Ex-Porn Star Shelley Lubben Talks about Days on the Set: Tedious, Intoxicated, Painful, Risky
Shelley Lubben, born in 1968, was known as Roxy during her time in porn, 1993-1994. She made about 20 films. She now speaks out against porn addiction, sex industry exploitation and sexual abuse. Her website and other public testimony shed light on the life of a porn actress.
Excerpt from Shelley Lubben's upcoming book The Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn:
Many believe the widespread fairytale that women enjoy making porn movies but in reality there are no happy endings for the women of porn. Women do NOT enjoy making porn movies and a closer behind-the-scenes look will show you several reasons why.
In the world of hardcore sex, an average day on the set for a porn actress is a long and tedious process. Women are told to come in around 8 am for makeup but it's only to make sure porn actresses arrive on time to work. Porn stars have a habit of arriving late because they're often hung over from drugs or alcohol from the night before.
After make up, porn actresses usually wait around long hours until it's their turn to do their scene. Some scenes take an hour and some take several hours to film. It really depends if the male actor in the first scene could "perform" or not. It also depends if female actresses have to stop the clock because they can't handle the pain of a hardcore sex scene.
While waiting around, jaded porn performers usually end up in the rest rooms with bottles of alcohol and lines of speed or outside in their cars for a heroin fix or gathered in the back yard with other actors to smoke marijuana.
To add to the mind-numbing process, women are never able to experience sexual pleasure because of the continuous cutting during sex scenes. In the background the director constantly yells, "cut" and the flow of action is interrupted in order to get a better shot, adjust lighting or to wipe up bodily fluids. Repeatedly pornographers stop the scenes and ask actors to "freeze" in position during very hardcore sex acts, which causes great physical and emotional pain for porn actresses.
I speak from personal experience when I say to be in the middle of a hardcore sex act with several actors at the same time and told to "freeze" in position for several minutes while lighting or cameras are adjusted is extremely painful and degrading. It's also very humiliating when scenes are stopped in order to wipe up bodily fluids such as semen, feces and blood.
Despite the fact that women do not enjoy making porn movies, they continue to lie to their fans and proudly insist they enjoy making porn movies. Of course they do. They get paid hundreds and thousands of dollars to lie because this is their occupation. Porn stars are paid professional liars who know how to "act" and they do it well. In fact, because porn stars spend a great deal time in front of the camera and never step out of character, they usually have greater acting abilities than mainstream Hollywood actors.
I used to brag endlessly to fans and pornographers about my extreme "Italian" sex drive and how I loved making porn movies. I would go on and on about how I needed more and more to fulfill my insatiable appetite. I lied 100% of the time to 100% of the people. Lying is the native language of porn stars because they can't afford to tell you the truth. Not only would it ruin the fantasy for their fans but more importantly, it would ruin the amount of their paychecks. Don't believe porn actresses when they proudly proclaim they enjoy making porn movies. They're ACTING.
Porn chronicler Luke Ford spoke with Ms. Lubben on 9/14/05:
Luke: "You wrote that porn actors and actresses are desperately unhappy. Do you hold by that?"Ford quotes from Ms. Lubben's personal testimony:
Shelley: "I hung out with them. They were so desperate for company. They were always saying, 'What are you doing? What are you doing?' I was a prostitute at the same time. I'd been doing that for years before porn. I ran a prostitution house. I was really into the money. If we weren't making money, I didn't want to party...
"I've seen girls vomiting in a bathroom after a scene. I see 'em getting drunk and smoking Marlboros around the corner from the set. It's nasty. It's gross when there's catered food and rags full of you-know-what on just around the corner from the catered food. It's really disgusting...
We all said that we were going to stay faithful. 'I'll just sleep with you. I'll just work with you.' And we'd all go sleep with a bunch of other people. It's a sick, twisted family...
"A lot of that time I was intoxicated...
"I slept with someone who slept with Marc Wallice. I came so close to AIDS..."
Luke: "I think porn girls are in it for the attention."
Shelley: "Money is number one. Then attention. A lot of these [Adult] entertainers I met had a lot of talent, a lot of gifts. Some of our parents said, 'We don't see anything in you.' So when the porn industry said, 'Wow! You're somebody!' We think, 'That feels so good.' All of a sudden, we're somebody. Recognition..."
Luke: "It seems that for a lot of these girls, they don't have a good relationship with their father."
Shelley: "Big time. That's the number one reason. I'm very careful how I bring that out on my website. I want to honor my parents. I want to live a long life. You know that law. [link by Luke Ford] But that is the number one reason--my dad spent no time with me. He was into his hobbies in the garage. He would rarely say, 'I love you,' or hug me. So I went crazy for boys at a young age..."
Luke: "Some of the porn stars do it for years. Nina Hartley has been doing it for over 20 years. She loves it and she's an intelligent woman."
Shelley: "Isn't that crazy? Once you do it, you become so jaded. It means nothing any longer. It took me about six years to get any kind of sexual feeling back in my body. I couldn't even feel penetration. They can say they had all these orgasms on a porn set. I never had one.
"Porn is harder than prostitution, where you are treated nice if you are in the luxurious side of it. Porn was totally degrading and shattering. None of the men in prostitution treated me sexually like the men in porn did..."
...At the time I caught herpes, I had no help and no one to help me deal with the disease. But since AIM came on the scene, the organization has lowered some of the spread of HIV in the adult industry, and has certainly increased awareness among performers. But the truth remains, porn actors continue to risk their lives and the lives of others. Nothing is more devastating than to receive a positive test for a sexually transmitted disease. For me, it was the final blow.
I tried to kill myself. I swallowed several bottles of prescription pills and sliced my wrists but it seemed no matter what I did, I couldn't die. So I turned off the pain and became a lifeless zombie. Then there were times the pain and trauma would surface and I'd throw fits of rage, yelling and breaking things. I was mad at God, hated myself and hated my parents. Only alcohol and drugs could soothe my pain. I cried out to Jesus to help me and tried to give up my lifestyle but within a week I'd be back in the vicious cycle again. I lost all hope and hated my life.
See also:
Interview with Ex-Porn Star Traci Lords: Abused as a Child; High on the Set; Power, Not Arousal; Bad Pay
There's nothing loving about it, no. Absolutely not. For me, porn was about my pain in my life as a child. And I was completely acting out. I was a wild kid. I was angry at the world. And I was very rebellious, and I wanted to show everybody...
...[I]t was never intentional. I never set out to be a porn star... I was stoned. I was on a set. I was supposed to be a girl in a bikini walking around the pool. And you know, I got high enough, a guy hit on me, and it was a filmed thing. And that was the beginning of my career in that world...
Jenna Jameson's Tragic Backstory; Seeking Virgins with Paris Hilton
[S]he was raped a second time when she was still only 16--this time by the biker uncle of her first long-term boyfriend [the uncle denies it]. She then prised the braces off her teeth with needle-nose pliers and successfully auditioned to become a stripper, making thousands of dollars a night. She was spotted by a scout for pornographic photo shoots, which led to her having sex on film for the first time. She was 19 and became an immediate sensation in the small world of the porn industry.
But there was another problem: Jameson had acquired a devastating crystal-meth (amphetamine) habit. It nearly killed her. Rescued by a friend, she was sent back to her father to recuperate: she was so emaciated that she had to be put on the plane in a wheelchair, and when he came to meet her at the airport, he didn't recognise her.
Types of Porn and Their Occupational Safety Risks (explicit)
The list of STDS on the AIM handout includes: "HIV, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphillis, Hepatitis, A,B,C, Herpes, Genital Warts, Molluscum Contagiosum, Crabs, Trichomonis, Bacterial Vaginosis, Rectal Chlamydia and Gonorrhea, Gonorrhea of the throat."
Penn State Law Professors Trot Out 'Female Porn Leaders' to Whitewash Realities of Adult Industry (explicit language)
As D.A. Clarke wrote in Christine Sparks and Rebecca Whisnant's anthology Not for Sale, most porn performers work under conditions more akin to sweatshop labor than to professional-level jobs. Sex workers receive very little of the profits made from their bodies; they have no social standing, no health care benefits, heightened risk for STDs and addictions, and little protection against sexual harassment and violence.
This is a great in depth look at the darker side of the adult film industry. I never realized that directors would yell "Cut" and make the actors freeze while they tried to get a better shot or relight the area. I was aware of some of the childhood trauma these girls experienced before entering the industry and knew they were degraded but didn't know it was to such a huge extent. The drug use and emotional distress go hand in hand, trying to numb out the world to the pain but never really quite succeeding at it. It's a shame these poor girls never had a strong father figure to look up to.
Reply to this
I wonder what percentage of children when they are growing up says I want to be a porn star? If the business wasn't for her then she should have got out sooner. This gives us a great deal of information just in case our children come to us and say they want to grow up and be a porn star we can give them this source as a reason not to.
Reply to this
Mass media tend to portray porn and prostitution as better lifestyles than they really are. An example is the movie "Pretty Woman". Young people are misinformed as to the realities of sex enterprises.
Reply to this
Porn is turning into a world of who can top who. Each guy is trying to outdo the last guy not worrying about what he is doing to the women. Porn stars may say on TV that they are making a fortune but the cost is far too great. I have to agree that the world of porn is becoming a very disgusting and low world indeed and the abuse these women have to put up with for a paycheck is disturbing. Hopefully they can find some sort of peace in the world and move on to something positive for their lives and move away from numbing out all the pain they carry around on a daily basis.
Reply to this