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Cindy Gallop took a risk when she entered advertising, and hasn’t stopped taking them since. She began her early career in the UK as a theater publicist and marketer, until an audience member declared that she could “sell ice to an Eskimo,” and advised her to make the jump to advertising.

Cindy then joined the London office of British advertising firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) in 1989 and was responsible for large accounts like Coca-Cola, Ray-Ban, and Polaroid. In 1996, she helped start the Asia Pacific branch of BBH. She founded the US branch of BBH in 1998 and served as chair of the board. In 2002, BBH US was named Adweek’s Eastern Agency of the Year, and in 2003 Cindy was voted Advertising Woman of the Year by Advertising Women of New Yor

In 2003, Gallop won the Advertising Woman of the Year award from Advertising Women of New York. Cindy left as BBH as Chairman in 2005 to work independently, starting her own brand and business innovation consultancy, Cindy Gallop LLC.

Cindy Gallop has turned her illustrious advertising career into a lifelong pursuit of changing the world, her way — one daring project after another. She is board advisor to a number of tech ventures, and consults and speaks for brands, agencies and conferences around the world, characterizing her approach as, ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’ She is also one of three Campaign Review Committee Chairs for the Ad Council.

Today’s new childhood reality

Did you know that the average age at which a child is first exposed to hardcore porn online, is six years old?

That statistic comes from a Bitdefender survey of 19,000 parents worldwide. If it horrifies you, be aware that that survey was conducted eleven years ago, in 2013. While Bitdefender haven’t replicated that study since, there are many others testifying to the fact that today, porn is widely accessed by children globally.

This isn’t because children go looking for porn. It’s a function of what in the digital world we live in today is inevitable and cannot be prevented, no matter how hard you try – they stumble across it. It’s what they’re shown on someone’s cellphone in the playground; what they see when they go round to a neighbor’s house - because it doesn’t matter what parental controls you have in place at home, your kids live their lives in other places; or, because this is the most wired generation ever, and in many privileged households very young children have access to phones, iPads, laptops, they do something cute and innocent – they learn a new naughty word, they google it - and one or two clicks away is something they never expected to find. Especially before they’ve received any education about sex.

Why I started MakeLoveNotPorn

I date younger men. This led me to realize, years ago, that when freedom of access to porn online meets society’s reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex, porn becomes sex education by default, in not a good way.

Cindy Gallop was one of the first people digging into how hardcore pornography has distorted the way a generation of young men and women thinks about sex, bringing up this issue publicly at the TED conference in 2009 which since then has been viewed millions of times and was one of the most talked about presentations at the conference. In 2009 she launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com, which began originally as a public service - ‘Porn World vs Real World’.The response was extraordinary. Thousands of people turned to Cindy, from all around the world - young and old, male and female, straight and gay - pouring their hearts out, making her realize that she had uncovered a huge global social issue.

Today, MakeLoveNotPorn is the world’s first user-generated, 100% human-curated, real world sex videosharing platform. If porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, MakeLoveNotPorn is the badly-needed documentary: a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving, wonderful sex we all have in the real world. MakeLoveNotPorn socializes, normalizes and de-stigmatizes sex, bringing it out of the shadows into the sunlight, to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and behavior. The platform operates on a revenue-share business model, where members subscribe to stream videos, and the revenue is split with our everyday people contributors.

“As a unique business, MakeLoveNotPorn has a unique capability: the power to change people’s sexual attitudes and behavior for the better. In the eleven years we’ve operated, we’ve taught countless young people that porn is not sex in the real world. Gen Z loves us! We’ve saved numerous marriages and relationships. We’ve inspired communications breakthroughs between couples. We’ve heard from survivors of rape and sexual abuse, who tell us that MakeLoveNotPorn helped them reclaim their bodies, and feel able to be sexual again post-trauma when porn is too triggering. And parents are buying their teenage and twenty-something children subscriptions to MakeLoveNotPorn, because, they tell us, they want their kids to see what happy, healthy, loving sexual relationships look like. But obviously, MakeLoveNotPorn in its current form is for 18+,” Cindy explains.

How to educate your children about sex and porn

From the moment I gave my TED talk 15 years ago, parents have reached out to me for help. I want to share with you the two key pieces of advice I’ve given parents for years.

1. Today, there is no such thing as ‘too early’ when it comes to talking to children about sex.

Now, I don’t mean, literally, ‘Talk about sex!’

What I mean is how you respond the very first time your child asks where babies come from, plays with their genitals or does something else sex-related. The most important thing isn’t even what you say, as much as how you say it.

Never get visibly flustered or embarrassed; never get irritated or angry; don’t shut them up, close the conversation down or leave the room. Instead, respond to them openly, honestly and straightforwardly. By doing that, you open up a channel of communication between them and you that will always be there for them as they grow older. And trust me – no matter how much they might appear to squirm when you talk to them frankly about sex and how to have a rewarding, healthy sex life, they will be secretly grateful to you for doing so.

Today, when you talk to your child about sex, you must also talk to your child about porn.

This is a lot easier to do than most parents think. Just say what I’m about to share with you, and dial it up or down depending on the age of the child.

“So darling, we’ve just talked about sex. You know how when we watch movies, TV, videos, cartoons together, we see things that aren’t real? Well, there are also movies and videos about sex, and they’re not real either. Because of that, they can be quite confusing, and so we’d rather you didn’t watch them until you’re older. But if you stumble across these, or someone shows them to you, do come and tell me/us, and I/we can explain it.’

That’s all you have to say. You can end the conversation right there. Because just by saying that, you’ve done two important things. Firstly, you’ve set up in their mind for when they stumble across porn - as they will - that it’s not real. And secondly, you’ve asked them to come and talk to you about it. You will want them to do that, because what they stumble across is likely to be utterly traumatizing.

I advise parents to bear in mind that no matter how embarrassed your child may appear or how much they may squirm and shy away, they are secretly glad you’re having this conversation. They desperately want information, education, advice, help, so always talk to them about sex whenever you want to, whenever you think there’s a need, or just generally in the course of your everyday family life. Even if they don’t respond and open up from their side, they’re absorbing what you say to them.

The most important thing is not to be embarrassed yourself. Be straightforward, honest, truthful, non-judgemental, and feel free to bring a sense of humor. The easier you make the conversation by the way you approach it, the more conversations about sex you’ll have. You want your child to be happy; this is the area that will impact their future happiness more than anything else. Let that fact take away your own embarrassment!

Bring your children up to have good sexual values

I recommend that parents approach these conversations in the context of my own philosophy: everything in life starts with you and your values. I regularly ask people, ‘What are your sexual values?’ No one has ever been able to answer me, because we’re not brought up to think that way. Our parents bring us up to have good manners, a work ethic, a sense of responsibility, accountability. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed. But they should – because values like empathy; sensitivity; generosity: kindness; honestly; trust; respect, are as important there, as they are in every other area of our lives, where we are actively taught to exercise those values.

So for parents, this is simply a matter of translating the values you set out to bring your children up with, very directly into how you educate them on expectations of behavior around sex. In the same way you teach them to do the right thing in life generally – to speak up if they don’t feel good about what’s going on, to step in and intervene if a friend or a stranger is being treated badly, to be true to themselves and what they know is right – teach them exactly the same things in a sexual context.

MakeLoveNotPorn Academy is here to help

The good news is, I and MakeLoveNotPorn are building something that will help, that parents and teachers have begged me for years: the 0-18 and beyond, sex education expansion, MakeLoveNotPorn Academy.

This is what I characterize as ‘the Khan Academy of sex education.’ Khan Academy, the online tutoring platform used by youth and adults around the world, tutors on every other topic under the sun, except sex education. Educational technology - edtech - is exploding as a category worldwide, but not in this area.

The Academy operates on the same principles as MakeLoveNotPorn: user-generated, crowdsourced, 100% human-curated, revenue-share. We’re building an aggregator hub for the best of the world’s sex education content. Sex educators, sexual health

and wellness experts, therapists, anyone informing and educating in this area, is invited to share their own content: books, videos, courses etc. Our unique human-curation model is key. Just as there is no self- publishing on MakeLoveNotPorn, human eyes will vet every piece of content to make sure that it’s safe and that we endorse it.

We will publish all content to make it easily searchable, for example by age-appropriateness. If you’re wondering how on earth to answer that question your six-year-old just asked, the Academy will provide age-appropriate tools and content to have that conversation. A teacher with a class of fourteen-year-olds can find age-appropriate teaching materials. For adults, it’s ‘access all areas’ - adults are equally desperate for all this information.

You’ll also be able to search by cultural sensibility, eg for Christian sex education, Jewish sex education, Muslim sex education.

And importantly, you’ll be able to pick and choose by personal comfort level - what you feel is right for you, your family, or your school. You can see this vision laid out at makelovenotporn.academy. MakeLoveNotPorn Academy is critically important right now, because open healthy sex education is being blocked, censored and de-platformed everywhere. I have a global network of sex educator friends who face the same challenges I do with MakeLoveNotPorn. Their content is censored on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the like; their accounts get suspended; they’re banned from advertising their work. We plan to change that, by providing a platform to promote their work and sell their products (the Academy will take a small commission).

Our mission at the Academy is to organize the world’s sex education information. That’s a deliberate paraphrase of Google’s original mission, to organize the world’s information. Because today, the algorithm is biased in favor of censorship. We’re going to change that.

I’m raising funding for the Academy, but in the meantime our equity crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder, led by actress Jameela Jamil (a big fan of MakeLoveNotPorn) has enabled us to build a bare-bones Minimum Viable Product which we plan to launch later this fall. Find it at WeFunder.com/MakeLoveNotPorn.

Why sexual health is so important for mental health

For the past fifteen years, in emails, comments and conversations, I’ve seen firsthand the enormous human misery and unhappiness caused by the guilt, shame and embarrassment society has imbued sex with. Sexual health is mental health, as MakeLoveNotPorn members testify when they tell us how we’ve transformed their lives. Normalizing sex as one of the most joyous, connected and profound areas of human experience, and feeling comfort with oneself as a sexual being, empowers and builds a different relationship with the self.

The CDC (Centers For Disease Control & Prevention) is the USA’s leading science-based, data-driven service organization that protects the nation’s health. This is how the CDC defines sexual health, acknowledging its fundamental importance to all aspects of our health as a whole:

Sexual health is a state of well-being in relation to sexuality across the life span that involves physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions.

Sexual health is an intrinsic element of human health and is based on a positive, equitable, and respectful approach to sexuality, relationships, and reproduction, that is free of coercion, fear, discrimination, stigma, shame, and violence. It includes: the ability to understand the benefits, risks, and responsibilities of sexual behavior; the prevention and care of disease and other adverse outcomes; and the possibility of fulfilling sexual relationships. Sexual health is impacted by socioeconomic and cultural contexts—including policies, practices, and services—that support healthy outcomes for individuals, families, and their communities.

This is why MakeLoveNotPorn operates in the single biggest market of them all. Not sex. Not porn. But the market of human happiness.