“I don’t get where people get this idea that as a porn star I’m having sex all day.”
People have always been curious about porn stars.
Does having sex for work take all the fun out of it? Do they ever get embarrassed getting down in front of a room full of cameras and sound and lighting guys? And is the porn industry really as violent and exploitative as we hear?
For answers to all your conundrums and more, I spoke to internationally renowned adult actress about sex on screen. Here, she reveals all the secrets, and explains why it’s really the women – yep, you read that right – in the industry who call the shots…
Is sex in porn different to sex in real-life?
“In a word, yes. Porn sex is nothing like real sex. Like, last time when I spoke about anal, because you have to consider camera angles, it’s only the tip of the penis that really goes in the butt, which is why guys look so big in porn. It’s not actually fully going in because it can’t fully go in because it’s just poking the side of the wall. And of course that’s not the most enjoyable sex ever when you’re just being poked by someone on the side. And it’s not great for him because he obviously wants to go all the way in.”
Any other differences?
“Until you start critiquing the porn, you won’t realize that a girl’s body is up, usually so the camera can see in and get access, and the guy’s arm is usually holding his back or holding the girl up – it’s never in that area of where the vagina and penis are because then it’ll be blocking the camera. So the whole time we might look like we’re going crazy at it, but in our heads it’s all about ‘Do I have a double chin?,’ ‘Are there lines in my stomach?,’ ‘Does my leg need to come out more?,’ ‘Are my arms hiding my boobs?’…”
“The directors only care about two things: don’t block what we call the ‘box shot,’ which is the vagina and penis, and try not to cover the boobs.
But every girl has a part of their body that they’re self-conscious of. So with me, for example, I’m self-conscious of my ears, so I always have to make sure my hair is covering my ears. I feel like I have little elf ears, but my hair’s so thick that luckily it covers them.”
What else do you have to think about when filming a scene?
“I like to make sure my toes are pointed because it makes my legs look longer [laughs]. I’ve always got a little checklist in my head, and I keep repeating that checklist every 30 seconds or so. Then on top of that, I’ve got to make sure I’m moaning, and a lot of girls are self-conscious of how often they moan – you’ve got to find that nice border.”
Do you get any say over who you film having sex with?
“Oh, you have favorite actors that you work with. It’s kind of like Tinder – you pick who you’d like to work with and then they kind of have to pick you back. You’re not just put in there with someone you don’t want to work with. It all revolves around the girl, because if we’re not happy with something, they can replace the guy, they can replace anything, but they can’t really replace the girl. So they treat the girl like a princess because they would rather replace the guy in a heartbeat than have to find another girl. So when you sign up with your agency, you pick out the guys you want to work with. And everyone has a ‘no’ list – people they won’t work with.”
Is there anyone in particular you absolutely won’t work with?
“I won’t work with people whose dicks are too big – not lengthwise, because length doesn’t really matter because half the time it doesn’t even go in, but thickness-wise – if someone’s too thick, I won’t go there. I haven’t had kids yet, I haven’t pushed anything out… I tried it once, and after 30 seconds I was like, ‘Nope, this is not going in’. It was like pushing an apple inside of me!
Also, I won’t do guys who have piercings on their penis. That’s just a psychological thing for me – it’s so scary-looking. I don’t want a piece of metal in me.”
How do you prepare for a porn shoot?
“The production company emails all the info through beforehand. So, like: ‘Here’s who you’ll be working with. If you don’t want to work with them, here are two other options. This is what you need to wear. This is what time you’ll need to be on set for hair and makeup. This is what the scene is about and this is what you’ll have to do in the scene.’
So the scene might say it’s about a sex dungeon and we want you to be bound and gagged, and then sex, and then cum on face or something. So you get that email and you can make changes or you can say no or you can say yes.”
How many times have you had to question the scene?
“I only question it when it’s something I’ve never done before. Like this one time I was told a cattle prod would be involved – and I didn’t know what it really was or what to expect. I was unsure, but then they told me to come in and check it out on the day and that if I didn’t like it I didn’t have to worry. So I went in and spent two hours in hair and makeup. They supplied clothes for this one; I was dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl. And they came in with all this bondage gear and they were like ‘Are you okay to be tied?’ – I was like ‘Yep’. They were like ‘Are you okay for your hair to be pulled?’ I was like ‘Yep’. They were like ‘Are you okay to be slapped?’ and I was like ‘Yep’. And then they said ‘Okay, you need to circle on this diagram where it’s okay for us to slap you’.
Speaking of slapping, is the violence we sometimes see in porn real?
“They test you for ‘slap intensity’, by slapping you or you slapping them. I’ll go ‘Like THIS hard’ and I’ll slap them [laughs]. It sounds weird when you’re on the outside, but on the inside it’s the way we make sure no one gets hurt.”
[Laughs] Once a cattle prod came out; my first question was whether it was real. And they explained it was just a prop, so while it looked and even sounded like a cattle prod, it wasn’t. The lights on the ends were just an effect. So since I wasn’t able to feel anything, what I had to do was every time I heard the noise, I had to jolt like I was being shocked – and I couldn’t miss any, otherwise everyone would have known it wasn’t real. That sounds so weird, I know, porn not being real.”
What’s the one thing you want the world to know about your industry?
“I don’t get where people get this idea that as a porn star I’m having sex all day. I’m on set for six hours, that doesn’t mean I’m having sex for six hours. Like, I’ll rock up, I’ll get my hair and makeup done – that’s like an hour and a half. Then we do the photoshoot for the DVD cover or the website or wherever the photos are going to go. And the photoshoots are always, like, you start off clothed, then you take off your top, then you take off your skirt, then you take off your bra, then the underwear, then you’re nude. Then the guy comes into your shot and you pretend to do things with him and you pretend to have sex, all while the guy is trying to stay hard.
How do the guys in porn maintain erections for so long?
“It’s so hard for guys to stand there for 30 minutes for a photoshoot and have a hard penis. And they can’t really take Viagra because Viagra prevents you from coming. They usually have to masturbate. It’s like three-second masturbation sessions between photo clicks. It looks so frustrating and so painful – guys need to get paid more than girls, hey, they really do. Their job is so much harder.
Do men get paid more than women in porn?
“No. The girls get paid way more.”