Review: Netflix’s “Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On” Episode One: “Women On Top”

Directed by Rashida Jones, this episode features women in production in the industry. Holly Randall and Erika Lust get to represent all of the women who function in production roles in porn. There are a ton, ton, ton more women working in the industry, and having only these two is not a good representation of the agenda and POV of every woman behind a camera. 

Holly Randall complains about how her budgets have shrunk because of all of the content theft here on the internet and how that has shrunk her budgets. We get to see bits of Jada Stevens being outfitted and trained to do fencing as a warrior princess for Digital Playground's "Quest", and we get to see Holly Randall look at wardrobe options for Stevens while production assistant/AVN Hall of Famer Kylie Ireland stands around in the background. Holly's mother/porn legend Suze Randall shares stories of being a pioneer and how she managed to get on staff as a Playboy photographer in a job that millions of men wanted and thought they could do.

On the set of "Quest", Stevens mocks the outfit she is wearing as "ridiculous" and nearly injures a production assistant with her sword while Derrick Pierce giggles nearby. Holly Randall talks about being asked to shoot harder stuff and says she won't shoot acts she finds degrading to women like "swirlies", the head in the toilet type of scene. AVN Hall of Famer Lisa Ann reminisces with the Randalls about life before "insane porn antics" and the three talk about the rough financial times that Holly is in and how the stigma of doing porn will follow her to anything else. To show she's not, Holly is then shown shooting stills of Dani Daniels with Ramon Nomar. "Swirlies" come up again in the chat with Ann like these are happening all over all the new porn out there which is just not true.

From there, we head to Barcelona where feminist pornographer Erika Lust addresses an audience about how more women need to experience great porn and she expresses how mainstream porn "isn't good enough" for her needs. "The people shooting [mainstream porn] are more interested in punish-fucking women than showing a good sexual encounter," Lust broadly states. Clips of Evil Angel's "Fetish Fuck Dolls 6" directed by the late Jake Malone, a Bang Bros scene with Nacho Vidal and Reality Kings' "All About Abby" and an uncredited stat claiming that one in three women can't find porn that they like to watch gets flashed on the screen.

She complains about the lack of women working in pornography as a whole (uh, hi, I'm right here along with a bunch of other women) and we get to see her working on some of her "Xconfessions" series. We get to meet her husband/business partner Pablo who makes Lust laugh by referring to their sex life as "not that special" and we get to see Lust be infuriated by having her porn run on a tube site next to porn from ExxxtraSmall.com where a banner cheerfully expresses that teens get destroyed on that site. We get to see Lust shoot "My Dream Piano Concert" for her "Xconfessions" series where a beautiful woman named Monica makes her porn debut. There, Lust complains that mainstream porn actors have too much trouble getting the emotions she wants out of them but then tells performers on her set to fake orgasms which isn't something anyone enjoys doing all that much. Lust and Monica laugh after Lust decides that Monica's male partner doesn't need to get off in their scene. Uh, orgasms are one of the best things ever and denying one to a guy who did everything he was told on set just isn't cool. If denying anyone their orgasms is women being "on top," just put me on the bottom forever.