Please: Enough With The Porn Offers Already

In what is rapidly becoming the least-surprising element of minor celebrity, Vivid Entertainment has offered Miss California Carrie Prejean $1 million to star in a pornographic film. Gross.

Vivid’s not exactly the first company to try to hitch its train to a woman in the news, and Carrie Prejean is hardly the first target of its exploitation. The company offered Nadya Suleman $1 million to star in one of its movies, and full medical and dental insurance for her family if she agreed to perform sex acts for them on an ongoing basis. Kick Ass Films offered Susan Boyle the same deal two weeks ago to film her professional deflowering. Porn producer Cezar Capone even had a run at Sarah Palin last year, offering her $2 million dollars to star in one of his “MILF” films, plus an extra $100,000 and a snow machine if she did it with her husband Todd.

Do these companies really believe that they are going to convince Prejean, Suleman, Boyle or Sarah fucking Palin to shed their clothes and fuck strangers on camera for money? Of course not. But they are exploiting these women and their celebrity, notoriety and ability to get the attention of the press to market their movies and their own names, and they’re doing it, frankly, without the permission of their supposed targets. (It’s interesting – and probably no mere coincidence – that, with the exception of Palin, the women targeted are either reportedly celibate and/or virgins.) or And even if these women did (in some alternate universe) agree to do such a film – as porn star Lorelei Lee told Violet Blue last year – it’s not for the weak of heart nor the amateurs or people who haven’t really considered what it means to become a sex worker.

A thought: If the porn industry wants to shed its reputation for exploiting or coercing vulnerable women, maybe a good place to start is to stop exploiting the images of women who did not and would not agree to be a part of the industry in the first place.