Jenna Jameson’s Cautions to Would-Be Porn Stars

In 2004, Salon reviewed Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Jameson’s advice to newbies caught our attention:

“In a worst-case scenario, a gonzo director will take a girl to a hotel room and have their friends shoot a cheap scene in which she is humiliated in every orifice possible. She walks home with three thousand dollars, bowed legs, and a terrible impression of the industry. It’ll be her first and last movie, and she’ll regret it–to her dying day.”

Jameson says porn has more pitfalls “than nearly any other occupation.” Drugs is one…

[The performers] don’t own any rights to their screen work, so scenes can be reused in compilations. And because the adult industry isn’t unionized and the movies are so cheap to make, the stars make a piddling slice of the overall profits…

See also:

Jenna Jameson’s Tragic Backstory; Seeking Virgins with Paris Hilton
COOPER: …[I]f you had a daughter, if she came to you and said that she wanted to get into that industry?
JAMESON: I’d tie her in the closet. Only because this is such a hard industry for a woman to get ahead and get the respect that she deserves. I fought tooth and nail to get to where I am, and it’s not something that I would want my daughter to go through. It’s not something that any parent would choose for their child.

Now on Sale at Capital Video: Watch Women Eat Their Own Poop (explicit)
One of the newer crazes in porn is a genre called “ass-to-mouth”.
In a typical scenario, a man has anal sex with a woman, then puts his
penis into her mouth. In effect, the woman is being paid to eat her own
feces. How to interpret this as empowering to women is beyond our
imagination.

Ex-Porn Star Shelley Lubben Talks about Days on the Set: Tedious, Intoxicated, Painful, Risky
“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…”

The Science Behind Pornography Addiction
[Performers in the sex industry] have high rates of substance abuse, typically alcohol and cocaine, depression, borderline personality disorder which is a particularly serious disorder and dissociative identity disorder which used to be called multiple personality disorder. The experience I find most common among the performers is that they have to be drunk, high or dissociated in order to go to work. Their work environment is particularly toxic. One study on strippers indicated that they were likely to be punched, slapped, grabbed, called c**t and whore and to be followed home or stalked.

Types of Porn and Their Occupational Safety Risks (explicit)

Testimony in Minneapolis: Likeness of TV Star “Rhoda” Misappropriated by Pornographers; Aspiring Actresses Vulnerable to Being Enticed into Porn

Porn Actresses: Most Careers Are Short, Few Are Lucrative (explicit language)

9 thoughts on “Jenna Jameson’s Cautions to Would-Be Porn Stars

  1. I do not agree with the proposition that porn is a means through women are exploited or commodified. Jenna Jamison says she refuses to do double-penetration, sex with multiple partners, and anal sex. Is she implying that this degrading? Isn’t degrading a very subjective term? What about women who enjoy or wish to participate in these alternate methods of sex. Shouldn’t women have a right to define what is degrading for themselves. Jamison goes on to say…”a…director will take a girl to a hotel room and have their friends shoot a cheap scene in which she is humiliated in every orifice possible. She walks home with three thousand dollars, bowed legs, and a terrible impression of the industry.” While this may be true in some instances, pornography can be a very respected industry. Furthermore, women aren’t coerced into making a porn movie, they voluntarily participate. In any instance where this is not the case, such as where a woman is coerced or forced to participate, this will constitute a crime such as rape.
    Other anti-porn advocates that believe porn is harmful to women argue that porn leads to violence against women. However, studies that relate porn to violence are unreliable. Persons predisposed to commit violent crimes and rape women will do these things anyway. What if porn provides a safe outlet for these types of people to experience gratification without harming anyone? For the rest of us, porn helps us to become more open minded, relaxed and comfortable about sex. It can also allow us to safely experience sexual alternatives and satisfy a healthy sexual curiosity.

    Jon Ritter

  2. I find it very hard to believe that “ass-to-mouth” and many other common porn practices (e.g. bukkake) are not degrading to nearly all women (or whoever is on the receiving end of the action). It is true that some people can come to get used to abusive situations. They may even claim to like it. Many porn products suggest that lots of women like to be abused. This does not strike me as a healthy situation. Domestic violence and sexual abuse are rampant problems in our society. Porn schools, incites, and gives permission to abusers to abuse.

    The “porn as catharsis” theory has been debunked again and again. It is simply not supported by the facts.

    It’s one thing to talk about porn as it “can be”. We talk about porn as it is.

  3. Porno isn’t bad. Misogyny is bad. Pornography didn’t create that. It only reflects it. Why not go to the root of the problem instead of talking mainly about porn? It’s really the shallow end of a much deeper problem.

  4. you should really do something about this right-click protection thing. A lot of people enjoy opening new pages in new tabs and continuing to read the page that their on. Nobody wants to steal your weak photographs.

  5. Porn, taken as a whole, is one of the largest and most extreme channels of misogyny today. Many people, including large corporations, are profiting from this misogyny. The profits drive the pervasiveness. Studies show that porn changesattitudes; it doesn’t just leave them as they are. We feel that the porn industry is an excellent and worthy target for our activism.

    That said, if you have suggestions for ways to combat misogyny, we would be happy to hear them.

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