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from www.dailymail.co.uk – It has been a long time since pornography was confined to the top shelves of newsstands and the seedy nightclubs of damp, dirty back alleys.

In a digital age where our private lives and ideas are splattered across a boundless platform of information swapping, nothing seems to have a hiding place, least of all sex which has become as commonplace as an Oreo cookie.

To what extent the ubiquity of sex and pornography in the public domain has influenced our perception of sexiness is a subject that filmmakers, Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, explore in their new film, Sexy Baby: A Documentary About Sexiness and The Cyber Age.

A journalist and a photographer, the two women were compelled to make the movie after Ms Gradus had witnessed an awkward scene take place between college kids in a Coconut Grove, Florida club.

She explained to Huffington Post: ‘Girls were dancing on [poles], and their classmates and other guys were putting tips in their shorts. It was total stripper behavior.’

But something didn’t sit right with her and when she showed photographs she had taken of the action to her colleague, Ms Gradus, the journalist recognised the incongruity.

‘I noticed in one particular picture [that] the girls were really trying hard, dancing and writhing on the pole and doing all sorts of stuff to get the guys’ attention, and the guys were a little bit checked out,’ Bauer said. ‘It wasn’t as titillating as it should have been, and that really intrigued me.’

This revelation, that such erotic behaviour had become so banal, formed the basis of their research into how the saturation of sex in the public sphere, thanks to social networking and the internet in general, has changed the way women and younger generations feel about it.

The documentary explores these themes as it follows the lives of three protagonists of what Ms Gradus and Ms Bauer refer to as Generation XXX.

Laura is a 22-year-old teacher from North Carolina who is seeking labiaplasty, Nichole [aka Nikita Kash, pictured] is a 32-year-old former porn star from Florida and Winnie is a 12-year-old school girl from Manhattan.

While they all inhabit a world in which ‘privates are public and extreme is the new norm,’ their reactions to it are markedly different.

Laura, a sweet and seemingly impressionable young woman, explains why she chose to have an operation to reduce the size of her labia in a clip of the feature movie that just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

‘Instead of “I’m going to hit you on the playground because I’m telling you in my way that I like you,” it’s “Let me slap you silly because I saw it in porn”‘

‘I just figure, it would be huge turn on to a guy to look like a porn star,’ she says.

Ms Bauer recalled how she and Ms Gradus followed Laura as she partied with her friends, hoping to get a better sense of how she related to her body: ‘There was an amateur night at the club, and I guess every couple of weeks they give away a boob job. Laura and her friends were all sitting around saying, “That’s so cool.”‘

Ms Gradus added: ‘There is not a lot of questioning that happens. Big boobs are the thing, being sexy is the thing, looking maybe a little more like a porn star is the thing, and she didn’t really question it. It was just sort of like, “I want to fit in and feel sexy.”‘

On the other end of the spectrum is Winnifred, a savvy 12-year-old from New York who accepts that the Facebook and pop culture encourages an ‘anything goes’ attitude, but when it comes to porn, is not that interested and has yet to really watch any.

‘Your Facebook profile is not necessarily who your are, it’s more like who you want to be,’ she explains to the camera. ‘We make ourselves seem like… down to f***. We make ourselves seems like we’re up for anything. And in a way all of this internet stuff kind of traps you. You’ve started an alter ego that has to be maintained and has to be real in a way.

‘So yeah, I mean it does kind of shape how you end up and how you actually are in real life.’

But she confesses: ‘I guess I’m the kind of person who doesn’t have the guts and doesn’t really care enough to look at porn. I know what sex is, I don’t need to see it in front of me played out.’

For her part, Nichole, who is trying to break out of the industry, sees ‘porn sex as sport f***ing’ and blames the way the mainstream has been ‘completely infiltrated’ by adult entertainment on the digital age.

Sexiness now, say the film-making duo is ‘more computer-focused, Facebook-focused. Like, Like, Like – 20 Likes, 30 Likes, 40 Likes, wow, I’m a superstar – versus I’m just going to pass you a note in class and admire you.

‘Instead of “I’m going to hit you on the playground because I’m telling you in my way that I like you,” it’s “Let me slap you silly because I saw it in porn.”‘