April Garris is a good friend of mine who, while working as a “porn star,” made around 20 movies. She left the industry in 2001. Below she exposes 5 common myths people believe about the pornography.
Myth # 1 – The first, and most commonly held, myth is that the girls in porn enjoy making the videos.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. What people who hold to this myth fail to realize, is that these girls are acting, plain and simple. None of it is real. In all of my experience, I have yet to meet a single girl who actually enjoyed making pornography.
Having been in the industry, I can tell you that it is not a pleasurable experience. The sex itself is painful, and the girls are exposed to all kinds of abuses, both by the pornographers and the people on set. It is beyond degrading, and for many of us, the only way we could endure the shoots was by numbing ourselves with drugs or alcohol, telling ourselves that it will all be over in a couple of hours, and completely zoning out, sort of disconnecting ourselves from the whole experience.
Most of the girls who get into the porn industry do one or two videos, then get out. If the girls enjoy making porn so much, then why is there such a high turnover rate? Luke Ford said, in an interview with 60 Minutes: Most girls who enter this industry do one video and quit. The experience is so painful, horrifying, embarrassing, humiliating for them that they never do it again.
Myth #2 — The girls who do porn must love sex.
Well, there are several reasons why girls get into the porn industry, but a hardcore sex drive isn’t one of them. I know, because that’s what I used to tell people in interviews. I would tell my fans about my voracious sexual appetite, and how I couldn’t get enough. I would say it was all I ever thought about.
The sad truth, though, was that I actually hated sex. Sex meant nothing to me, as it means nothing to anyone else involved in porn. It’s just something that you endure to get paid. I’m not saying that it is like that with every single girl in porn, but I am saying that this is the norm and not the exception. In the case of every single girl I’ve talked to and have known, it’s the same thing.
Myth #3 — The girls are there voluntarily.
This is not entirely true. A lot of times, the girls are threatened or manipulated by the pornographers. This happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to other girls also. They are told they will be doing one thing, but when they arrive onset, they are told that they will be doing something else, and if they refuse, they forfeit their pay.
A lot of the girls are young and inexperienced, and they feel like they are obligated to go through with the scene….a scene that they did not agree to, and do not want to do. They may be scared of the pornographers, or they may be scared that they won’t be able to work anymore. They feel trapped.
Even if they are not manipulated, the truth is, no girl actually wants to be there. Just because they might have agreed to do it doesn’t mean that they enjoy it, and any girl who tells you otherwise is either outright lying, or isn’t telling the whole story.
Myth #4 – If they are getting paid for it, what’s the harm?
While it’s true that the actors get paid a lot – typically hundreds of dollars per scene – the twisted irony is that once the porn stars end up leaving, they come out broke and with nothing to show for it. There are several reasons for this. One is the drugs. Drugs are all over in the porn industry. It’s rare to find a set that doesn’t have drugs or alcohol, and many of the people are addicts.
Drugs are something you use to endure the humiliation and hardcore sex, and for many it’s what you use to numb yourself. The money that you make in porn you spend trying to numb yourself from the lifestyle.
Another reason is that a lot of the money they make goes right back into porn, with makeup and clothes and just the general cost of upkeep. They spend what they need to keep themselves looking good. So, even with the hundreds of dollars they make per shoot, in the end, they are left with nothing…..emotionally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt.
Myth # 5 – There are no, or at least minimal, health risks in the porn.
This is absolutely wrong. People are tested for HIV, but not for all sexually transmitted diseases. The majority of porn performers have one or more STDs, and many girls have reported contracting cervical cancer and HPV from their time in the porn industry.
The girls who come into porn are not made aware of these risks by the pornographers. Just this year, the L.A. County Health Department shut down production of the mainstream porn due to several reported cases of HIV. The porn industry knew about the HIV, but never reported it, because they didn’t want to shut down production.
Most of the girls in porn are prostituted women, which means that they can contract HIV or some other disease from one of their johns, and give it to one of their co-stars whom they work with. The pornographers will say that the performers always use condoms, but that is a lie. It is very easy to catch a sexually transmitted disease in the porn industry, although the pornographers and performers will tell you that it is completely safe.
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