Welcome to Entertainment

I had a (for me) fairly long conversation with a friend the other day who was considering a working-in-porn-vacation from their every day life. Before giving someone I care about a rundown of the various ways to get into the adult industry and the individual benefits and drawbacks of each, I always feel like it's important to find out where their head is at and whether or not they're aware of the ways that porn will affect one's life.

There's the obvious and immediate; risk of both easily curable and permanent STIs, flak from strangers, relatives, and acquaintances. Later on, the large gap of employment history on a resume can lead to very interesting and complicated conversations with prospective bosses. You can pretty much forget a serious career in politics (Um... hi Mary Carey... great publicity stunt, BTW) or working with children. The divisive nature of adult entertainment combined with the human tendency to mate monogamously can seriously narrow an already small pool of compatible people to date and bond emotionally with.

I guessed at all of these effects before I got into the hardcore side of the adult industry. I actually made a list... evaluated which of these drawbacks were actually applicable to me, did a risk/benefit comparison and decided it seemed worth it for the adventure.

The one thing that I didn't realize is that I would be living in public. Less than no secrets. Not only is the entirety of my body, every curve, the inside of every crevice (hell, I could send my dentist a link to my blow job clips and never have to sit in his chair again) filmed and distributed in super high quality HD video, but my personal life is indelibly recorded on the internet. Even if I delete something, it has already probably been screenshot, archived in the wayback machine, reposted by someone. In real life, if there's a misunderstanding it gets addressed and talked out. If you say or do something incredibly stupid, your friends laugh for a minute and everybody moves on.

Not so as a public persona in the internet age. Anything I say or do will be taken out of context and thrown back in my face, or used to perpetuate the stereotype of completely vapid and mentally useless porn stars. My personal life will be found out, inaccurately reported, and used to make money for absolute strangers. This is the only thing I've encountered during my time in the adult industry that makes me feel like a whore.

Specifically: I would love to post the living daylights out of the issue of Bizarre that I'm on the cover of. I was really excited to do the shoot. The photographer and I put together something that I found interesting and enjoyed being a part of. I had one request about the spread and article; that I be allowed privacy and respect on one small thing. I didn't want the press to use Manson's name. If someone wants to write about him, he's got a press agent. It's ridiculously tacky and obnoxious to use his name without consent. I'm torn between the professional thing to do, which is promote my work and do my best to push the product I've performed in for Digital Playground and my anger and disappointment at being lied to and taken mild advantage of.

I'm struggling with the fact that continuing my career means that there is no way to stop this from happening. I'm avoiding interacting with people via blogs and message boards because I feel so conflicted about it. In interviews I'm even more awkward than before because I'm constantly censoring everything I say for the possible ways it could be twisted and misunderstood. That's no way to live.

The only viable solution I can see is to have some faith in my audience. Trust that you are capable of  and willing to read an entire post and comprehend it. To believe that anyone who is really interested will seek out my own words in places like this and my twitter account to balance the skewed view of the press and their tendency to rearrange the facts to make an easily digestible story that fits into its allotted space. Hope that my target demographics and ''fanbase'' will, like my friends and family do, like me for my strengths and in spite of my flaws...

...and it's fucking terrifying. Welcome to entertainment.

-Stoya

Additionally, in the interests of shameless self promotion: Here's a still from "Workaholic"