Dawn Porter: Free Lover

Oh god its so late again. Forgive me unforgiving peoples of the internet.

Here at YourFace we love a bit of Dawn Porter. She’s our favourite ‘investigative’ journalist who jumps in feet first into all sorts of alternative lifestyles. We’ve seen her indulging her Sapphic side, getting her kit off and looking at the joys of pregnancy (all previously reviewed here), but now in the first of a four part new series of documentaries, Dawn visits a free love commune and learns all about polygymy.

Basically Dawn goes to a freaky German love commune where they all hang out (sometimes not just figuratively) and have multiple partners. So far so good. What I really love about Dawn is that she really gets into her documentaries and after some prudishness about having more than one lover she decides that she’ll immerse herself in the lifestyle. And immerse herself she does. In hot oil. With some naked germans.

Sounds hot? It wasn’t, but I admire her guts. Dawn, despite her reservations, tried to experience the polyamorous lifestyle as fairly as possible and didn’t once fall into the trap of focussing far too much on all the shagging that was going on.

I don’t really feel the need to explain the whole programme as suffice to say Dawn didn’t decide to take multiple lovers and ended by firmly stating that she is a one person woman. What I really think deserves the most mention is Dawn herself. I’m very rarely impressed by journalists trying to ‘shock’ and Dawn so easily could have gone down that route with her choice of subject, but luckily she continues to produce thoughtful, intelligent and genuinely interesting pieces of work.