I admit it. I got sucked into Tyra Banks' talk show today, not just because ANTM was fucking pre-empted by baseball last night, but because she was interviewing porn star Tyra Banxxx (aka Alannah) about bogarting her name. I was hoping for some kind of cat fight with weave-pulling and lots of “oh no you didn’t!�, but alas, that was not to be. Instead, Tyra endeavored to help Alannah escape the evil confines of the porn industry.
Sigh.
I’m not going to get into the whole whiny debate that I’ve launched into a million times about how the porn industry isn’t that much more devious and awful than regular businesses (remind me to tell you of all my sexual harassment stories when I worked in newspapers, and how that happened maybe twice when I publicized porn.) And naturally, to appease her advertisers, Tyra had to take an anti-porn stance and focus on the negative. I’d expect Condi Rice to be pro-porn before Tyra Banks.
Even still, it was actually a pretty good interview. Alannah didn’t shy away from any questions. She admitted there were things she enjoyed, but also talked about the things that she didn’t. (Which was Tyra’s M.O. – as soon as Alannah mentioned something positive, Tyra would bring up the negative, but to her credit, Alannah was honest.) The thing that I liked most about the interview, aside from Tyra asking semi-hard hitters (semi-hard, heh, heh) and Alannah not backing down from them, was that Alannah was clear that it was her choice to be there. Sure, someone approached her in a mall and asked her if she’d be interested, but in the end, she was the one who made that call and said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.� And she felt that she gained self esteem and a greater knowledge of herself sexually because of it.
(As an aside, it kinda bugged me that Tyra was all, “Girls don’t get sexual understanding and groundedness from doing porn.� Says who? Just because it’s not your choice doesn’t mean it’s detrimental to everyone. And the whole attitude of how it’s degrading… ugh. Save it. If she thought Alannah’s porn was degrading, someone needs to introduce her to Max Hardcore.)
So the boyfriend comes on and says he got turned on when he found out, but that now he wonders how long he can put up with her boning other men, and that’s reasonable. Jealousy is human. But of course Tyra needs to save Alannah from the industry, and helps her get career counseling, enrolls her in cosmetology school, and invites her to hang out on the Tyra set so she can watch the make-up artists at work, because that’s what Alannah’d like to do. So Tyra said she’d do it all for her if Alannah made a solemn vow to quit porn. “I wanna hear you say it,� Tyra said. And Alannah looked her right in the eyes and said, “Tyra, I am gonna quit porn.�
Looks like it didn’t stick.
I’m not trying to be catty or petty about that – like Alannah herself said, it’s a choice, and clearly she chose to stay there. That’s totally fine, and if she digs it enough to stay, more power to her. But this is where I’ve gotta interject with some of my own experiences. While Alannah and her boyfriend were being interviewed, they both expressed concerns over The Porn Stigma – basically, the old adage that once you do porn it’s all you can ever do because people will look down on you and not let you transcend that. It’s commonly held in industry circles that The Stigma doesn’t care if you’re in front of the camera or behind it – working in porn is working in porn, no matter which way you slice it. And when they said that to Tyra, she basically called bullshit on it and said that people can do whatever the hell they want to do when they want to do it.
When I made the decision to enter porn people warned me of the same thing. And when I left, the vast majority of them snickered and predicted I’d be back, because there’s no way anyone would want me to work for them now. After all, I worked in porn! And I always said, “So fucking what?� And so far I can’t say that I’ve run into anyone that has held it against me. What I don’t think people realize is that if you act like it’s something to be ashamed of, then others will follow your lead. Now granted, I was never on camera (save for that one Jenna Jameson movie, but damned if that’s ever going to see the light of day… oh, and I was sitting in a crowd, so it’s not like that counts.) But over time there have been girls who have performed on film and disappeared to work in restaurants, real estate, or they just married rich.
I think the vast majority of the reason why lots of porners don’t move on from porn is simple: it’s easy money. Going to cosmetology school and getting a certificate and putting make-up on people all day long is work. Fucking dudes for a living is work too, but when you can make a thousand dollars a day for a few hours of work… well. It’s a lot less work than the other route.
I don’t know that I had much of a point with this. So there you have it.
Oh, and it was a brilliant PR move on Banxxx's part.
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