The Blue Devil in Miss Belle Knox: Meet Duke Porn Star Miriam Weeks [View all]

[redqueen]

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None of which, she maintains, has anything to do with why she entered the sex trade. When Weeks started at Duke, her father was working in a private practice. Then he got called by the Army Reserves to go to Afghanistan for less than half of his previous salary. Weeks says she begged Duke to revisit her financial-aid package, but "they didn't care." Staring at a monthly bill for $4,300 that they couldn't pay, her parents suggested she take out private loans, despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt she'd rack up by the time she graduated. In high school, Weeks had worked as a waitress – a job she has said she found more degrading than the sex trade – so she knew how impossible it would be for someone without a car or a college degree to make anywhere near enough to cover her tuition. In desperation, Weeks joked to her roommate, "Oh, screw this, I'll just be a porn star."

And then, having said the words, she started to actually consider it. "I Googled 'how to be a porn star,' and all of these agencies popped up. And then there's this website called SexyJobs.com. It's like the Monster.com of porn." Weeks took a few naked selfies and submitted them, along with her height (five feet four), weight (95 pounds) and a short description ("'I'm a college girl with a naughty side' or something like that&quot . Within days, she got a call from a company called Facial Abuse that offered to fly her to New York for her first shoot, at a rate of $1,200 per scene. The night before leaving, Weeks says, "I was horny. I remember thinking, 'This is gonna be really hot.'"


While Weeks maintains that everything that happened at the shoot was consensual, it was not the best experience. "They try to figure out what makes you tick and fuck with you. I remember getting naked, and the guy said, 'You have cuts on your legs. You're a cutter.' He could tell I had written the word 'fat' in my thigh, so he started calling me fat." Once they called "action," she was pushed to the ground and slapped. "And I said, 'Stop, stop, stop. No, no.' And then they stopped, and they were like, 'We have to keep going.'

"And I was like, 'Just please don't hit me so hard.' But it went on like that, me getting hit, pushed, spit on. I was being told I was fat, that I was a terrible feminist, was going to fail all my classes, was stupid, dumb, a slut. But I got through it. You know how you kind of zone out sometimes? I just disassociated." It wasn't until she got back to Duke that she felt the weight of it all. "I remember just being a wreck, like, 'Oh, my God, what have I done? This is the most embarrassing thing ever. What if somebody finds it?'"

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http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-blue-devil-in-miss-belle-knox-meet-duke-porn-star-miriam-weeks-20140423#ixzz327lW3iwU

People keep throwing our the canard about banning porn, but most anti-porn feminists don't talk about the ubiquitous misogyny, assault, and rape in this industry with the goal of banning it. Most just want to make people aware. There are some whose desired outcome is that maybe after being made aware of the methods that most in this incredibly profitable industry use to make all that cash - and after considering what the trade off is for - that most will reconsider using porn to facilitate their precious wank sessions. No, not all companies are this bad, but that's beside the point. Those who defend the industry insist there's "nothing wrong" but anyone who has looked an inch below the glossy, overhyped surface knows better.

It is important to note her comment that waitressing is more degrading than porn. Reading about the experience above, it is impossible to interpret that claim as anything more than a defense mechanism. Many women who have been in the industry discuss this common method of dealing with repeatedly exposing oneself to traumatizing situations.

I fully expect the usual avalanche of childish responses. I wonder if they convey to other readers what they do to me.