Industry News

Newbies-Consider Your Future before doing Porn

On Porn

By T.B. Hunter

February 2009

On the surface, a career in porn likely seems an attractive option for young women – especially those new to the flashing lights, red carpets, celebrities, and other attractions of Los Angeles.  It is certainly an easy and legal way for a woman to earn a living.

It also satisfies any young person’s desire for approval and acceptance, with men lavishing money and praise on them while admiring their naked bodies. Making whatever promises (many never kept, of course) of stardom, wealth, perhaps drugs, and the high life – whatever that young woman may want.

Of course, like much in Los Angeles, so much of what appears attractive is only skin deep.  Certainly, many such young women will make the easy money that will help pay bills and credit cards, and to buy the things that all girls want – clothes, a new car, a condo or home, etc.

Before taking the plunge into the Industry, there are few who would offer advice against making that final step.  I am here, however, to do just that.  To offer an open letter to the girls and women considering porn as a career.

Do you plan to get married one day?  To raise a family? Now think ahead, one year, five years, ten or twenty years.  By that time the typical porn actress will have several dozen titles to her credit, not to mention having stills from photo shoots or even the videos themselves.  These will, without fail, appear soon thereafter on Google Images, in men’s magazines, and everywhere around the world.  And once that happens, there is no going back.  You will never be able to undo that part of your life, to erase the pictures of you performing whatever sexual acts you might have chosen to perform – anal, oral, gangbangs, facials, you name it.

Think now, for a moment.

Are you prepared to live a life in which you will always have to think, in the back of your mind, “how am I going to explain this” to a guy you may fall in love with, or may be hoping will ask you out or to coffee or dinner – the cute guy you may see in line at the local coffee shop, or at the local college, or at a bar or club.

And how will you explain that to your children?  There will come a day, like it or not, when they will be able to see your pictures online.  The internet is everywhere, and it will only grow by leaps and bounds over the next year, ten and twenty years.  And your exposure will grow with it.  Your name, even a screen name, will always be bound to those images, which will follow you the rest of your life. Do you want to look down on that infant you are breast feeding, all the while in the back of your mind envisioning the day when you will have to explain those pictures and videos to your child… Did that guy who came on me really have a clean bill of health?  Was he with some woman in the days after getting his card stamped by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation and just decide not to mention it?

The most important thing to consider, if you think of nothing else, is that once you have taken that plunge into porn, or even nude modeling, there is no going back – ever.  The pictures and videotapes of your body and sexual activities will forever be part of this world – just one click away on any search engine in which anyone can type your name.

I am not in the Industry, nor have I ever been.  And to avoid any hypocrisy, I will readily admit that I (a single, 40 year old male) am an admitted consumer of porn, having watched my share of videos and films over the years (I am of the Christy Canyon/Traci Lords/Ginger and Amber Lynn era), not to mention magazines (back in the day when the internet was just a thought in the minds of computer engineers at universities and government agencies).  VHS and Beta were certainly available, but, their exposure was relatively well hidden behind roped-off areas of local video stores.

I feel that porn, if used properly, can be a healthy sexual outlet.  And of course there are a few adult film stars who have adapted their careers to their personal lives and have lived the lives they have chosen, without serious problems.  However, how many hundreds or thousands of lives of young women have been ruined because they didn’t think ahead, with a sober mind, as to what lies beyond the paycheck and the parties…

This open letter is not a condemnation of porn, porn actors and actresses, nor even the porn lifestyle. Lord knows I have enjoyed the products of the porn industry, as I stated above.  I am not a Bible-thumper, nor an anti-porn activist.  This is, rather, one person’s hope that those young women considering a career in the adult industry will pause, just for a moment, to give a serious moment’s thought to the future, rather than the flash and cash of a couple hours in front of a video camera this afternoon or tonight. If they do choose this career, I do wish them the best – that they will make money, pay their taxes, and remain free of diseases and abuse at the hands of those who would promise them the stars for a few minutes of sex in front of a camera.

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