Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Pornstars and Their Careers

http://jonmillward.com/blog/studies/deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/

by justinmares • 13 years ago

277 108 13 years ago

jonmillward.com

johncoogan• 13 years ago

As always, the regional heat map is useless... http://jonmillward.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/porn-...

Luckily there is a relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1138/

jlgreco• 13 years ago

Oh I don't know, I think there is some interesting information to be gleaned from that heatmap. Look at Florida compared to New York for instance.

strait• 13 years ago

I'm trying to make sense of Texas. There's 50 claiming San Antonio (Good Catholic Latinas Gone Bad?) and another 50 centered on land that is merely rural range (but with a little shack outside La Grange!). One from A&M and one from Baylor U. Who wants to claim they're from Lubbock?

Tichy• 13 years ago

The same probably goes for all the other traits (blonde vs brunettes, cup sizes, and so on). At least they are pretty useless without a comparison to the average female population.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

I'm surprised more people aren't working on alternate heatmap visualizations, it doesn't seem like an incredibly hard problem to me.

capnrefsmmat• 13 years ago

It is a hard problem. You could, for instance, divide by population to get a rate instead of an absolute number -- but then rural areas would have all the hotspots. Why? Because in areas with small samples, you're bound to get more variation and noise, so all the extremes will occur in areas where there are few people.

There are ways to adjust for that, but basically, you can't win:

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/allm...

trdtaylor• 13 years ago

Deep inside, heu heu heu...

pbiggar• 13 years ago

Honestly, I'm offended. How could any man spend such time so deep in such filth? I understand that people gotta do what they gotta do, but really: Excel?

digitalengineer4• 13 years ago

Offended? It's about time somebody brought some order in to that chaotic world. He shows a lot of assumptions are actually just that: assumptions not backed up by facts. Now we know. And why would someone seeking knowlegde offend you? Were you forced at gunpoint to click the link? Or do you feel uncomfortable discussing sex-related topics? Well, most people do and thats what brings us back to those assumptions other people use to create official policy.

WalterGR• 13 years ago

He's making a joke. The punchline is the last word: Excel.

shardling2• 13 years ago

Err, did you read the comment? It was clearly a (cheap) joke poking fun at excel.

saundby• 13 years ago

Look closer, I think he's referring to the "filth" of a popular spreadsheet program. ;)

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

The post you replied to is so, so short, yet you couldn't even be bothered to the end of it, preferring to react to the first few words. Scary.

However, I must thank you because I think you just demonstrated why western society is such a complete mess better than anything I have previously read or seen. A hair trigger reaction with out even bothering to consume the point, let alone understand it. And how could you understand it, you didn't even read it? The sad thing is that you're not even giving yourself a chance.

And that is leaving aside the sheer blinding irony of you criticising people for making assumptions.

oellegaard• 13 years ago

Epic comment ;) And I actually thought the same when I read the fact that he used excel to analyze 10.000 rows of data

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

Obviously he should have used a database to analyze so much data. Like MS Access.

Shorel• 13 years ago

Actually, it is not such a bad tool for that, since about 2007.

microtherion• 13 years ago

Luckily, my phone bill for the last month was quite reasonable, so it looks like I won't have to do Excel in the near future.

mchusma• 13 years ago

Cool analytical approach to an interesting data set. I wish there was a better way to see income for films, how they enter the business, and where do they end up after. I realize this is in practice and for privacy reasons this is nearly impossible to get.

shardling2• 13 years ago

> one thing’s for sure: most women don’t quit after one film—in fact, the majority (at least 53%) do three or more.

Well, I guess that depends on how accurate the database is. To the extent that it might miss performers, it would certainly be biased towards those who have fewer credits, or whose credits are for smaller outfits.

lmkg• 13 years ago

Another confounding factor: there's a decent volume of shovelware movies that consist of non-original scenes edited together, like a mash-up tape. I would not be surprised to discover that one scene results in three credited appearances on average.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

They flag compilations on iafd. Let's pretend they mentioned that in the article somewhere and I didn't just happen to know.

qznc• 13 years ago

I also assume that there is a difference between "first video" and "first published movie". Those early quitters might never appear in any movie in the database. Maybe as a short advertising clip or something.

vacri6• 13 years ago

Also in question is the source of the quote he's opposing - where is that guy getting the numbers that "Most girls who enter the porn industry do one video and quit" and their motives for doing so?

hkolek• 13 years ago

Another important thing to keep in mind here is that IAFD only tracks movie releases afaik. They don't have data about scenes that are available on the web only which is a considerable amount of porn. I bet if you take those scenes into account the percentage will be much higher.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

This is an important point. Two others; one big, one small:

BIG: iafd doesn't cover loops ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porn_loop ) or their descendents, internet scenes, unless they were eventually compiled into a movie. I would expect 'one scene and out' performers to be more common at the lower end of the market (not shrewd/no body of work) and most of that is going to be internet.

small: The fact that porn tends to cluster around samey names, plus the fact that people who are just dabbling in porn don't put a lot of thought into their names means that a lot of one time performers end up accidentally rolled into another performer's filmography.

Taylorious• 13 years ago

This guys other articles are really good too. He has a couple on escorts that are really interesting. The article he has on the last words of inmates being put to death is absolutely fascinating and incredibly saddening.

sirwitti• 13 years ago

Interesting. But I think there might be porn even outside the U.S., who knew?

jiggy20119• 13 years ago

I foresee sex work (so, porn , prostitution , "cam whoring") being huge business over the coming years (ok, it's already huge, but I mean even huger) and losing a lot of it's stigma.

Here in the UK where prostitution is legal there already exists websites where people can basically browse online directories for various sexual services.

Combine high employment with women realising that they can make a solid 4 figures a week by working < 8 hours a day with the male tendency to "seek variety".

It's only a matter of time before some business manages to take advantage of this on a huge scale.

mhaymo• 13 years ago

As a UK resident, I had no idea prostitution was legal. Wikipedia says: In the United Kingdom, prostitution itself (the exchange of sexual services for money) is not a crime,[2] but a number of related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb crawling, owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes.

So how exactly does prostitution work? It seems like it is effectively illegal.

jiggy20119• 13 years ago

AFAIK it is legal as long as the prostitute is effectively self employed (so not working for a pimp or brothel) and not selling services on the street, and of course over 18. This is where the internet comes in.

There is a certain website known for this which I will not link to here.

brazzy• 13 years ago

Sounds easy to find loopholes. Instead of a "brothel", you have a clothes-optional "wellness club" with easy access to a building next door full of luxurious bedrooms, who just happen to be rented rather expensively by a bunch of beautiful women who like to hang out naked at the club... If necessary, the two operations can be run by completely separate companies.

majmun• 13 years ago

theoretically it coul be run by autonomous agent. hosted as tor service.

DanBC• 13 years ago

Be careful with UK laws, there have been some recent additions.

In general two consenting adults who have sex and then exchange money is legal. But being a pimp is illegal; running a brothel is illegal; offering sex for money or offering money for sex is illegal. And there are some fierce laws about coercion and trafficking - the punter is guilty if the sex-worker is coerced even if the punter didn't know. And the UK has a stricter definition of trafficked than most other countries. A woman who is assisted to travel willingly and knowingly to the UK to do sex-work has been trafficked. And the punter is guilty even if they didn't know about it.

So, in the past you'd have someone offering a length of time for £X, and anything else that happened between consenting adults was just good luck, oh, and btw, here's a list of sexual practices that I like, and here's what I do not do.

For a grim website you can have a look at adultwork.com

dagw• 13 years ago

how exactly does prostitution work

You advertise your phone number/email in relevant forums and wait for people to contact you.

vacri6• 13 years ago

In Australia, or at least in my state, brothels are legal but open to health check inspections. Streetwalkers are illegal. It seems a sane approach - safer working conditions and public spaces.

dspillett• 13 years ago

It is one of those (many) spots where UK law is almost deliberately patchy. We don't make it illegal, but we make it hard to do legally. Having sex for money will never be completely outlawed, as it'll wreck a popular past time amongst the politicians who vote on these things (and their lobbyists & other interests)!

Basically it is illegal to advertise paid sex or go looking/asking for it - but if by chance during some other encounter someone who is willing to pay meets someone who is happy to be paid for it, then there is no crime.

Another oddity is pornography. A small brothel in Grimsby got around the brothel thing by having a camera in every room - that way porn was being filmed which sidesteps the wording of the law nicely by instead being a film studio that happened to work on adult material (apparently customers walked away with the tape afterwards, though to be honest I'd not trust that wasn't the only copy!).

bitwize• 13 years ago

The internet, private networks/listings, friend of a friend...

Japan is just the opposite: prostitution is illegal, but prostitution is defined by law as "penis in the vagina for money". So a lot of institutions have sprung up to offer every other kind of service.

tsotha6• 13 years ago

According to NPR, the big trend in recent years is a steep drop in profit for porn. The supply is enormous and people don't seem to care much about production quality. People may shell out for physical contact, but they expect porn to be free.

jiggy20119• 13 years ago

Based on what I have seen , the money seems to be in webcams. The free porn is used as a lure to get people to click on livejasmin popups.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

This may be a red herring though. The traditional porn producers may be hurting but what about the total revenue of the entire porn spectrum? I suspect that it's not that the industry is dying but more that it's changing into different forms.

ameister14• 13 years ago

I was talking about the RFS with a friend the other day. When I asked him what people would do for fun in twenty years, without hesitation he replied "sex robots."

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

>> If you think that’s bad, you haven’t heard the half of it. Another reviewer mentioned being able to taste the dry saliva of a previous punter on the escort’s nipple while he sucked it

O...M...G...

Edit: there is something, levelling, and humanising about the sheer unexpectedness of this. Plus no showering in between clients, nope going back to OMG

rb2k_• 13 years ago

I would be really interested to see statistics about the differences to the rest of society. On maps of e.g. the birthplace/hair/color/... I'd be more interested in the deviation from national averages.

A lot of people are born in big cities, so a lot of pornstars will be born in big cities. I'd be interested to see which cities have a disproportionally low/high number.

Even with the hair color, I'm wondering what the deviation from the national averages looks like.

p.s. obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1138/

prawn• 13 years ago

I'd be interested in comparisons to sport. e.g., in a pro basketball league, a significant percentage of players never play more than a handful of games while a more select group rack up hundreds. Both groups are performing after all.

vacri6• 13 years ago

On the xkcd thing, meh. If your users map is similar to a population map, then it means you're appealing to a broad slice of the population. If it's centred in one area, that means you're not appealing outside that area. There's nothing wrong with such a map if it's interpreted correctly.

randallsquared• 13 years ago

> If your users map is similar to a population map, then it means you're appealing to a broad slice of the population.

Er, no, it just means there's no geographic component to your appeal within the limits of the map. Could be a very narrow slice, but even distributed in population.

smegel• 13 years ago

Unnecessarily evocative title

tferris• 13 years ago

Useless but in parts well designed work of an addict.

CodeMage4• 13 years ago

This is certainly an interesting study, but I can't help being seriously disappointed by this part:

Sometimes when I hear people railing against porn, declaring it as the downfall of society, a poison infecting masculine minds and demeaning female ones, I wonder what kind of porn they’re talking about.

[...]

So when I hear somebody claim that porn is ‘degrading’, I can’t help but ask: which porn?

If you think most porn isn't degrading, then you need to look a bit closer and think a little harder. I've already posted my views [1], but I'll copy & paste the relevant part here:

First of all, there's very little porn out there where the woman truly enjoys the experience. It's not always glaringly obvious (although we'll get back to that in the next point), but if you actually stop and look, you'll see the discomfort and/or indifference very often.

Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc.

Third, even the porn that doesn't focus on pain teaches wrong stuff. One might get the idea that the only thing a man need do to make a woman enjoy sex is to pound her fast and hard. On top of that comes the whole issue of hygiene: the way anal is portrayed means that if you try it at home, your female partner will likely end up with an infection.

Fourth, it creates unrealistic expectations. Let's just say that gag reflex is not as easy to suppress as the porn makes you believe and that anal sex is not a matter of just sliding in any time you want.

TL;DR: No, it's not just about whether the sex if fun or boring.

Finally, I find the claim that "female porn stars dictate the type of sex they have by listing in their modelling profiles the acts they’re willing to perform on camera" to be disingenuous. It propagates the idea that everything is okay and whatever isn't okay is "her fault".

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4499803

EDIT: Since I'm obviously not trolling, I was wondering whether anyone could help explain the drive-by downvoting. I don't expect everyone to agree, but it might be nicer to have a discussion than to suppress it ;)

vacri6• 13 years ago

One might get the idea that the only thing a man need do to make a woman enjoy sex is to pound her fast and hard.

While I'm not about to argue that porn is a particularly accurate depiction of sex, I always find it interesting that these kinds of criticisms of it always seem to ignore the frequent cunnilingus in it. One of the things I like about this article is that it's about data mining rather than selection bias. Not to say that the article isn't biased, but that it's less biased.

CodeMage4• 13 years ago

I can't speak for other people, but I can offer you insight into how I think about these things.

It's not that I ignore the frequent cunnilingus in porn, it's that I don't see the need to mention it because I don't look at porn as an equation, as in "Well, he's going from ungentle and obviously painful anal directly to rough fellatio, but that's perfectly okay because of the long cunnilingus at the beginning."

I'm not trying to portray all porn as bad and degrading, nor am I denying that there is good (and sometimes even realistic) sex in it. Nor do I claim that it all should be realistic. What concerns me and motivates me to comment on porn are the following things:

1) the prevalence of casual degradation of women in porn.

2) what people learn to expect based on porn.

3) how many people seem to be either unaware of some (or all) of the above or aware but believe it's normal and acceptable.

marknutter• 13 years ago

The real truth is, there's a wide range of porn catering to a wide array of interests and you're narrowly focusing in on a very small slice of that array.

jules2• 13 years ago

> Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc.

I might be mistaken here, but as far as I can tell this kind of porn is the minority. Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded? Whether you like it or not, the power dynamic is an integral part of human sexuality. That you see this in porn is just an effect of the phenomenon, not the cause. It's completely natural and benign. People saying that this is "wrong" and taboo are doing far more harm than good to the women and men (!) who enjoy being on that side of the power dynamic.

Secondly, porn isn't meant to be realistic. Complaining about that is just like the people complaining about violence in video games and movies. People are perfectly capable of distinguishing reality from fiction. The reason people enjoy porn is exactly because it is not realistic -- it satisfies a fantasy, whether that is sex with a person who is far out of your league, or rough sex, or otherwise. The way to go here is to improve sex education, not to blame porn for not being sex education.

jseliger• 13 years ago

>I might be mistaken here, but as far as I can tell this kind of porn is the minority. Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded?

I've dated women (note the plural) who were into this sort of porn. I'm not a random sample, obviously, but take a look at books like A Billion Wicked Thoughts and The Evolutionary Biology of Human Female Sexuality, or Meredith Chivers' work: bdsm-style desires appear to be more common than is commonly depicted in the media.

CodeMage4• 13 years ago

Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded?

I'm not sure I understood you correctly. Are you suggesting that "Hot Japanese Girls [sic] gets fucked and abused in every way" is marketed primarily to people who identify with abused women?

But again, the videos that explicitly and specifically portray violent and/or degrading male fantasies don't bother me as much as so-called "normal" videos that seriously misrepresent what is enjoyable to most women.

Whether you like it or not, the power dynamic is an integral part of human sexuality. That you see this in porn is just an effect of the phenomenon, not the cause. It's completely natural and benign. People saying that this is "wrong" and taboo are doing far more harm than good to the women and men (!) who enjoy being on that side of the power dynamic.

Something tells me that men and women who enjoy being on the submissive (or "less powerful", if you prefer) side of the power dynamic are still the minority of the market. While I'm sure that there are people who watch Mandingo videos because they identify with the lady or because they enjoy watching big penises, I'm pretty sure that most people who watch it are men who like to identify with Mandingo and fantasize about having a penis that big.

So, to sum it up, I don't claim that it's wrong or "taboo" to be on the less powerful side of the power dynamic. Hell, there's nothing bad with fantasizing about being on the more powerful side or about having a huge penis or what have you.

Secondly, porn isn't meant to be realistic. Complaining about that is just like the people complaining about violence in video games and movies. People are perfectly capable of distinguishing reality from fiction.

I wouldn't be so quick to equate these things. It's a lot easier for kids to confirm that the world is not really violent in the same degree and way as videogames than it is for them to find out what women find enjoyable in sex.

The way to go here is to improve sex education, not to blame porn for not being sex education.

Precisely, but how? How do you improve teaching kids about sex in terms of pleasure, not only reproduction and health, which seems to be what most sex ed focuses on?

mistercow• 13 years ago

>Also, isn't this 'degrading porn' meant for people who identify with the person being degraded?

It's for both. There is an entire subculture of people whose fetishes involve degradation on either side. Two important points to take from that:

1) It is silly to extrapolate to all porn from that. Those genres are targeted at relatively small demographics.

2) The fetish has nothing to do with those people's attitudes about society at large. Men who are into degrading consenting women in the bedroom are not, by and large, misogynists, for example. It's a sexual fantasy, not a political stance.

However, fetishes notwithstanding, I don't think it can be said that most mainstream porn is sex-positive or embraces healthy attitudes.

jiggy20119• 13 years ago

This seems to make the assumption that there is a right and wrong way to have sex and that there is a definitive list of things that women do and do not enjoy.

Of course it stands to reason that porn marketed to men will put more focus on the parts that men are more likely to enjoy and the marketing will also reflect this.

So a scene showing fairly vanilla sex will be labelled "slut gets destroyed by huge cock" or something.

To be honest I would suspect that women in porn who truly hate the experience wouldn't last too long. It's more likely that they simply find it boring after a while than outright unpleasant. In other words doing anal to them would be like debugging to us.

saucetenuto2• 13 years ago

So if you're marketing porn to men, it's better to write "slut gets destroyed by huge cock" than e.g. "man has great sex"? I think you're right, but it's pretty disturbing, hearing it put that way.

henrikschroder• 13 years ago

> First of all, there's very little porn out there where the woman truly enjoys the experience.

There's a lot of porn out there that has no women at all in it.

I agree with you that there is a lot of bad porn, and that there are a lot of bad things prevalent in porn, but that specific point of the author stands pretty strong. You have to preface the discussion by asking "which porn?". In your comment you've already narrowed your definition of "porn" into a specific segment.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

Downvoted you because of this gem:

>Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc.

---

You're searching for that specific type of porn - of course it's going to be degrading. Your whole argument falls flat on it's face I'm afraid.

fluidcruft3• 13 years ago

I think the point is the relative proportion of available/consumed porn that falls into these categories. Anecdotally, I agree with CodeMage that this sort of porn seems to be the predominant form (at least within the commercial variety of porn advertised on the internet). Perhaps what's needed is some sort of measurement of the different classifications. I really think you should address the point of proportion of this type of porn consumed, rather than the methods that can be used to identify it.

CodeMage4• 13 years ago

Why on earth would you draw the conclusion that I came up with that because I search for that kind of porn? Let me put it this way: if you go to a store looking for chocolate and there's a lot of products with hazelnuts and you remark on that, would you expect anyone to jump at you and say "That's because you were looking for chocolate with hazelnuts"?

TDL• 13 years ago

'Finally, I find the claim that "female porn stars dictate the type of sex they have by listing in their modelling profiles the acts they’re willing to perform on camera" to be disingenuous. It propagates the idea that everything is okay and whatever isn't okay is "her fault".'

I honestly don't understand how you come the conclusion that women controlling their working conditions ends up propagating victim blaming in sexual assaults. Hopefully you can clarify.

tomjen3• 13 years ago

>Second, a lot of porn out there focuses on and glorifies the woman's suffering, pain and degradation. Seriously, you only have to read the word "painal" once to realize that. However, if that's not enough, you might also look for the occurrences of "choke", "gag", "destroy", "slut", etc.

And an entire subgroup which focus on the same with the man -- but most people don't look that far, because they just want to look down on porn.

It is religious bullshit, repackaged as concern for women(TM).

sigzero• 13 years ago

Religion has nothing to do with it. Porn is degrading.

notgrace• 13 years ago

I'm female and I have my toe in that industry. I am not in the skin trade, but I am in a position where I have a bit of exposure to it.

1) Yes, most porn focuses on the male's pleasure, which is a common complaint. That's why James Deen makes money: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/11/17/porn_that_wo...

2) Yes. Some women are into that. I feel like you are unnecessarily close-minded about the idea that women might like a range of experiences. I also agree with other commenters on their ideas that naming porn conventions do not actually indicate suffering, pain, and degradation.

3) True. Porn is not meant as educational material; be safe.

4) It does create unrealistic expectations, but almost nobody expects porn to be like real life.

Female porn stars do get to choose what kind of sex they have. I hate victim blame just as much as the next woman, but saying that porn stars can choose what to do is not victim blame. Porn stars live in a world where they get paid for what they decide to do. The skin industry does have some people who are not there by choice but necessity...but the vast majority are there because they chose to follow that route. Though I think concern for the performers is admirable, most performers are ok with where they are. It's actually a little bit ridiculous that men get up in arms about women when they choose to go into the industry; it's a mostly free choice. Men act like the performers can't like what they do, which is wrong. http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/its-a-lap-dance-a...

Surio2• 13 years ago

+1 Actually, IMO, you do raise some very good (and uncomfortable) points. I've read on the papers that research studies actually support the points you make.

Here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/02/gail-dine...

There was another article that mentioned that an explosion in access to [western made] pornographic materials in many African countries has distorted the views across the male population (from adolescents to old men). As a consequence the stats on rapes being committed has gone up very significantly (Alas: I cannot seem to find a link)

brador• 13 years ago

So....can we get that data for download?

gwern• 13 years ago

> An expanded report of this article that covers the methodologies and full results of the analysis will be available for free very soon. If you’re a journalist or blogger and would like early access to the PDF, or if you’d like to go on the list of people who will receive it by email, please contact me via this form.

For this and the sidebar, I'd guess he's an analyst for hire - sharing the raw data would let people scoop him. If you want the data, you can always scrape the IAFD yourself...

freddealmeida• 13 years ago

I would love this level of study of bankers. 10,000 bankers and their careers. HSBC drug cartel bankers get extra points.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-t...

brini• 13 years ago

Text-only Google cache version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

reinhardt• 13 years ago

Getting 404 and "Powered By LiteSpeed Web Server".. what's this?

2510c39011c5• 13 years ago

Quite reminiscing to last time when a guy put the vagina-hacking link on HN...every time when something about porn posted here, the website would be DoS'ed in hours, almost without exception...perhaps next time we should at least have the courtesy to notify the author to mirror the site before we link it on HN...

Meglis• 13 years ago

It gives me a 404. Damn!