<p>One of the things with porn is that these days, because of the net and other sources, it is even more fragmented and sleazy then it was in the old days, because there is a huge demand for it and the source is not as controlled as let’s say when the only outlets were movie theaters and adult book stores.When the vhs came out (and some ridiculous percentage of revenue from VHS was porn), it drove up demand, while killing off theaters and such. With the .net, it became a torrent…and it became so easy to produce video, can do it, put it on the net, in a couple of hours. There has always been an ‘elite’ in porn, the top name people, but a lot of it is quite honestly is fly by night operations these days, what the young women describes is the norm. In the ‘elite’ world they do run routine health checks, it is a pretty closed circle of people, and it is a lot safer than what she is doing, that is the other circuit I just described, and health checks and such are often bypassed. It also is not a glamorous business, that money she makes is gotten the hard way, you might think it is two people having sex for pleasure while the camera rolls, but it isn’t. They do it in takes, and it is mechanistic, designed to get off the person viewing it, and it is acting in many ways, because they aren’t getting much out of it. I have met a couple of people who did various kinds of porn, and it is the equivalent of working in a steel mill, by the end you are worn out, weary and feeling pretty crappy from what they told me. Personally I find much porn to be boring, it looks mechanical and stupid, there is some that I wouldn’t classify as porn, but more erotica, but those are rare…I think porn should be legal, trying to make judgements on what is porn and what isn’t is just too loaded by the values of those watching it, I would wish it were better regulated, to make sure the performers are protected, but that is another story.</p>
<p>As far as the young women, I normally would probably say something like “well, we want kids to be creative and entrepreneur”, but what I see here is a mess, and from the story it looks like there is dysfunction all over the place. She went to Duke, probably because like other elite schools, she saw that as a foothold to getting into a top law school and so forth, so turned down the full tuition from Vanderbilt because only a bigger name school would do (no offense meant to Vanderbilt, I think she is more than a bit stupid to assume Vanderbilt isn’t ‘all that’, it is a really good school IMO). For what she wants to do in being a lawyer, if she did well at Vanderbilt, got excellent grades and SAT’s, she could get into almost any top law school in the country. There are times when decisions like this can matter, if it was full ride at University of Phoenix or going to Duke, it would matter, if it was some obscure religious college versus Duke, yeah, I could see that. </p>
<p>Speaking as a parent, something is fouled up there with the parents and the daughter, I kind of wonder if the porn thing isn’t a way of getting attention or getting at them or something. If the girl had problems with cutting, that is a sign of dysfunction in her life, and maybe her doing porn was lashing out at mom and dad, given they are supposedly very religious. More importantly, speaking as a parent, I don’t know how they could agree to pay tuition like that if their finances were that tight. 200 grand living in the area they are in is not chicken feed, in the NYC area that would be decent income but not earth shattering, and if they had other kids in college, how could they not know that that 5k would be too much? And now I am going to be seen as mean, but why would someone with kids in college, paying tuition and such, suddenly get a new big house with a large mortgage?If they got the house before she went to Duke, then how come they couldn’t figure out that 5k was too much? If they did it after she decided to go there, then that is irresponsible…as a parent who is sacrificing, paying full freight at music school, one of the most fraught fields there is to go into, I am speaking as a parent, and I think part of the problem is they set unreasonable expectations in the girl, and they themselves did it, given their financial position, it sounds to me like the parents may have had a hand in her going to Duke, at the very least, putting into her head that she needed to go to an ‘elite’ school (after reading about the large mortgage on the big house, kind of confirmed it to me)…and then suddenly walked away and said “we can’t pay anything”?</p>
<p>And the Dad is a doctor, and doesn’t know about his daughter cutting herself? Or that she is prone to self destructive behavior, which porn can be? I agree there is a lot more to this, and the fact that now that she has been outed, she has decided to do the big publicity, strip and so forth, tells me even more so. She could have come out and with some sincerity said “I only did this to pay for college, I wanna get out of it, I would rather just be a student”, but instead she has turned herself into a celebrity (and gotten attention for it). She could potentially have helped her future by quitting the porn, and speaking out about how she only did it in desperation, etc, and played to people’s sense of second chances and such, but it looks like she has embraced what she is doing, and I think others are right, it is blowing her chance at a different future. </p>
<p>I have known women (and a few men) who quietly did sex work, in things like sexual domination, escorts, porn, stripping and webcams and films and used it to pay for school, then who moved on, but they did it in such a way as they stayed under the radar, though most of them didn’t have parental support, they were supporting themselves through school and they clearly saw it simply as a way to pay the bills. I think most of them, even though they at least tolerated and often enjoyed the work, would have taken the Vanderbilt offer in a flash, simply because lot easier to focus on school not working, the ‘easy money’ of sex work is often not so easy, and it also is not without risks.</p>
<p>I hope she gets help, I think she really needs someone who can help her sit down and get her life back together. I suspect her family life was a mess before this, the girl sounds like she was self destructive before she got to school, and doing porn was just another way IMO to act that out, too.</p>