What’s In A Name? Sex Worker, Porn Star, Porn Starlet, And Content Creator

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

William Shakespeare used this line in his play, Romeo and Juliet, to say that what we name someone or something is irrelevant. A name is arbitrary and subjective; what matters is their, or its core qualities.

For example, we might have different uses for notebooks, notepads, journals, and even diaries. But those differences are subjective to our personal preferences and, essentially, they are all books of blank pages for us to write on.

Disclaimer: Although I recognize that forced sex work is a huge international problem, for this article, I will only be discussing consensual and voluntary sexual services and erotic performances.

FACT: Sex work ONLY refers to voluntary sexual transactions. The transaction must take place between consenting adults who are of the legal age and mental capacity to consent and must take place without any methods of coercion other than payment.

Sex work in different forms has been practiced since ancient times. It has been reported that even in the most primitive societies, there was transactional sex. Due to the stigma and legality of different forms of sex work in different states and countries, what name we give certain types of work makes a massive difference in how that person’s work is perceived.

Some types of sex work that include some degree of physical contact with a client are webcam modeling, pornographic modeling, exotic dancing, phone sex operator, erotic dancing, erotic massage, escort services, girlfriend experience, sugar baby, and sexual surrogacy.

We can define pornography as “the explicit portrayal of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.” Back in the day, when porn constituted well-made feature films, many notable adult actresses became stars as their names sold tickets, VHS tapes, and DVDs. Therefore, by its very definition, a porn star means anyone who stars in a pornographic movie. Still, to most, it means someone who has a fair amount of fame or recognition for their body of work within the adult industry.

Today, it seems more common to use the word performer for female adult actresses and the term male talent for male adult actors. However, there are certain people who are well known in the industry as porn stars.

For example, Riley Reid started performing in 2010, has 1,410 performer credits and one director credit, has won over 45 awards, including 2 Fleshbot Awards nominations, and has 2.2M Twitter followers. Ana Foxxx started performing in 2012 and has 685 performer credits, one director credit, 80+ nominations, 11 wins, and 315.5K followers on Twitter. Alexis Texas started performing in 2007 and has 899 performer credits and 11 director credits; she’s been nominated for 60+ awards, has nine wins, and has 1.1M followers on Twitter. Emily Willis has been performing since 2017, has 665 performer credits, has over 85 nominations and over 25 wins, and has 15.6K followers on Twitter

We can safely say that the porn stars on this list are famous and have received vast recognition for their work in the adult industry. Porn starlets are female performers who started doing porn in the last two years. Some examples are Kenzie Anne, Coco Lovelock, Lenna Lux, Jamie Jett, Leda Lotharia, Sera Ryder, Mini Stallion, Azlyn Ray, Miss Demeanor, and Jazmin Luv. None are credited with over 150 performer credits, have received more than ten nominations, or have more than 220K followers on Twitter. It's going to be interesting to see what happens 5+ years down the line.  Will these starlets follow the path of the stars we know and love, or will social media and content-sharing platforms change what a career as a porn star looks like?

Content-sharing platforms have created a substantial new line of sex work. It’s not just people who have started creating private, explicit content to share with their fans (content creators); some performers have retired from making professional scenes to become content creators. Some successful content creators are Marcela Alonso, Sweet Bunny, Luxury Girl, Bella Delphine, Sami Sheen, and even Blac Chyna. Mia Malkova and Lana Rhoades are retired female performers who are now creating their content and sharing it directly with their fans.

Whether we’re “naming” the person a porn star, female performer, male talent, porn starlet, or content creator, we are subjectively classifying different but parallel types of sex work. We know that if a person is performing in professional scenes, creating explicit content to share on platforms with their fans, or doing both, regardless of how long they’ve been doing it, they are, as a matter of fact, sex workers.

Being a porn star requires having fame and recognition in the industry but being a porn star, or porn starlet also has a more negative stigma and reputation than being a content creator. I believe this is mainly because content creators are in control of their image and can create any “persona” using social media. The sweet, innocent-but-naughty influencer is creating content we’ve seen before… and when we did, we named it porn.

So, what’s in a name? In this case, control of one’s image, stigma, and, ironically, prestige.