 60 million visitors every single day. You can check out the company’s new apparel line at their mostly-safe-for-work website.
