Natural Beauty and Nationalism: PornHub Reveals the Biggest Trends in 2025

Every December, Pornhub releases a year in review of search trends, watched categories, and viewing habits. Think of it like Spotify Wrapped… but for sexual desire. In 2025, the data doesn’t just reflect kink or fantasy, it reflects what people actually want, imagine, and connect with at a time when relationships, identity, and technology are all shifting rapidly.

Here’s a look at what stood out this year and what it might mean about how we think about sex, bodies, and connection.

The “Natural” Turn: Ordinary Bodies, Real Desire

One of the biggest themes of 2025? A clear shift toward what Pornhub calls “natural beauty” — searches like natural beauty, real woman, and no make-up grew by double-digit rates.

That tells me something important: people are tired of hyper-produced perfection. The polished, airbrushed aesthetic that dominated pornography for decades is giving way to something more grounded in reality. Viewers are gravitating toward bodies that feel actual, with flaws, lived-in marks, and individuality.

In an age of digital filters and AI-enhanced images, this desire for the “real” is striking. It’s sexual desire pushing back against perfection, a craving for honesty in a world saturated with simulation.

Hot' grandma Charlene Farnsworth says young guys love her

Mature Content Continues to Rise

The enduring popularity of mature categories like MILF and the significant rise in searches for cougar, over 50, and even GILF shows that age isn’t being erased from desire. In fact, it’s becoming more visible, not less.

This doesn’t just reflect one generation’s preferences, it suggests that sexuality at older ages is becoming normalized, not stigmatized. People across age groups are acknowledging that experience, confidence, and real bodies matter in fantasies too.

Locality, Identity, and Familiarity Matter

In Italy, local search terms such as italiano and amatoriale italiano dominated, signaling a return to relatability and cultural context in fantasies. This could also suggest that nationalism in politics could be impacting porn searches. In countries with more right leaning political leaders, there seems to be a connection to getting nationalistic in search.

Rather than exoticizing the distant or hyper-other, users want connection and likeness, sexual content that feels proximate, recognizable, and connected to their own lived experience. In a globalized digital world, there’s a fascinating counter-trend toward the intimate and culturally specific.

Video games like Fortnight have become popular searches on PornHub

Hybrid Content: When Worlds Collide

Another fast-growing trend is the rise of hybrid categories, porn inspired by gaming, podcasts, and online subcultures.

This tells us something deeper about how sexuality is evolving: sex is no longer siloed. It intersects with fandom, media worlds, narrative imagination, role-play, and the communities we build online. People don’t just want static scenes, they want stories, context, character, and connection to other aspects of their digital lives.

Fantasies Reflect Real-World Narratives

Pornhub’s 2025 data also showed an uptick in searches tied to contemporary cultural narratives: power dynamics, office fantasies, even scenarios inspired by scandals or popular events.

This isn’t random. Sexual imagination doesn’t float in a vacuum, it absorbs the stories we’re living through. Where political drama, corporate power, and personal betrayal show up in our newsfeeds, they also show up in our fantasies. That doesn’t mean porn causes these ideas, it means that porn functions like culture: it reflects how we make sense of power, attraction, and taboo.

Regulation, Access, and the Politics of Porn

It’s important to look at these trends in the context of a world increasingly grappling with age verification, regulation, and online safety. In 2025:

• Italy and other European countries are tightening age verification and online safety laws.

• Pornhub and other platforms are facing EU scrutiny under the Digital Services Act for insufficient protections for minors.

• In the U.S., multiple states have passed or proposed age-verification laws, leading sites like Pornhub to block access rather than comply.

These regulatory battles shape who can access porn, how easily they can do it, and what kind of data is required. They remind us that pornography isn’t just about desire, it’s a political issue, linked to privacy, censorship, youth safety, and digital rights.

If there’s a through-line in this year’s Pornhub insights, it’s this:

People want connection, authenticity, and representation, even in fantasy.

Pornography, for all its controversies, remains a cultural mirror. What people search for and watch reflects deeper currents:

• A rejection of perfection

• A desire for realness

• A longing for familiarity over abstraction

• A blending of sexual expression with other cultural identities

In a world where so much is filtered, staged, and artificial, the rise of “natural beauty,” mature performers, and familiar contexts in adult content speaks volumes about how we want to relate to each other, even in private.