Free The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure by Tristan Taormino, Constance Penley, Celine Parrenas Shimizu, Mireille Miller-Young Page B

choices or motivations. I didn’t imagine that the actresses hated having sex, but rather that they were performing in a venue that discouraged their personal expression. I wanted to know what they looked like when they had sex in their real lives, and I wanted to see that onscreen.
    In addition to mainstream porn, I was exposed to images of some of the scions of feminist pornography including Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley. I watched Nina Hartley’s films and felt admiration for her clear and frank way of talking about sex. I loved that she was completely present and aware of herself and her presentation. The films Nina, Annie, and others made represented a sexuality that was open, honest, and without shame; they showcased sex that was fun and consensual. They had a sexual agency that I found arousing. It was the first time that I saw sex that resonated with me and that I wanted to emulate. Even with these films though, I still had issues with the bodies: the differences between theirs and mine. I couldn’t relate to the curvaceous body type of Nina Hartley or Annie Sprinkle. At five-feet-ten and 145 pounds, I have been athletic and sinewy for most of my adult life. My breasts are small A cups, and my look is often more androgynous than girly. Like many women, I experienced the simultaneous intrigue and revulsion that canaccompany pornographic film watching 3 : of being simultaneously captivated and repulsed by the performers as they embody stereotypical female “beauty” and “perfection.”
    While I was slowly constructing my own ideas about what porn should be, I discussed my thoughts with my sex-wise coworkers at Good Vibrations. One coworker in particular, Shine Louise Houston, was always available and interested in my thoughts on porn, as she had some pretty exciting thoughts of her own. When I talked about the kind of porn I wanted to see, she talked about the kind of porn she wanted to make. She talked with fervor about what she thought was hot and erotic and what her films would look like. Her dream was to direct sex scenes that were “authentic,” a term that we discussed quite a bit. I was taken with her dream and with her enthusiasm but also the fluidity of her ideas: forward thinking, diverse, and edgy, like mine. On a work break one day, I offhandedly said that should her dream ever come to fruition, I would star in her first film. I meant it, though I doubted that I would ever have to make good on such a promise. She left her job at the sex shop soon after that conversation. Over the course of the next year, I only heard about her in passing from mutual friends. Then I got a phone call from Shine. As it turned out, during that year, she was working on manifesting the adult film empire that would ultimately change my life.
    She asked me if I was ready to star in her film. She had gotten money together to finance her first movie and was I still interested? Yes, I was. And I was terribly curious. I spent the next two months preparing myself as best I could for what I imagined I would experience. To say I was nervous would be a huge understatement: when I walked in the door to the San Francisco apartment that was serving as the set, I was shaking all over. I had tweezed, primped, self-tanned and done just about everything I could to feel good naked. Though I knew I was there to be myself and give good, hot sex, I still feared that I wasn’t “porn” enough and couldn’t quite shake the images of toned, big-breasted bodies moaning and fucking in some impossible position on a pleather couch. I wanted people to think I was hot. I wanted to feel hot.
    Luckily, Shine was great at making her performers feel comfortable. I snacked and chatted and before we began the actual scene, she and I, along with my two fellow scene-mates, blocked out what we would do and where we would do it. The two people I would be having sex with were also first timers and our collective nervousness broke the ice. By the time the