Too New to be Good?

I’ve written about Belle Knox once or twice. (How can I not? It’s an actual story about porn that people are aware of!) But as much as I’ve written about her, Gram Ponante has written a lot more; she (and the asshat who outed her) show up on his blog (and the blog on Naked Truth where he also writes) fairly often.

One thing Mr. Ponante has mentioned about Knox on a regular basis is that she’s too new to the industry to be, you know, good at it yet. Take, for example, this post, in which he says:

Is Knox a great porn star with only five months in the business? No. I’m not into the porn-trope giggling. There is a lot of self-consciousness on that screen that might have a lot to do with the fact that Knox is more famous than any porn star her age. But if she stays in the business, and explores those things that she is curious about, and lets all that residual shame fall away (good luck with that!), I bet she’ll be a great MILF.

(The “MILF” thing is a running joke throughout the post.)

Not that this is a point against Knox, mind you, and I don’t think Mr. Ponante means it in a bad way. He’s not saying that she’s a bad pornstar, he’s just saying that she’s new and hasn’t had time to build her skills. Many of his comments are written in a commiserating fashion because he knows that she’s having to deal with a lot of fame before she’s even really gotten used to this whole pornstar thing: at a time when most pornstars are just getting acclimatized into the whole scene – making their first few movies and trying to navigate the world of being a pornstar – Knox is already famous.

For those who are new to the blog (if any), I should reiterate that I use the term “pornstar” for anyone who acts in porn, not just the really famous actors. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re in porn you’re a star.

But it’s not just the scene that Knox has to get used to. What might surprise many of Ponante’s readers (though it doesn’t surprise me) is that he also hints that she needs to also learn some skills. Again, I don’t get the impression he’s saying she’s a bad pornstar, I think he’s just saying that you don’t walk onto the set your first day as a pornstar with all you need to know on how to be a good one. Being a pornstar is like anything else: the longer you do it, and the more experience you get at it, the better you’ll get at it.

I wonder, though – which is why I wrote this post – if that’s a commonsense assertion to most people? I wonder if people think about the fact that, yes, there is some skill involved in being a pornstar? Or do they believe that all you have to do is take your clothes off, let the makeup people do their work, get fucked, and then boom, you’re a pornstar? (Actually, people who think this way might not even think about the makeup part. “What, her skin isn’t naturally flawless like that?”)

And I don’t think it’s just the faking it part of being a female pornstar that Ponante is referring to, either. Actually, perhaps I shouldn’t keep referring to Mr. Ponante; from this point on I’ll stand on my own two feet.

It’s not just faking it that I’m talking about, either. Pretending to have an orgasm isn’t the only skill you need as a pornstar. (I actually read a post recently in which someone mused that maybe more orgasms are real these days than used to be the case, so maybe even faking it is no longer a mandatory skill.) I’m no expert – not even close – but I’m led to believe that looking good on camera during the act of love involves a lot of moving pieces:

• Probably the most obvious one is that you often have to wear clothing that would never get worn outside of a porn scene, and not all of that clothing is, you know, comfortable. One immediately thinks of the shoes, but there are also various forms of undergarments that don’t look all that comfortable. A lot of it looks sexy, of course, as a guy I’m quite happy to look at it, but I’m betting the actresses need to hide a certain amount of discomfort in some scenes.
• You have to get into weird positions you wouldn’t normally get into so that the camera can see what’s going on. You even have to be careful about your hair; we’ve all seen scenes where the girl is giving a blowjob and has to keep getting her hair out of the way so that the camera can capture the action.
• You have to be vocal about what’s going on in a way that you don’t have to in your civilian sex life (though I think a lot of women are following in porn’s footsteps and getting more vocal), but you have to do it in such a way that your moans and screams and verbalizations don’t get cheezy or repetitive. That’s potentially a fine line to walk: keep up the noise for however many minutes or hours you’re fucking, but don’t repeat yourself too much!

Those are a little more concrete, but the main skill needed is a bit more abstract: You have to look good while you’re fucking. This is a mix of looking sexy, and looking like you’re into it (or looking like you’re not into it if you’re doing rape porn) and forming chemistry with your costars (faking it if you have to), and a lot of other intangible things.

And to zoom in on just one of those things: Did it surprise you that I said one of the skills needed is to look sexy while fucking? If you think that’s the default, take a sexy girl’s clothes off and insert a cock somewhere and of course she’ll look sexy, then I ask you this: Do you look sexy when you’re fucking? If you’re female, I’d bet money your answer to that question was no. You might even have felt slightly horrified at the idea of it; you would never want to see yourself during the act of coitus, and the times you have seen yourself (in a mirror or whatever) you’ve wished you looked more like… well, more like a pornstar. And I’m betting that almost all of my female readers had that reaction – even the really sexy ones. (All of my readers are probably really sexy, but I have to generalize because I can’t know for sure.) If the vast majority of women feel that they don’t look sexy while sexing, and I’m betting that’s the case, then why do we assume that it comes naturally to the girls who do porn?

Actually, to be fair, this may not all be related to “skills.” There may be some naturally occurring attributes which play a part as well. Looks, of course, would be part of this, but not as much as you might think: obviously there are certain body types that work better for our tastes in porn than others, and you kind of have to be good looking to go into porn, but the reality is that it’s probably more important to be photogenic than to be hot. Just because you’re sexy it doesn’t mean you’ll look good on camera, you might not, and even some not so hot women will have a unique presence on the camera that makes them very watchable.

Have you ever met a model in real life? Based on the pictures of models that are all over the media you’d expect them to be cookie cutter perfect when you meet them, and in some ways – mostly their overly thin bodies – they do look very model-like in real life, but in terms of how pretty they are you’ll find that many models are actually quite “normal looking” in person. They didn’t become models because they’re so beautiful, they became models because they look good on camera, which is different. Similarly, I’ve known painfully beautiful women who don’t photograph so well; when they walk by on the street you’re in danger of breaking your neck from turning your head to follow them, but if you saw a photo you might pass it by without a second glance.

I expect the same thing applies to pornstars. (Mostly female pornstars; I should have said so from the beginning of the post.) It’s not just a matter of how beautiful you are, and it’s not even a matter of how photogenic you are, it’s a matter of how photogenically sexy you look when you’re naked and having sex.

Then, from there, you have to learn all of the other stuff; the faking it (if necessary) and holding weird positions but still seeming to enjoy it and all of the other stuff. And if Belle Knox was a “regular” pornstar, that’s what she’d be doing now: She’d be honing all of those skills, and getting better and better at fucking on camera. (And I say “getting better,” not “getting good.” I haven’t seen any of her scenes, but perhaps Ms. Knox started out with natural skills, and was good right from the beginning – but that doesn’t mean she won’t get even better over time.) As it is, she’s doing interview after interview where she talks about being a pornstar, while other actresses who’ve been pornstars for much longer have no such responsibilities.