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While the media swirls around trying to save young women from falling into the trap of sex work, the voices of the men and women that choose to work in the industry are often ignored. Despite having a job that they enjoy and that pays the bills, these industry professionals are either silenced or told that they don't know what they're saying. But the portrayal of victims being the population of the adult industry is now being more vocally opposed by the very people our society is trying to ‘save’.
Politics, fashion, mainstream media and journalism are just a few examples of industries that sex workers and porn stars find themselves transitioning into throughout and after their careers. So strap on your helmets kiddies, we're about to bust some of those preconceived ideas about porn stars.
STOYA
Stoya is an example of a girl who gradually found her way into pornography, starting with modelling for a friend and progressing into being offered roles in adult films. She is known as being Digital Playground's first Alt-Porn girl within the company. Outside of the sets, however, Stoya writes about the porn industry, female health issues, art and many other topics with publications such as Vice, The New York Times, The New Statesman and Esquire.
Her writing is unapologetic, frank and deeply sarcastic, which works fantastically if you're like me and can't help but make snarky comments in your head while reading articles. It's like you're having a conversation with an equally as jaded and deeply interesting new acquaintance!
Here's a couple articles to get you started: Vice, New York Times, Esquire.
BELLE KNOX
Knox is well known for being outed as a porn star while studying as a freshman at Duke University. Knox received numerous negative responses from her peers and other commentators, including threats of violence and sexual abuse. While going through the ordeal, she was interviewed multiple times about why she came to work in pornography, which she expressed was due to her wish to avoid taking out a student loan and burdening herself, and her family, with debt. Knox has also compared the job to when she was a waitress, saying she prefers sex work and finds it empowering. Many people came out at the time to say she was out of her mind, and that she was, in fact, being oppressed because the main consumers of porn are men (who totally chain her to the cameras after the director calls cut).
Regardless/in pure sass-driven-spite of all this, Knox has since become an avid and vocal libertarian activist for students and sex workers, with involvement in Students for Liberty (Campus coordinator at Duke’s) and being appointed onto the board of directors for the Sex Worker’s Outreach Project.
Check out the bad-assery of these organisations here: Students for Liberty and SWOP.
AURORA SNOW
Following the trend of her fellow entertainers, Aurora Snow has become highly successful in the journalism industry, contributing to The Daily Beast and Glammonitor. She is also known for her coverage of the obscenity case against John Stagliano and his production company Evil Angel in 2010 for AVN. The recurring theme throughout the articles is her disbelief of the prosecution’s arguments; there’s a lot of outrage about close-ups of pu$$ies. Her most well-known work, however, is her open letter to her unborn son about how his mum was a porn star. Check it out here.
Throughout the years, Aurora has also appeared in mainstream media, doing a cameo in Superbad the movie in 2007. She has also appeared on episodes of 1000 ways to die concerning some edible underwear, and The Young Turks where she discussed how racism is alive and well in the pornography industry.
She’s also interviewed the woman set to be the first porn star sent to space, which leads us to…
COCO BROWN
While many kids grow up wanting to be astronauts, many of us work out down the line it might not be all that achievable and move on to more realistic goals, like ladybugs and firemen. CoCo Brown, however, has been training with one hundred other people to be the first to earn their astronaut wings through the training program XCOR at the bargain price of $100,000. CoCo is set to co-pilot an expedition in 2016, setting herself up to be the 4th African-American woman and first porn star to venture into the final frontier.
Check out Aurora Snow’s interview with her on The Daily Beast.
SASHA GREY
You were waiting for it; we all knew we had to mention her. Sasha Grey is like that infuriatingly perfect over-achiever we all knew in high school that was good at everything she did without breaking a sweat. Modelling, mainstream movies, music, writing, record breaking, she’s done it all.
Grey has appeared in numerous movies and TV shows over the years, the most prominent being her role in the movie The Girlfriend Experience and six episodes of Entourage – both of which she played versions of herself. She has also appeared in music videos for The Roots, The Smashing Pumpkins, Eminem and David J. I’m putting my money on it being because of her eyebrows; the devil decided to make her the ultimate femme fatale with those things.
Sasha Grey is the youngest winner of AVN’s ‘Female performer of the Year’ and ‘Best Oral Sex Scene’ awards. She is also a vocal advocate for the industry, defending fellow actress Belle Knox when she was outed as a freshman at Duke University.
Sasha’s vocalisation is one of her most famous qualities as a porn star, but she’s also played her part in various voice acting roles. You may recognise her as the voice of Viola DeWynter in Saints Row: The Third and Gat out of Hell. She’s been heavily involved in multiple musical ventures, founding the industrial music collaboration aTelecine in 2008, contributing vocal to Current 93’s album Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain, while also DJ’ing throughout the US and Canada. It is also expected that Grey will be contributing vocals to Infected Mushroom’s track Fields of Grey on his upcoming album Converting Vegetarians II.
Then there’s her modelling. Grey has appeared in Playboy twice, once in 2009 for a pictorial and then a cover feature in 2010. She’s modelled for fashion lines by French designer Max Azaria, Italian Brand Forfex (an international campaign mind you), and American Apparel. She has also modelled for Richard Kern in a Vice anti-fashion layout and a companion book titled Wives, Wheels, Weapons, as well as for artists such as Zach Smith, David Choe, and Frédéric Poincelet. She has also worked with animal activists PETA, posing nude in a campaign advocating for animal neutering.
AND THEN there’s the fact she’s also a published author of two books: a photobook Neϋ Sex, which was published in 2011, and an erotic novel The Julliette Society, which was published in 2013.
Honestly, someone make this a woman a CEO or something she clearly has too much time on her hands.
The list could go on forever, and it epitomises the fact that the women who choose to get into this line of work are some driven, incredibly articulate and opinionated people. If a woman has enough confidence to have sex on camera and be viewed by millions of people doing it, I don’t think there’s much that could possibly hold her back.
