After falling in love with free-spirited hookers from the gold rush era, I decided that porno was likely my path into the sex industry.  When I turned 18, I sought out companies that might hire me.

While searching online, I came across a guy-with-camera site where the amateur models were "normal people sexy", rather than "porn star sexy".  (I'm not setting up a false dichotomy between mainstream porn stars and "real people"- what I mean is the difference in beauty standards.)  I hadn't been previously aware, as most people aren't, that porn covers a broad spectrum of sexual interests and truly embodies the concept of the long tail.  Whatever you look like, someone is who is attracted to your body type, and a variety of specialty porn sites exist to cater to all interests.

I emailed a few topless photos of myself sitting at my iBook to the amateur porn guy.  This is my first rejection from pornoland, screen-capped in my archives for posterity:

I was bummed out- not because I wish I had bigger boobs and was going to cry and choose to feel insecure about myself, but because I thought I'd found my fit.

Quickly, though, I discovered that we "hairy" chicks have our very own niche!  I didn't need to shave my cooter to get a job.  With sensitive skin prone to ingrown hairs and irritation when I shaved my pits and legs as a teenager, getting that same rashy pimply look on my ladyparts never appealed to me.

I emailed a few hairy porn sites, and ended up booking a shoot in LA with the one that paid the most in a single chunk.  (I didn't want to travel around the country for $50 here, $100 there.)

The photographer was paid by the porn company $1250 for being awkward at me, and I was paid $750 for being your typical barely-legal model in stupid outfits that middle-aged men think 18-year-olds would wear to be sexy - like cheerleader uniforms or white cotton granny panties with little flowers on them.  (Because, as we all remember about being 18, nothing mattered to us more than trying to be mistaken for being 12.)  On the day of the shoot, the photographer tried to talk me down to less than $600 so he wouldn't have to go through the hassle of sending me a tax form at the end of the year.

The photographer kept telling me that a lot of the girls he shot were just so overwhelmed by horniness that they couldn't help themselves and just had to suck his cock.  (It took all my willpower to refrain from bursting into laughter when he said this.)  He was ugly, fumbly, and so sweaty that his thinning hair got stuck to his head.  If a cheesy movie was portraying the stereotype of an icky pornographer, this dude was exactly what that character would look like.

My LA porn experience was my worst work as a model, which is too bad, because those photos will be out there forever, probably seen by more people than my own site.  I look increasingly tired as the day worse on, (we shot 20 sets in a 12-hour day), and before I was out the door, I'd decided that it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life.  (Although, I now know that plenty of porn companies are much cooler to work for, and even have the decency to feed their talent and not try to get free blowjobs from them.)  In almost every photo, I have the same distant, slightly annoyed expression on my face, but hey- they got what they paid for.

I later found out that I was paid less than I could have been for softcore/masturbation content.  The company I worked for is a major player in the online porn world, but they pay models less per photo set ($37.50) than the model would make posing for tiny punk/queer/DIY porn sites that don't turn much profit.  I'm not trying to cry about economic exploitation- it was a learning experience on my path to my real career.  But, unlike, say, working at Burger King during college, my embarrassment is still visible to the world and making money for someone over 7 years later.  (Remember kids- porn is forever.)

I'm glad things didn't work out with myself and mainstream pornoland.  I'm sure I've missed out on a lifetime of weird anecdotes, but I like being independent.  So - thank you, WebGuy and creepy LA photographer, for being my first steps on the path to running my own company where no one else keeps most of the money made selling my image.

Recently, I was baking vegan cupcakes and watching Real Genius.  These are the sorts of awesome things I do with my days now that I no longer waste any time trying to convince sexually frustrated leftists that feminism and sex work can coexist.  (Can they?  Who cares- let's go swimming and drink mojitos!)

The movie got me thinking about the people on the other end of my internet fights.

Real Genius has a character (Kent) who's uptight, unhappy, unattractive, and always putting others down to make himself feel better- a bully.  He works tirelessly, yet achieves only mediocrity, and he's infuriated to no end that everything goes so well for his rival, Chris. Chris screws around and has fun rather than attending classes, but he's still more intelligent and successful than Kent.

Kent reminded me of a lot of people I've encountered in debates about beauty politics and sex work- they just can't stand the idea that other people are having a good time.  They make life hard on themselves, and then resent anyone who doesn't also struggle tirelessly against self-imposed problems.

In the movie, Kent sabotages Chris's final project so that it blows up and he loses all the time he painstakingly put into it.  But, thanks to the total destruction of his work, he has a breakthrough about an even better way to go about accomplishing his goal.  And Kent is back to his dull existence.

So, remember - when the Kents of the world sabotage you (Prop K, Prop 8, anyone?), may those setbacks be temporary.  Bounce back with stronger plans and better-executed projects.  Think in radically-clever new ways.

We will win- and have more fun in the process.

"It reminds me of the exasperation I used to feel, years ago, when one could be accused of regarding others as "sex objects." Well, one can only really be a proper "subject" to oneself. A sentence that begins with I will be highly solipsistic if it ends only with me, and if the subject is sexual, then the object of the sentence will be an object. Would people rather be called "sex subjects"? (A good question for another time, perhaps.) Or "sex predicates"? Let us not go there."

-- Christopher Hitchens, in The You Decade on slate.com