For years I’ve dampened my need to write; I’ve felt that I had nothing interesting or important enough to say. And when I did have something interesting to say, I worried that no one would want to read it anyway. Five years ago, I finished my undergraduate degree and since then I haven’t written anything long-form. But, there have been attempts: blogs posts that never materialised, articles written but not published, thoughts left unsaid.
Since the medium of my work is visual, I grew accustomed to expecting that all that anyone wanted from me was purely visual – ‘accompanying thoughts unwelcome!’. Whether this is true or not I have no idea, but the concept permeated my life for so many years that the only long pieces of writing I’ve done since 2020 have been rants to jilted lovers or clients who I was annoyed with.
Now personally speaking, I’m not sure that’s quite healthy.
During the latter half of last year I realised that my industry’s pervasive urge to centre and cater to men was eating me from the inside out; I like men as much as the next person (okay, debatable) but having to shape an entire career and artistic expression around their likes and not my own was starting to feel incredibly disingenuous. Now, technically I had free reign to make whatever I wanted, I’m self-employed. But not everything sells well and I didn’t have any sort of backup job due to the pandemic, or any established fanbase to monetise. I could have been making obscure works of art the entire time, but in my earlier years of video-making and livestream I was much more concerned with making ends meet and just kind of faffing around being 22, horny, and overjoyed that I was my own boss.
Eventually though, something started to shift within me. Not quite break, but bend like the bough of a tree sagging under days of heavily-packed snow. I switched streaming sites and made my livestreams more creative, because I felt people were misunderstanding who I was. In fact, I felt they were purposely trying very hard to ignore my personality in order to maintain their sexual satisfaction. The issue there is that my personality really does eek through, even to the men just trying to jerk off to Random Mid Girl #32- I’m not very good at pretending to be normal. So, a greenscreen here and a Biblically Accurate Angel costume there and my work became more Me. Still, I felt I had to Be Nicer To Men, or The Part of Me That Men Like, or The Part of Me That Doesn’t Write in order to earn an okay income. I gained more followers and the men were still…confused about my general vibe.
At this point we were heading into 2023 and I hadn’t written in years. I continued that way for another year and a half, doing the occasional weird performance art stream, trying very hard to conform to the most marketable ways of being a sex worker, and picking up and losing regulars along the way. I will add, at no point was all of this failed marketing particularly working for me, but I had yet to realise that the advice I was being given was not for Actual Weirdos and certainly not for women who didn’t yet know they were autistic!! So, I tried to push through. I love my career overall, I was just doing a bad job of figuring out how to express myself; everyone was telling me to essentially not bother with all that ‘weird arty stuff’ and I’d already pretty much explored everything else I wanted to do…and found it lacking.
Then, last winter, whatever had been further and further bending under all those layers of snow within me snapped quite cleanly. I realised I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was a few months post autism-diagnosis and I realised that I was never going to be all that Cool. By ‘cool’ I mean: the ideal mass-marketable girl-next-door- a tiktokable cute friend that will jerk you off without demanding 3 dates, a profession of deep love, and staring longingly at each other beforehand. Years of marketing had been pointless, because I truly just didn’t give a fuck about JOI videos and going on about how much I “LOVE” cum, no matter how much people told me those sell really well. (Sorry lads. And they didn’t even sell that well anyway, so wtf!). I’d ran out of video ideas and all I wanted to do was make something creative and new. Something that actually expressed my interests or artistic vision, separate from the concept of whether it would be financially successful.
So last winter, £800 in my overdraft and moving cross-country for cheaper rent and a bigger bedroom, I said ‘fuck it, maybe I’ll just make things that won’t sell’. You cannot actually get that much poorer than already being really poor. I started out with my The Love Witch inspired video-homage; I spent hours trying to work out an erotic storyline that was Not-Gross (if you’ve seen the original film you’ll know the protagonist is pretty…mentally unstable and vulnerable), then upwards of 30 hours editing and colour correcting. It was worth it; it’s one my favourite videos to date and it sold pretty well!
Huzzah, success.
Then, I just kept making things. Interesting things- no really, interesting! I’ll write a separate post about it later, but I really do feel that the art of film-making within pornography is long-forgotten, replaced by non-cinematic videos featuring cookie-cutter storylines of women stuck in household appliances and being blow-banged by their step-relatives. So, over the past 5 months I’ve been trying to make actual short films, that happen to also be porn. At first it was only one in every few videos, but going forward it’ll be 95% of them.
Okay okay- so this post is meant to be about writing and I am talking about filming. Sorry, I ramble. I promise, the essence of this article is about writing. But as I said at the start, I haven’t written properly in five years.
Five years of no writing and I had almost entirely lost my ‘spark’, lost the motivation to make a change within my industry, and was beginning to believe that ‘Yes, All Men Are Just Trying To Nut At The Expense of All Others Sanity’. (The sun was setting at 3:50pm, forgive my grim winter outlook). Now, I do not think that everyone within the online adult industry struggles with these things, but, that if you have a certain personality type or ‘lofty’ goals that reach far beyond a man having a quick nut, then yes you might. But, if I had been regularly writing during that period, not just in my journal but in a space where others could see and interact with it as a way to externalise my ideas, then I probably wouldn’t have lost my way anywhere near as much. I would’ve found followers and clients who were directly interested in my thoughts and feelings, been able to hone my creative voice, and probably would be five years ahead of where I am now in terms of actualising my artistic expression and skills.
So, I’m back to writing!
I’m trying to force myself to explore various creative outlets that I find meaningful, interesting, and positively-engaging. Even if that means experiencing the sharp pang of rejection when some of these projects flop.
Personally, I’m pretty fed up with the general status quo of online pornography and sexuality; I think it’s often uninspired, outdated, and so disconnected from genuine connection that it leads people to believe that pornography must be one repetitive and boring motif focused on men jizzing over their glassy-eyed new ‘step’ mother/sister/cousin/NewBarelyLegalGF. People cannot think outside of the box when it comes to creating porn because they are trying to build upon what already exists and is popular. People who could really enjoy erotic videos entirely miss out because they can’t find anything that doesn’t feel a tad oppressive. Oh, how the mighty have fallen- the early days of filmed pornography were incredibly creative.
I am trying to slowly but surely remind everyone that ✨online sex work✨ doesn’t have to be Mindless-Goon-Fodder. There’s more we can, and I think should, achieve in how sexuality is expressed online in a thoughtful and interesting way.
Many of my fellow sex workers do not think that porn intends to ‘teach’ anyone anything, and therefore should be exempt from critique or media analysis; ‘making porn is already under constant threat of being banned/stopped/made illegal so why make it worse by trying to analyse what exists?’. But it is media, much like this overly long blog post is, and we should be considering how we consume it, why, and how it affects us (I am not anti-porn, of course, I make it! But I am also not team ‘it’s all fine as is’). Your favourite film might not be setting out to teach you anything either, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected your life.
Anyhow, for those of you that don’t know me:
hi, I’m Jess!
My posts here won’t only be about fixing whatever the fuck is wrong with porn, but more widely about internet culture, eroticism/sexuality, and just generally some creative rambling stuff thrown in there too. This post has been pretty me-centric, but they won’t all be like that. I’ll see how it goes, I’m making it up as I go along.
What would you like to see more in porn? Be it either for personal consumption or if someone put you in charge of the Ministry of Pornography today and gave you unlimited resources, what would you encourage, or what would you enable people to do?
I also take wriing seriously -- it's such a missed opportunity for not only the adult industry but also people -- Creators, readers, experiencers otherwise -- who are saturated with nutrient-poor, high-salt, high-sugar fast-food of media.
I'm also cinematic with my erotica writing, and I'll show up for your productions. And join in (the writer's room or the investor's room or whatever fits -- let's get this quality out to the world and ensure you're covered regardless of how the revenue chart looks)! 👋🏾