Weight Loss, Self-Esteem and Entering the Porn Industry

I don't think low self-esteem discriminates against anyone.

Doesn't matter if you come from a great family or if you come from a not so great background. Uh, I struggled my entire childhood with weight, and I never felt attractive or worthy of male attention. And suddenly, my first year of college, I start losing all this weight from making small changes.

Hmm. And by the time I graduated, I was ready to make a bigger difference. I felt extremely self-conscious about my breasts because that was the first thing to go when I lost all the weight.

I lost about 50 pounds. I don't know how many kilos that is or stones.

Um- Well, it's a l- it's a considerable amount of weight.

Yeah. I- It changed your body. Oh, yeah.

It changed you physically. Completely. Yeah.

So my biggest insecurity was my breasts, so I wanted to more or less go back to what they normally were.

And once I did that, I started garnering all of this attention from men, and I was never used to it. And I felt like unless I held on to it and kind of did what was asked of me or what was expected of me, it would go away.

And after feeling what it was like, that validation, and, you know, the compliments for the first time, I did not want that to go away.

Hmm. You were spotted, I think, on a street.

Mm-hmm. I mean, there you were, you were a young graduate wanting to sort of find a job, and, and you were spotted on a street by a guy who said, "I, I, I can work with you." Uh, a- and clearly he opened up and said it, it's the porn business.

What was it in you that, that f- far from running away was, was drawn into it?

Um, I... It wasn't... It... That's not how it was.

It wasn't just, "Hey, do you wanna come do porn?" It was more so, "Oh, you're beautiful. Like, would you like to do some modeling?

Oh, uh, you know, you have a great body.

Like, I think you'd be great in nude modeling."

Hmm. Uh, things like that. And after I came and toured the studio, you know, it was very respectable. It was a gorgeous location.

It was, uh, in Miami, in Doral, Florida.

Um, it was clean. Everyone who worked there was nice.

All of their cubicles were decorated with family photos.

Like, it was nothing dodgy or m- that made me uncomfortable.

And after do... Like, it... The first time I went in wasn't the first time I, I filmed a porn movie.

Um, Hmm. It was the second time. Uh, the first time was more so, "Do you wanna do this? Like, sign the paperwork," et cetera, et cetera.

So these guys, they just saw you, frankly, as a money machine.

Absolutely. But you still had no advisors, you had no lawyer, you had no nothing.

So I- I was twen- what 21-year-old has a lawyer on retainer?

I, I, I'm just trying to get my head around how stressful this must have been, and whether even now, 'cause you sit here so poised, and obviously a lot of time has passed and you've moved on.

But do you think there is some sort of post-traumatic stress that is in you from this experience?

Yes, and, uh, I think it kicks in mostly when I go out in public. Because the stares I get, I feel like people can see through my clothes, and it brings me deep shame. It, it makes me feel like, it makes me feel like, uh,

I lost all right to my privacy, which I did, because in... w- I'm one Google search away.

Yeah. And it w- those images you cannot expunge.

Yeah. You have no right. Even though it is deeply personal to you, you have no right to, to remove them from anybody's view around the world.

Yeah. It is very hard. It is. And I'm just thinking, this isn't... I mean, this story is your story.

But frankly, it, it's also the story of other porn actors and actresses.

I honestly started seeing that recently after the interview came out and people started reaching out. And, uh, all of the emails go...

My, my manager checks them, and when he gets stuff like that, he filters them and sends them to me. And reading the words of some of these girls who have been sex trafficked and forced into porn, and all of these stories of girls whose lives have been ruined by it,

b- and by men who have taken advantage of them, and by contracts that they didn't even, didn't even understand the jargon of, it, it makes me feel like, okay, maybe, maybe it was good that I started talking- Right ... and that I posted this interview, and that I'm speaking out now.

Because other people feel the same way. And even if they don't relate on a, as deep a level as, you know, doing porn, they can relate on the level of being insecure and being pressured into doing something- Right ... they didn't wanna do.

You were wearing the Islamic headscarf, often known as hijab. And of course, then it developed into a sort of a sex scene. You must have known how provocative that was.

I verbatim told them, "You guys are gonna get me killed."

And they said? They just laughed. Why didn't you then say, "I'm not doing it"?

Intimidation. I was scared. But- I, I, I knew that if I said no, it would, it would... You know, they're not g- you c- they could...

They're not gonna force you to do it. That's... At that point, that's rape.

N- no one's going to- Hmm ... force you to have sex. Um, but I was still scared.

I mean, I... Have you ever felt scared to... Not scared, but nervous to speak up and say something at a restaurant when your food's not right and the waiter comes by and says, "How is everything?" I, I was intimidated.

I was nervous. Y- y- we interview a lot of people, and many of them are middle-aged or older.

It's great to have somebody in the studio who's only 26 years old.

Uh, there is a, a school of thought which says that, that our culture as a whole, I'm not just talking about the United States or the UK, but many, many countries, is being pornified, and that young people in particular are so exposed to pornography so young in their lives that it's, it's materially changing the way

males and females relate to each other, the way they think about relationships, in a, in a potentially very corrosive, damaging way. W- what's your take on that?

Of course it affects relationships. Um, porn addiction is very prevalent in America, and I'm sure here, too. Uh, the things that men see in videos, they expect from the women in their lives, and that's just not reality.

No one is going to be that perfect. No one is going to do those acts on a Wednesday night with the person they love.