A group of adult people.

An adult is a human being or living organism that is of relatively mature age, typically associated with sexual maturity and the attainment of reproductive age. In human context, the term has other subordinate meanings associated with social and legal concepts; for example, a legal adult is a legal concept for a person who has attained the age of majority and is therefore regarded as independent, self-sufficient, and responsible (contrast with "minor"). Adulthood can be defined in terms of physiology, psychological adult development, law, personal character, or social status.

These different aspects of adulthood are often inconsistent and contradictory. A person may be biologically an adult, and have adult behavior but still be treated as a child if they are under the legal age of majority. Conversely one may legally be an adult but possess none of the maturity and responsibility that may define adult character.

An event relating to the oncoming of adulthood is Coming of age, which encompasses passing a series of tests to demonstrate that a person is prepared for adulthood, or reaching a specified age, sometimes in conjunction with demonstrating preparation. Most modern societies determine legal adulthood based on reaching a legally specified age without requiring a demonstration of physical maturity or preparation for adulthood.

Some propose that moving into adulthood involves an emotional structuring of denial, suggesting this process becomes necessary to cope with one's own behavior, especially in uncomfortable situations, and also the behavior of others.^{[citation needed]}

Biological adulthood[link]

Historically and cross-culturally, adulthood has been determined primarily by the start of puberty (the appearance of secondary sex characteristics such as menstruation in women, ejaculation in men, and pubic hair in both sexes). In the past, a person usually moved from the status of child directly to the status of adult, often with this shift being marked by some type of coming-of-age test or ceremony.^[1]

Most medical and general English dictionaries define childhood as the period from infancy to puberty, thus historically adulthood began with puberty. After the social construct of adolescence was created, adulthood split into two forms: biological adulthood and social adulthood. Thus, there are now two primary forms of adults: biological adults (people who have attained reproductive ability, are fertile, or who evidence secondary sex characteristics) and social adults (people who are recognized by their culture and/or law as being adults). Depending on the context, adult can indicate either definition.

Although few or no established dictionaries provide a definition for the two word term biological adult, the first definition of adult in multiple dictionaries includes "the stage of the life cycle of an animal after reproductive capacity has been attained".^[2][3] Thus, the base definition of the word adult is the period beginning at puberty. Although this is the primary definition of the base word adult, the two word term biological adult stresses or clarifies that the original definition, based on the beginning of puberty, is being used (that is, the organism has matured to the biologically important point of being able to reproduce).

Although there is no scientific agreement on when physical maturation completes, in modern society social adulthood somewhat corresponds to the completion of physical maturation. Because the term adult is most often used without the adjective social or biological, and since the term is frequently used to refer to social adults, some writers have taken the meaning of the two word phrase biological adult to begin at the end of physical maturation rather than the onset of puberty.

In modern developed countries, puberty and therefore biological adulthood generally begins around 10 or 11 years of age for girls and 12 or 13 years of age for boys, though this will vary from person to person. ^[4][5]

Legal adulthood[link]

Legally it means that one can engage in a contract. The same or a different minimum age may be applicable to, for example, parents losing parenting rights and duties regarding the person concerned, parents losing financial responsibility, marriage, voting, having a job, serving in the military, buying/possessing firearms (if legal at all), driving, traveling abroad, involvement with alcoholic beverages (if legal at all), smoking, sex, gambling (both lottery and casino) being a prostitute or a client of a prostitute (if legal at all), being a model or actor in pornography, etc. Admission of a young person to a place may be restricted because of danger for that person, concern that the place may lead the person to immoral behavior, and/or because of the risk that the young person causes damage (for example, at an exhibition of fragile items).

One can distinguish the legality of acts of a young person, and of enabling a young person to carry out that act, by selling, renting out, showing, permitting entrance, participating, etc. There may be distinction between commercially and socially enabling. Sometimes there is the requirement of supervision by a legal guardian, or just by an adult. Sometimes there is no requirement, but just a recommendation.

With regard to pornography one can distinguish:

• being allowed inside an adult establishment
• being allowed to purchase pornography
• being allowed to possess pornography
• another person being allowed to sell, rent out, or show the young person pornography, see disseminating pornography to a minor
• being a pornographic actor: rules for the young person, and for other people, regarding production, possession, etc. (see child pornography)

With regard to films with violence, etc.:

• another person being allowed to sell, rent out, or show the young person a film, a cinema being allowed to let a young person (under 18) enter

The legal definition of entering adulthood usually varies between ages 16–21, depending on the region in question. Some cultures in Africa define adult at age 13.

According to Jewish tradition, adulthood is reached at age 13 (the age of the Bar Mitzvah), for Jewish boys, for example, are expected to demonstrate preparation for adulthood by learning the Torah and other Jewish practices. The Christian Bible and Jewish scripture has no age requirement for adulthood or marrying, which includes engaging in sexual activity. The age of consent for sexual relations in the Vatican is 13,^{[citation needed]} the age when many girls achieve menses, and are thus reproductive and therefore physically capable of marriage and childbirth. However, the Vatican does not allow sex outside of marriage.^[6] The 1983 Code of Canon Law states, "A man before he has completed his sixteenth year of age, and likewise a woman before she has completed her fourteenth year of age, cannot enter a valid marriage".^[7] According to The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman, the Christian Church of the Middle Ages considered the age of accountability, when a person could be tried and even executed as an adult, to be age 7.

In most of the world, including most of the United States, parts of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Wales), India and China, the legal adult age is 18 (historically 21) for most purposes, with some notable exceptions:

1. The United Kingdom: Scotland (16)
2. British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Yukon Territory in Canada; Nebraska and Alabama in The United States, and South Korea (19)
3. Indonesia and Japan (20)

See also[link]

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

Linda Susan Boreman (January 10, 1949 – April 22, 2002), better known by her stage name Linda Lovelace, was an American pornographic actress who was famous for her performance of deep throat fellatio in the enormously successful 1972 hardcore porn film Deep Throat. She later denounced her pornography career, claiming that she had been forced into it by her first husband, and for a while became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement, though she would subsequently accuse Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon of financial exploitation.

Early life[link]

Boreman was born in the Bronx, New York.^[1] She was born into an unhappy working class family, the daughter of John and Dorothy Boreman. Her mother was a harsh, domineering disciplinarian and her father, a policeman, was seldom around.^[2] She attended private Catholic schools including Saint John the Baptist (Yonkers, New York) and Maria Regina High School (Hartsdale, New York). She was nicknamed "Miss Holy Holy" in high school because she kept her dates at a safe distance.^[3] When Boreman was 16, her family moved to Florida after her father retired from the New York City police force.^{[dead link][4]}

While living in New York, Boreman was involved in a serious car accident requiring her to undergo a blood transfusion; the transfusion would lead to future health problems.^[3]

Career[link]

Pornography[link]

While recovering at her parents' home, Boreman became involved with Chuck Traynor. According to Boreman, Traynor was violent and controlling. She said he forced her to move to New York, where he became her manager, pimp and husband.

Boreman was soon performing as Linda Lovelace in hardcore "loops", short 8mm silent films made for peep shows. She starred in a 1971 bestiality film titled Dog Fucker or alternately Dogarama. She later denied appearing in the film, until several of the original loops proved otherwise.^[3][5]

In 1972, Boreman starred in Deep Throat, in which she famously performed the film's eponymous act. The film achieved surprising and unprecedented popularity among mainstream audiences, and even a review in The New York Times.^[6][7]

[edit] Media career after Deep Throat

In 1974 Boreman starred in the R-rated sequel Deep Throat II, which a critic writing in Variety described as "the shoddiest of exploitation film traditions, a depressing fast buck attempt to milk a naive public".^[2]

In 1975 Boreman left Traynor for David Winters, who produced her in the 1976 film Linda Lovelace for President, which saw her on the campaign trail following a cross-country bus route mapped out in the shape of a penis, and co-starring with Mickey Dolenz. However, her career as an actress did not flourish, and her film appearances add up to only five hours of screen time.^[2] In her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, Lovelace maintained that those films used leftover footage from Deep Throat, however, she frequently contradicted this statement. She also posed for Playboy, Bachelor, and Esquire magazines between 1973 and 1974.^{[volume & issue needed]}

During the mid-1970s she also took to smoking large quantities of marijuana combined with painkillers, but after her second marriage and the birth of her two children, she left the pornographic film business and found some happiness and stability.^[2]

In 1974, she published two "pro-porn" autobiographies, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace.

In 1976, she was chosen to play the title role in the erotic movie Laure. However, according to the producer Ovidio G. Assonitis, Lovelace was, "very much on drugs" at the time. She had already signed for the part when she decided that "God had changed her life," refused to do any nudity, and even objected to a statue of the Venus de Milo on the set because of its exposed breasts. She was replaced by French actress Annie Belle.^[8]

Charges against Chuck Traynor[link]

In her suit to divorce Traynor, she claimed that he forced her into pornography at gunpoint, and that in Deep Throat itself, bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. She made the assertion that her husband "would force her to do these things by pointing an M-16 rifle at her head." Boreman wrote in her autobiography that her marriage had been plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution and private pornography. Some of her assertions have been challenged, but Andrea Dworkin stated that the results of polygraph tests administered to Boreman support her assertions.^[9]

Lovelace wrote:

When in response to his suggestions I let him know I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and told him I intended to leave, [Traynor] beat me up physically and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner, I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in the door. He slept on top of me at night, he listened to my telephone calls with a .45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I was beaten physically and suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer. My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. Traynor. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn't go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me, they were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed...The lives of my family were threatened.^[10]

On the second commentator's DVD track of the documentary Inside Deep Throat, Deep Throat 2 co-star Andrea True said Traynor was a sadist and was disliked by the Deep Throat 2 cast.

In Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne's 2005 book The Other Hollywood, witnesses, including Gerard Damiano, the film's director, state Traynor beat Boreman behind closed doors, but they also question her credibility. Adult-film actress Gloria Leonard is quoted as saying, "This was a woman who never took responsibility for her own [...] choices made; but instead blamed everything that happened to her in her life on porn."

Eric Danville, a journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint. In The Other Hollywood, Eric Edwards, Boreman's co-star in the bestality films and other loops that featured Linda urinating on her sex partners, disputes this claim. According to Edwards, Boreman was a sexual "super freak" who had no boundaries and was a pathological liar.

Boreman maintained she received no money for Deep Throat, and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor.^[11]

Marchiano marriage[link]

In 1974, Boreman married Larry Marchiano, a cable installer who later owned a dry wall business. They had two children: Dominic, in 1977, and Lindsay, in 1980. For a while, marriage and particularly motherhood brought her some stability and happiness.^[2] In 1990, his business went bankrupt and the family moved to Colorado.^[4] In The Other Hollywood, Boreman painted a largely unflattering picture of Marchiano, claiming he drank to excess, verbally abused her children, and was occasionally violent with her. They divorced in 1996. However, the divorce was civil and they remained in contact with each other for the remainder of her life.

Anti-pornography activism[link]

With the publication of Ordeal in 1980, Boreman joined the feminist anti-pornography movement. At a press conference announcing Ordeal, she leveled many accusations against Traynor in public for the first time. She was joined by supporters Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and members of Women Against Pornography. She spoke out against pornography, stating that she had been abused and coerced. She spoke before feminist groups, at colleges, and before government hearings on pornography.

In 1986, Boreman published Out of Bondage, a memoir focusing on her life after 1974. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in New York City, stating, "When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time." Following Boreman's testimony for the Meese Commission, she gave lectures on college campuses, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices in the pornography industry.^[11][12]

In The Other Hollywood, Boreman said she felt "used" by the anti-pornography movement. "Between Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon, they've written so many books, and they mention my name and all that, but financially they've never helped me out. When I showed up with them for speaking engagements, I'd always get five hundred dollars or so. But I know they made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else."^[13]

Last years[link]

Boreman contracted hepatitis from the blood transfusion she received after her 1970 car accident.^[14] She underwent a liver transplant in 1987.^[15] In 1996, Boreman divorced Larry Marchiano. In 2000, she was featured on the E! Entertainment Network's E! True Hollywood Story. The following year she did a pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show. She said she did not object to the magazine shoot because "there's nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it's done with taste."^[12]

On April 3, 2002, Boreman was involved in yet another serious automobile accident, suffering massive trauma and internal injuries. On April 22, 2002, she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 53. Marchiano and their two children were present when she died.^[16] Boreman was interred at Parker Cemetery in Parker, Colorado.^[17][18]

Legacy[link]

The coordination system Linda was named after Linda Lovelace as a play on words because of the programming language Ada, which was named after computer pioneer Ada Lovelace.^[19]

Boreman's participation in Deep Throat was among the topics explored in the 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat.

Indie pop singer/songwriter Marc with a C released a 2008 album entitled Linda Lovelace for President, which contained a song of the same name.

In 2008, Lovelace: A Rock Musical, based on two of Boreman's four autobiographies, debuted at the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles. The score and libretto were written by Anna Waronker of the 1990s rock group that dog. and Charlotte Caffey of the '80s girl group, the Go-Gos.

As of 2011, two biographical films on Boreman are scheduled to begin production.^[20][21] The first, entitled Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story,^[20][21][22] starring Malin Åkerman, was scheduled to be directed by Matthew Wilder and produced by Chris Hanley and to begin filming in early 2011.^[23][24] The second, titled Lovelace, is filming as of January 2012, with Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman directing, Amanda Seyfried as Lovelace, and Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck Traynor. Also starring are Eric Roberts, Sharon Stone, Wes Bentley, Chris Noth^[25] and Sarah Jessica Parker as Gloria Steinem.^[26]

Tina Yothers, who as a child actress co-starred on the television sitcom Family Ties, was cast as Lovelace in Lovelace: The Musical.^[27]

Partial filmography[link]

• Dogarama (1971)
• Sex for Sale (short) (uncredited) (1971)
• Peeverted (short) (1971)
• Knothole (short) (1971)
• Gomorrahy (short) (uncredited) (1972)
• Deep Throat (1972)
• The Confessions of Linda Lovelace (1974)
• Deep Throat Part II (1974) as Nurse Lovelace
• Linda Lovelace for President (1975)

Books[link]

Boreman has been the subject of five biographies, four authored or co-authored by her:

• Inside Linda Lovelace (1974), Linda Lovelace, ISBN 0-902826-11-5
• The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace (1974), Linda Lovelace, ISBN 0-523-00394-3
• Ordeal (1980), Linda Lovelace and Mike McGrady, ISBN 0-517-42791-5
• Out of Bondage (1986), Linda Lovelace and Mike McGrady, ISBN 0-425-10650-0
• The Complete Linda Lovelace (2001), Eric Danville, ISBN 0-9705502-0-0

Other books:

• Jack Stevenson (ed): Fleshpot – Cinema's Sexual Myth Makers & Taboo Breakers (Headpress, England 2000): Features an interview with her.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Linda Lovelace ultimate memorabilia website at www.lindalovelace.org
• Linda Lovelace at Lukeisback.com
• Linda Lovelace (1949–2002) @Arlindo-Correia.com – Collection of Linda Lovelace obituaries and other articles.
• Linda Lovelace at Find a Grave
• Linda Lovelace at the Internet Movie Database
• Linda Lovelace at the Internet Adult Film Database
• Linda Lovelace at the Adult Film Database