POSTS
Finished a book
BlogWarning:
Book by a woman who makes money from prurient endeavours is discussed further in this post. You may want to not look if you’re of a rather Victorian bearing.
I recently finished How To Make Love Like a Porn Star : A Cautionary Tale by the undisputed queen of the pornography genre: Jenna Jameson (née Massoli).
In this day and age in America, the third act of fame is the search for forgiveness. All of a sudden after being a Bad Boy or a Bad Girl you go on Oprah, blame it on your overbearing parents, on poverty, on drugs, on boredom.
In the public crucible your sins are forgiven and melted to feed your fame’s fire.
And what would be better than for Jenna, the Jenna to come out and complain about abuse and isolation driving her to do it?
Well, if that were the nature of the book I’d have not bought it. Instead she did something much more respectable. She didn’t apologize. Instead of milking sympathy she, in a great display of Nietzschean and virtue ethics responsibility says I made these choices that are unconventional, sure, but I made them, and I’ll be damned if i tolerate your judgment of me.
This was enough to get me to read the book.
And sure, in the story we’re told about her emotionally distant father, drug dealing / using brother, her mother’s death at a young age. New to the middle of nowhere Montana (her roots are never very deep) she is gang-raped and has no one to confide in…
All those things push her to seek approval from anyone anywhere and it turns out to be at the hand of an uncaring tattoo artist in Vegas. In time she suffers more humiliation and finds out she can gain his approval by “dancing” in Vegas. There she tastes her own power and independence, turns cold to men under the blue gel lights and still looks for someone to support her.
The methamphetamines, anorexia, and codependence play hell upon her, but she is clean and healthy when she enters the industry and keeps her mind on her money. Years later she’s one of the wealthiest players, does spots on E! and VH1, has married and is living in a gigantic home in Scottsdale, AZ preparing to become a stay-at-home mom.
Remember, you get no apology. It’s unconventional, but its unapologetic - and in that too one finds something to respect.
In our age of moral relativism, authenticity is the only coin of cool.