6 Things You Learn As A Lesbian Porn Star
Everybody knows that Cracked is made up of the world's foremost dick experts. But lately, we've been branching out into other genitalia -- that's why we've become a lot of people's go-to source for looks inside the lives of sex workers. Last year, we wrote an article with male porn star Lance Hart about the insane realities of his job. This year, we sat down with lesbian porn star Lily Cade to learn about working the same field with a different type of plow. Here's what she told us:
Hollywood Is A Slippery, Well-Lubricated Slope Into Porn
So how does one launch a career in pornography? In Lily's case, it started with her frustrating attempts to launch an acting career:
"I was kinda working as an AD. I was kinda working as an extra. I was on Community as a back-up goon for Anthony Michael Hall."
But striking a clothed pose alone wasn't enough to keep Lily from starving:
"... it wasn't taking off, or paying the bills, so porn seemed like a good idea. I've always been a massive sex addict and exhibitionist. I did some porn scenes, and the first one I did ... I know now the rate was bad, but I needed $200."
But while she was well-prepared for the volume of sex, working as an extra (where your costumes are generally provided) hadn't prepared her for getting dolled up to make some porn. Thankfully, her first co-star was cool about it:
"I laid out all my underwear at the time, and she was like, 'No baby; sexy underwear.' And I'm like, 'This is my sexy underwear.' So she dressed me, took me to work. I shaved my legs for the first time in years."
Undress for the job you want, not the job you have.
You mean porn stars aren't born naturally smooth, like sexy seals? Way to shatter the image ...
Porn Sex Is Incredibly Hard On Your Body
We don't know how you bone, dear reader, but we're going to assume it rarely lasts for an entire day. Porn sex takes a long time and an exhausting amount of effort.
"Porn-level strap-on sex is quite the workout," says Lily. "So that's why my core looks like it does. In porn, she's here, I'm here, I've got this leg back and keep my hand out of frame, so on my ass or my boob or like crossed over this way, because you have to keep the shot open. It's like this weird core workout. A lot of stuff where I'm on my knees fucking, pile-drivering ..."
Lily took some safe-for-work (... ish) pictures to demonstrate how this looks. Go try to hold these poses, at these angles, with your partner, and let us know how quickly your abs explode.
Porn comes with on-the-job injuries, too. And there's no workman's comp when the work involves, say, ass-eating:
"I pulled a muscle in my tongue once, for real, in Prague. I'd shot ten scenes which were primarily focused on ass-eating, and I pulled a muscle because I was working so much. It hurt. It felt like I couldn't stretch it out properly, but I kinda had to keep going, because what was I going to do? Another time, I fell in a fire on my ass, and I didn't tell anybody -- I just wore stockings.
"I got a real hideous bruise from doing DP on a desk. They had me and Jennifer Ryan fucking on, like, an Ikea entertainment stand. It's not super sturdy. It's like a hundred degrees -- you can't run the air where you're filming. And I'm in a three-piece suit, just dying. And she slips. And the shoes are like two sizes too big ... and my shoe bends, and I just go down. So I have this split-second decision about whether to just let her go or take the impact."
Believe it or not, professional fucking doesn't come with a great benefits contract:
"There's no healthcare in porn, not for most of us. You're an independent contractor, which means you either learn to take care of yourself or you pay. If you're not in good shape -- not just going to the gym but overall health-wise -- you're going to get sick."
"There's germs all the time. Not just STDs, but you're around dozens and dozens of people. Colds and flu. Bacterial vaginosis. Just, people's grossness. I mean, I eat a lot of ass."
Luckily, Lily's never come down with an illness she can tie directly to the Galactus-style devouring of asses.
You Will Have To Bring Literal Bags Of Dicks Through Airport Security
Lily has to travel to jobs around the world in order to keep her calendar full: "I've done New York, Jersey, Miami, Prague, Toronto, San Francisco, Vegas, and I'm maybe doing Croatia in June." We'd be failing miserably in our journalistic duties if we didn't mention that the porn she was filming in New York was Mormon-themed, " ... complete with magic underwear."
Remember what we said about porn stars being "independent contractors"? That doesn't only affect healthcare. You may also have to bring your own tools to the trade:
"About every time I go through the airport ... I usually have a bunch of dicks on my bag. And about every other time, someone says,
"'We need to search your bag, ma'am.'
"I just tell them, 'It's a bunch of sex toys.'
"Meh. Our scanners make porn 24/7."
"One time, I noticed a screener making a face, so I said something. 'You guys stop me a lot. Do you get a lot of dick-shaped threats to national security?'
"'We have to check it. It's a hard, solid mass.'"
Apparently, the TSA doesn't appreciate childish snickering.
Like With Professional Wrestling, Your Porn Persona Is Everything
Every actor has an "image" to keep up, and Lily's heavily involves her own lesbianism:
Lily is "really, really gay" in her own words. Her first big on-the-job shock was realizing that some women got into lesbian porn just for the money, and weren't into other woman at all:
"She took me to do a scene, and for the first time, I realized straight women were real. I could just tell, like, 'Oh man, you're not into this.'
"I've had to fuck some girls who really do not want to do it. They need a car payment or whatever. I do everything in my power to connect with them. I want to have a good time. And it's not in my reputation to do bad scenes. So if you don't get into it, I can't just BS my way through it. I've got to fuck the shit out of you. Because this is my job."
You can probably relate. You have to wait tables or sling coffee and don't feel like smiling? Tough shit. Put on your Customer Service mask and muddle through. But when you clock out, you get to be yourself again. Not so for Lily:
"I can't go to a party and not be Lily Cade. It can't be, 'Yeah, today I don't feel like having sex.' I love my job, but I sometimes keep the persona on when I should drop it."
Being a porn star, in some ways, sounds like a complicated mix between PR representative and mascot. One that you can watch get screwed on camera. Which gives us some complicated feelings about the Philly Fanatic ...
There Are Some Surprising Moral Questions In Porn
There's a lot of emotional issues tied up in sex, and there are certain moral responsibilities that come along with it. Lily says:
"I'm fucking depraved, so I won't go as hard on camera. I'm not going to choke some bitch out on camera. That just looks bad."
There's nothing illegal about porn like that, but it raises a host of troubling questions for her:
"I know myself. I know my girlfriend. I know that we're fine. But putting this for the rest of the world to see ... A lot of our audience are people who don't really fuck, or don't have a lot of sexual experience. I don't want them to go, 'Oh that's hot' and try it. They don't know how to do it safely."
It's sort of the same issue with violence in movies, only some dumb 17-year-old having his or her first sexual relationship is WAY more likely to try something they saw in porn than to knife-fight a gang of ninjas.
It's tempting to think of porn as a moral Bartertown -- a place where anything goes for the right price. But it's not that way for Lily:
"I do think about making sure that the work that I do, both within and outside the story, treats people ethically. My porn persona is kind of an asshole, slightly exploitative. But I try to keep it 'slightly.' I don't do stuff that borders onto rape territory. Rape fantasies might be fine at home, but ... I don't want to film someone saying 'no' too much. That makes me uncomfortable, as a producer and a performer."
"It's obviously consensual; we all agreed to film this. But in all my porn, there's a moment where the person who is having to have this sex has to think about it and go, 'Yeah, I'm willing to do this.' Even if they're fucking to get a job or whatever. I don't like it if there's too much resistance. I'm very uncomfortable with that."
The Future Of Pornography Is In Question
Lily is pretty frank about the issues any porn star exiting her 20s is going to face:
"Porn's got two roles for women: teens and MILFs. It's high school, and you're either a student or a teacher. If you age gracefully, you can work a lot as a MILF. If you're good at seduction roles. But you need to age gracefully and accept it, and accept that there is a limit to how long you can do it. For most people, there is very much a time limit on how long you can do this."
"If you're a lifer, you get in on the production side. A lot of girls find a sugar daddy, a husband, and that's what they do. Some girls try to have second careers, but that's often very hard. You're used to the money and the validation and the culture, and to go work in an office after that can be hard. Some girls do real estate. Some go back to school. My ultimate goal is to go mainstream. That's what I always wanted to do. I chose to do porn as my path to that."
Wait, mainstream? Like, back to dance-fighting with Anthony Michael Hall? Not exactly.
Lily's picture of the future of porn looks a lot like Game Of Thrones ...
"Five years ago, porn parties were filled with cocaine and happy people. Now, porn parties are filled with everybody bitching about how there's no work. And the reason is that a lot of the industry is stagnant. It's people filming big tits getting fucked by big dick, day in and day out. The industry is stuck in this business model.
"Maybe you could get by with that -- and charging exorbitant prices for it -- back when porn was the only place you could see sex outside of a bedroom. But now there's the Internet. A whole lot of homegrown free stuff. Mainstream Hollywood has adapted with things like Netflix and Hulu. Porn needs to do that.
"There's a lot of smut in mainstream, respectable TV these days. I think a lot of people watch Game Of Thrones because it's hot. There's surely a lot of people masturbating to it. Look at the sex scenes in House Of Cards."
"That's the future of porn."
Imagine it: An epic multi-season porn flick with a huge budget, in which all of your favorite characters get hardcore penetrated with things other than swords. Do you want a billion dollars? Because that's how you make a billion dollars.
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For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Strange Things You Learn As The Madam In A Brothel and 5 Ways Being A Legal Prostitute Is Weirder Than You Think.
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