Do Pornstars Go To Heaven?

Jenna Jameson. Easy now. If that name rings a bell you need to take a deep breath. And relax. If it doesn’t, well, here you are, welcome to the light.
Jenna Jameson is the most successful pornstar of all time. E Entertainment News calls her ‘an icon of adult video’. But she’s also been in mainstream movies. That’s right. Porn is becoming mainstream. When she goes to the mall, girls approach her, asking for autographs. One asks, “Please won’t you initial my boobs.”
So what makes the world’s most popular and successful pornstar? Jenna’s blonde and – hang on let me check – brown eyed. Born April 9th, Jenna is 31 this year, going on 32, and recently married to her long time boyfriend, Jay Gardner. She has a life, and a story. She’s a person. She says, “I miss my mother…more than I can express.”

What’s interesting is what her life and success says about us. You and me. It’s a measure of how we endorse beauty, and what we believe about beauty. Is beauty a thing (like a sculpture, something to gawk at, or a dildo, something to grab and use), or is it a living, delicate existence? Is selling yourself, compromising yourself and your integrity, worth it – for whatever amount of money?
What ought we to do with someone that’s beautiful, that delights our senses, that fires up our loins, but does so only for money?

Life is altogether more complex than that. Money drives us, but so does pain, and fear of loneliness, and emptiness, and a need to be loved and accepted. Sometimes this desire for acceptance and affection, in whatever form, is extreme. It certainly was in Jenna’s case. Are mitigating circumstances a justification for what amounts to selfish ambition, and greed? Would Jenna go to heaven?

Pornography, lets face it, makes it hard not to see women, people, as objects. Objects that serve to gratify our desires. Random men have paved (paid?) Jenna’s way from a desperate existence in Las Vegas to palatial comfort in Casa de Jenna in Beverley Hills.

Jenna’s a hard worker. She’s earned plenty of awards. She’s performed in plenty of adult films, posed in hundreds of magazines. She’s merchandised herself in every possibly way, even the name Jenna is a brand. She’s recently signed a landmark deal with Vivid Entertainment for 15 films over 7 years. The contract is not just about making movies, but directing them. She exercises hard every day – pornstars have to be durable to always look good naked, and to last in the business. She’s also recently married. One assumes over the next 7 years there’ll be a pitter patter of feet. This is where, and this is when, every pornstar has to ask: what would my child think of what I’m doing? Jenna says: “What is most important here is that I am happy, and that it’s something I have chosen to do.”
Husband Jay says: “Once we have kids she won’t perform in adult movies any more – she’ll start branching out towards the mainstream.”

In the early hours of the morning, the sleepless mind, twisting in sobriety, asks that question over and over. It evolves. It becomes: am I a good person?
And who is the best qualified person to answer that? Your mother. Jenna’s mother died before Jenna’s 2nd birthday. Her father? Her brother? Maybe they are qualified to answer that. But one wonders what the fathers and brothers of pornstars (when they’re female) do when they support their daughters and siblings.
For your answer you (if you were a pornstar) might go to church, and see whether hell hath any fury for a woman that ought (possibly) to be scorned, or heard in confession.
She might ask in a confessional, or as a prayer whispered towards graceful arches, “Do pornstars go to heaven?”

Jenna is not just any pornstar. She’s a brand. Jenna’s the most powerful brand in the pornography business. Her administrative assistant, a svelte brunette, wears a black shirt with these words in white: got jenna?
Pornstars are becoming brand names, household names, like Nokia, Levis, Dispirin and Deep Heat. Why not? KY Jelly and Viagra are just the same; powerful brands that have come of age thanks to this casual attitude to what was recently taboo. We’re in a recycled wave, a tsunami, of mellifluous debauchery. The threat of disease and death doesn’t seem enough to stave off our desire for decadence. Let’s not be hypocrites; pornography is everyone’s cup of tea behind closed doors. And if it isn’t, then it was once, and when the urge is there again, we’ll indulge in titillating ourselves once again. Is there any harm in that? Is pornography harmful? Should it be part of the garden party, with cookies and scones and grandma?

One way of answering that question is by looking at Jenna’s situation. There are a lot of stalkers on her tail. She needs bodyguards and protection. There are plenty of men making a nuisance of themselves; who feel they know her intimately and so they try to make their presence felt. Her persona is this: someone who loves sex, anywhere, anytime, anyhow, with male or female. She loves it. And if you were there, she’d sex you up too.
In the real world, Jenna has a husband, and intends to stay monogamous. (I think that means, only performing with girls).

So: Do pornstars go to heaven? That’s a contrived way of saying, ‘are they redeemable?’ Well, it depends on who you are, and it depends on what fluffs out your tail feathers. To me she’s hard and soft, delicate and tough, but mostly seeming to be tough on the outside. Jenna is a heroine to some young girls. She’s a master with men (on screen), she’s a self-made woman, she’s rich, and she has a meretricious beauty. Is that what our girls and young women aspire to be? Is money our idea of Heaven? I asked my girlfriend to watch Jenna on a True Hollywood Story with me.
“What did she say?” my girlfriend asked at one point.
“She said, ‘Jenna’s better than making loving to a guy.’”
At one point Jenna appeared bashful. My girlfriend picked up on it immediately (I didn’t): “She’s a manipulator.”
I replied, somewhat ambivalently: “But I think she might be quite sweet when you get to know her.”
My girl gave me The Look.
A little bit later she had mixed feelings. She said: “I want to have my teeth done (like hers). And I want a boob job (like hers).”
I said, “But I love your boobs. I love you the way you are.”
I wasn’t patronizing. I do think my girlfriend has an awesome bod.

I like natural. Natural, for me, is healthiest and best. So are our girlfriends supposed to look like pornstars? Do we want our girlfriends to be pornstars, or do they want to be pornstars? Hey, that might be fine, in a world consisting of one man. What’s happening now is boobs are pushing up everywhere, lips are sparkling, and boyfriends and husbands everywhere are still expected to maintain their decorum. It’s not going to happen. What is happening, correct me if I’m wrong, is sexual overload. Sexy is fine. But when is sexy pornographic? I’m sure it’s different for everyone. But how much would you want your girlfriend or wife or daughter to bear in a magazine. The rulel of thumb, thumb-sucked here, might be: Sexy is fine. Overt lust is not.

Overt lust on display is not healthy because it’s harder to satisfy, and it demands satisfaction. Thanks to the internet you’ve got thousands of oversexed men walking around with impossible pornstar girls in their minds; lithe, large breasted apparently ravenous and very open-minded nymphs, and now all the girls are bringing it on, or trying to represent themselves in much the same way. Even if my girlfriend has a boob job, is she going to spend as many hours as Jenna does in the gym? Will she ever be as toned and tanned? I doubt it. Will she do the sort of things (having plenty of sex with strangers) Jenna does? Never. That’s why it’s a pointless exercise. Be happy with what you have. Quit obsessing, beyond that vital point, about more.

It’s easy to look at Jenna. It’s easy to like her. She’s quite witty, quite savvy. But there is something cheesy and silly about it. Like her awards. She has an executive office that Cheney would be proud of, but filled with awards that might make him blush. Like a crystal monolith for best All-Girl scene.
Jenna has a tattoo of her husband’s name – Jay – on her ring finger. She has tattoos everywhere (she shows them off during the documentary on Entertainment E) – a big one of the back of her neck, a tall red booted vixen on her shin, and something else on the other shin. Jenna’s first tattoos are a pair of strawberry red hearts on her right bum cheek, with the words Heart and Breaker above and below. The tattoos, the idea of using your body as a canvas for pictures and shapes, the body as a sort’ve flyer, suggests a lack of respect, well, a lack of knowing how much to care about oneself, including one’s own body. This deep-seated lack of caring for oneself is what drives pornstars and those who consume them.

Jenna seems sweet in her interviews. In one she wears a neat black and white uniform that is halfway between starched corporate executive and sexy nurse. Tough when criticized, Jenna is more than capable of standing up for herself. She has responded to criticism by facing up to the likes of Bill ‘O Reilly on a Fox Network News Show, and traveling to Oxford to debate whether pornography is harmful: she won the debate by 204 votes to 27.
But Jenna is not too tough to shed a tear when reminiscing about her own trials. Curiously, during her interview with Entertainment News she is able to discuss her mother’s pain and death (from skin cancer) but is less dispassionate about her own pain, probably because she can remember it better. When she describes herself arriving in California drug-ridden and rail thin and having to be shepherded off a plane in a wheelchair, her tears are for herself. Should we really admire pornstars just because they’re beautiful and sexy? They’re also selfish, and even the brightest are not very bright. The industry, like some religions, teaches them not to think.

Now that trend is seeping into the cinema. Take a ‘sweet’ mainstream movie like Rumor Has It. It’s about a man (Kevin Costner) who beds the grandmother, the mother and the daughter. That’s really the story line for a porn movie called 3’s Company (I’m taking a wild guess).
Before that there was a movie in which Robert Redford plays a widower who then chooses the daughter of his dead wife as a lover (Jennifer Lopez).

Fantasy is all very well, but what happens when it becomes part of contemporary culture, when it is part of popular entertainment, and we’re inclined to wonder: does life imitate art? Is life a porn movie? Find a granny and her granddaughter and find out.
So this is where our meander brings us: our art is getting a bit off track. Maybe there are too few intellectuals among us to think out serious and beautiful and heartwarming tales like The Lord of the Rings. Maybe we’ve just seen so many James Bond movies that we’re bored with the sweet talk and innuendos, we want to see what James is actually doing.
I am as much a sucker for hot women as the next man. But I like to think of myself as reasonable, and fairly intelligent. Porn is neither. And it seems to me our conventional lifestyles are getting a bit off track now too.

Jenna’s husband says: “Jenna’s going to go to heaven because she’s been a good person. I mean, her heart is amazing. She doesn’t have a bad bone in her body. I mean she’s the first person to help out a friend and anyone in need.”
Fellow pornstar Brianna Banks says: “Jenna will go to heaven because, you know what, just because she does porno doesn’t make her a bad person.”
There’s something fascinating about how they find ways to make their lifestyles seem normal and ordinary (when it suits them, such as when asked how making these movies will fit in with being married, or being a mother) but also to be the most sexy, gorgeous and glamorous whilst doing some pretty unsettling things. Do a Google search for sex, and then look at the yucky subtext: ass licking, incest, bondage, shit eating, pissing.

A pornstar is all these things: beautiful, sexy, uninhibited…but their bodies are also cauldrons filled with sour sap, ooze and pools of sweat. Their bodies have been cut, augmented, tattooed, injected and retested for HIV and other diseases. Worse, is the oh so subtle manipulation going on:
It’s a pretense. They might get a kick out of a few people watching and filming them having sex on the first day, but by day 3 and 17 and beyond, it’s a job. It’s not romantic, it’s not sexy. But their job is to make it seem like it is.
That’s deception. Do you mind paying someone to deceive you?
Would you buy Coca Cola if it had Pepsi in it?

The idea here is not to try to get everyone to throw out their Playboys. It’s to be conscious about where we are going with our sexual fantasies. It may seem strange to say, but we’re becoming very badly disciplined. Rampant sexuality in a society is something we need, as individuals, to modulate. And pornography, and its pornstars, is a perfect place to start. I don’t mean changing the industry, I mean changing our attitude to the industry. That’s a private affair between you and your favorite porn website. Make yourself, when you’re on your own, your most honored guest.

Pornography is about screwing people for money. Wish fulfillment for money. If you’re happy to pay money to feel nice, then that’s your oyster. But don’t go wearing branded t-shirts that say ‘Pornstar’ because if you really thought about it, you wouldn’t do it, and you wouldn’t let your children. Wake up and get real. If you want a brand to represent you wear Jeep or Nike or Puma instead. And for my sake, say no to your wife’s boob job, especially if she says she’s not doing it for you, she’s doing it for herself (and all).

Look, money doesn’t buy everything, and even the richest pornstar can’t afford Heaven. Heaven is in the heart. And only a pure heart will do. Pure means these:
Unadulterated, uncontaminated, unpolluted, clean, untainted, wholesome. Or chaste. I’m not suggesting we all take up Zen Yoga or become Born Again or aim to be 40 year old virgins. Far from it. There is just something to be said for having a little purity in life. In the things we eat, in the things we dream about. Pornography has its place. It’ll be around – but in excess it kills the child inside. Pornography turns the dream into a soggy mess.
And Heaven? What is Heaven anyway? Think about it? Is it a pie in the sky? Where is it exactly if we could go there right now? Is it a place?
No. It’s a state of grace. A place where you are in harmony with yourself and your world. Simple question, easy answer: Is that possible, if you’re a pornstar (or a porn addict)?

Jenna says, “I’m going to go to heaven because I’m a good person, and I have a good soul, and I care about people. I care more about other people than I do about myself.”
Stranger things have happened.
Words: 2675
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