Porn Uncensored: An Expose
By Cameron Rowe
The News No One Reports
Note: I removed the adult content warning since the article will not be published.
I’ve done two stories on the porn industry, the last an updated version of the first, and decided to go deeper into the story. Go as far as the Rabbit Hole would allow. Unfortunately, the investigation affected me profoundly. I had a moment of clarity. A moment where the horror I was investigating got personal. If a story gets personal to a journalist, a journalist should refrain from continuing since the impartiality is gone. For me, it got to that point not long ago.
For the life of me, it is beyond my comprehension how people survive in this business of porn without becoming emotionally involved to the point of feeling their pain. Porn star Sasha Grey’ story was the beginning. Something inside me felt compassion to this hard-edged woman. Her outward persona fell away and I saw a scarred and scared little girl that didn’t have to end up this way. On the Tyra Banks show, she was defiant but her YouTube videos were void of humanity. She probably started out with the best intentions, but, as the saying goes, hell is paved with good intentions.
For the life of me, it is beyond my comprehension how people survive in this business of porn without becoming emotionally involved to the point of feeling their pain. Porn star Sasha Grey’ story was the beginning. Something inside me felt compassion to this hard-edged woman. Her outward persona fell away and I saw a scarred and scared little girl that didn’t have to end up this way. On the Tyra Banks show, she was defiant but her YouTube videos were void of humanity. She probably started out with the best intentions, but, as the saying goes, hell is paved with good intentions.
Defiance in the face of the truth that other woman told her hit me as a silent cry for assistance. Perhaps, Miss Grey will have her own moment of clarity. I hope so. I think deep down they all do; whether they act on it or not is personal choice—free will is a bitch as the Devil said in the movie “Devil’s Advocate”. She also reminded the immortal truth Eminem once said in a song, “Super stardom is close to post-morderm”.
Even more than Sasha Grey, Jenna Jameson’s book was heart-breaking. The biggest star, the most successful, the one all seem to know, was even more deeply affecting. I didn’t even like her. She was the star. She was the story porn wants everyone to see. But, the axiom of the truth always being found out came from her. She came from a broken life and, despite any impediments, she thought she had made it. Behind the fame and fortune sits a woman that is maybe porn’s Marilyn Monroe. Just maybe in her ambition is the foretelling that one day we’ll wake up and find she’s dead. The roses won’t bloom in death. At the gut level, Jameson did what she thought she had to and thought she had no choice. There is always a choice. Instead of putting her troubled past of gang rape past her she went headlong into it. Made something horrible into something uglier.
Julie Meadows affected me. Affected me most of all. She thinks it is over but it isn’t. She’s really still in because maybe that’s all she knows. She’s smart and could’ve been something else and extremely successful at it. What hit me about her was that I believe she knows she had other choices and past them up for maybe what she thought was the easiest decision. Jameson wouldn’t recommend a porn career to anyone unless they are a strong person. Jameson came with baggage; never read Julie did. If she did, I don’t know.
Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor, rendezvous with call girl Ashley Dupre hurt him but he’s back on his feet. Ashley Dupre isn’t. Like all these porn stars, she said on Dr. Phil that no one will hire her because the social conviction she now has to live with the rest of her life. NBC cancelled her appearance on The Apprentice. She was the hooker for “Client No. 9”. End of story.
Viewers of porn, without exception I could find, say the most sickening thing about the women in porn. “I’d do that whore”, “I’d do that b----“ reverberates in user comments. Viewers watch to get off. Plain and simple. Some male porn actors say the only reason they are in porn is to have sex, a nice way of expressing it, with all the “hot” women that wouldn’t have anything to do with them in high school. Spread your legs is good for your career those in porn have undoubtedly said. Easy money I know they say.
It isn’t easy money at all. If you do porn, television and Hollywood isn’t going to come calling. You’re meat. You’re some person’s fantasy. You’re some person someone got off to or get turned on. You’re some person that did the most intimate of acts for the camera for anyone to see. That is your legacy. It is that simple for a porn star. I’m sure Meadows and others will twist that into something else like “I was empowered” or “I live a nice life” or some other banality of indifference. They can’t escape the fact that the only reason porn exists is so viewers can get off or get turned on. You have that life, if you didn’t lose it all like some, if not a lot, of porn stars do, is that more people got off or got turned on watching you spread your legs for whatever guy they put you with. Not a legacy I’d want for a daughter. Jenna said she’d lock her daughter in the closet if she decided to do porn.
Doing porn might seem like an easy way to riches but riches won’t make you happy. One day you’ll look back and said, “I did that for $2,000? I let some guys on Viagra bang me like a screen door in a hurricane I never would have had sex with in real life was for this?” When the scene is over and the cameras are turned off and the lights go dark, how will you feel? Did you do your best in life? People that get awards and real recognition work hard. Porn is hard work but any woman appealing can get in it since it requires little special skils. Unfortunately, the social stigma that you’re a piece of meat they still make money off of is it. I think everyone in porn, male or female, will find all they did was get screwed and screwed till the end of time.
I seriously doubt but a few people outside the industry will feel anything but you’re easy. America is the land of second and third chances though porn will not make those easy chances to get whether you are a viewer who destroyed your marriage over it or a porn star that is on the outside of the business. A viewer will get past it; a porn star most likely will never remove the social stigma. These poetic words are true: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” Your claim to fame was you spread your legs so viewers could get turned on and/or get off is your legacy. Was the money worth it? Can you live with that? Can anyone? Honestly, can anyone?
