R.I.P. Candida Royalle

Feminist Porn Pioneer Candida Royalle Is Gone But Not Forgotten

Fearless, beautiful, feminist, trailblazing porn performer/director/producer/author Candida Royalle died on Monday of ovarian cancer, according to multiple sources.  She was porn's first woman who created and owned movies produced from a woman's perspective and she did so mainly through her production company, Femme Productions which was distributed through Adam & Eve.

She also co-created her own line of vibrators--the Natural Contours line.  They looked and worked unlike anything else on the market when they came out in the late nineties and the shapes and colors of these have been widely imitated by other novelty makers out there.  They are designed, like everything else in her realm, to serve a woman's needs--and I can say from personal experience that those toys are awesome.  Recently, she was in production on a documentary about her life story and Royalle's search for her birth mother.

AVN's Mark Kernes has written a fully exhaustive, loving obituary of her that you can read by clicking here.

I was honored to have met Royalle once and I was impressed by her intelligence and how strongly she wanted her brand represented in the marketplace.  She wanted women in porn to know that they have choices about what kind of porn they put out there and how they represent other women in what they put out there in the marketplace.  I know that part of why I have been able to have a job writing dirty things for a living is because of her fight to make it socially acceptable for my voice to be here.  I am eternally grateful to her and the fight she fought.

Love to her family and friends and much thanks to her for making porn a place for women to work in, and not just be stars of.