YourMVP.net

A month and over 100,000 site hits after launch, YourMVP is going strong. We're carving out an audience we are proud of, and one we feel admires and appreciates us for what we are. We provide an array of content not to be found anywhere else. Thank you to all that have supported us--reading our features, telling friends and family, bookmarking the site and returning to see the latest updates.

At the same time, we're faced with misperceptions and ignorance from people who refuse to take more than a casual glance at the site before casting their judgment. Over the last several weeks, staff members have been routinely contacted by individuals who label our site "porn." Many staffers are concerned that our initial-- and lasting-- mission to produce an interesting, informative and unique blend of adult-oriented features, reviews and commentary is being overshadowed by this false perception. All are uneasy about the "porn" label and the fact that people are applying it to us.

Am I bothered by it? As Editor-in-Chief, the person responsible for guiding the public's perception of our product, of course I am. The last thing I want is my mother to hear about her son running a porn site. The fact of the matter is, however, that I'm not.

YourMVP is certainly an adult-leaning entertainment destination. It is that way by design and for a reason. We feel that the mature man can balance both a professional and personal side, that he can be equally interested in sports, world events, and what is going on in the entertainment industry-- including the adult entertainment industry.

This makes it easy, at a glance, to misinterpret the site's content and purpose. Since we refuse to deny our audience's interest in sex and beautiful women, we visually market the look for men. But it's far from a porn site. Even members of the adult entertainment community, such as this update's cover story on renowned Internet pin-up girl Danni Ashe, never take a foray into raunch or even particularly distasteful material.

Instead, YourMVP interviews all celebrities, regardless of their background, with the same approach--asking questions we feel our readers, "normal, average, everyday guys," would want to know. In fact, the content appears to have a cross-gender appeal that has garnered us a number of comments such as "It's not what I expected--I actually enjoyed the articles," from female readers.

Were we porn, we would feature sexually explicit photos, not simply scantily clad images that could be found on the cover of any supermarket tabloid. We would fill our site with "Penthouse Forum"-style details instead of "Ask Rina" openly and honestly discussing sexuality and relationships. We would be detailing and displaying sex acts, full-scale nudity and other . . . this is the key, folks . . . pornography or pornographic material. Not surprisingly, we're doing none of this--and yet still we acquire the label.

Perhaps we'll have to remember a valuable lesson Ashe says she's learned through her years in both adult entertainment and the Internet industries. For most people, things are black and white. That's fine with me. If people want to think we're porn, I have no problem with that . . . look what it's done for Ashe. And, from a publisher's standpoint, there's always that age-old cliché "What's black and white and read all over?" I can only hope that, eventually, the response might be YourMVP.