September 18, 2006 English Composition
"Reading Porn"
Porn, all aspects of it, and the people who indulge in it are dirty. From a young age that was what I was taught. As I grew up I learned porn was not as dirty as I had thought but to express my curiosity would make me the same as the dirty people. It was not until I was 18 did porn enter my world of literature or writing. I happened to have been in a friend’s room when I saw lying on her floor a book with a picture of a woman on the cover. The picture was taken from mid-clavicle up; her hair was blonde and curled bringing to mind a typical woman of the twenties. In big bright red letters scrolled across the bottom was How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale. The author was Jenna Jameson, one of the most famous and more mainstream adult films stars.
I had known of Jenna Jameson before I saw the book lying on the floor but why would the typical teenage girl have knowledge of porn stars. Porn was something for teenage boys with raging hormones to discover while alone in their rooms dealing with the seemingly endless problems of male puberty. As Jenna sat on the cover staring back at me with a cigarette in her hand and her perfect red lip gloss undisturbed by her smoking, I had a choice to make. I could either leave her as I had found her or take her with me and indulge in the secret life of a porn star. Upon my departure from the room, I chose the latter. As I walked back to my room I felt as though I had changed. Having Jenna the porn star in my bag gave me a sense of empowerment. It was not until I had to explain to others, the role Jenna was now playing in my life, did my empowerment fail me. To some people Jenna is simply a whore, and How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is a whore’s tale. I was questioned as to why I would want to know about a woman who prided herself in sexual escapades captured on tape and distributed to the entire world. To answer the people who thought How to make Love was a waste of money I simply responded by saying “I haven’t even read the book yet, it could actually be good.”
As I began reading How to Make Love I was no longer sure why I would want to read it. I typically read books that I felt I could relate to; for an entire summer I felt as though I should have been living a life filled with wine and bankruptcy along side Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises. Despite my doubts I cracked open the book and began to learn about the life of Jenna Jameson or Jenna Massoli before entering the adult film industry. The book was an autobiography. It began with Jenna’s mother dieing of cancer and ended with her finally filling the void in her life once she married her husband Jay. Of course there were many pot holes in the road but Jenna seemed to have overcome them and brought her life full circle. As Jenna wrote in great detail about every aspect of her life, I began to feel a sense of closeness to her through her writing as I had while reading The Sun Also Rises.
The beautifully untamed Jenna Jameson had not come to me by recommendation or as an assignment but rather by choice. I choose, in that moment which now seems so distant, to pick her up off the floor and venture into a chaotic literary exploration she called her life. It was in that choice I had found my empowerment. I could read the autobiography of a porn star of my own accord with only my empowerment to justify my actions. It was all I needed and Jenna, after all, had spent her adult life making men’s fantasies come alive on video but she could also alter the life of a young woman, me, with a book about life as a teenage girl with no direction.
One: Situating Embodied Learning
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Identity and Learning: “Follow What I Am Doing: Do The Rules That I’m Doing: It’s Very CoM-pli-cated”
- Producelike Behavior: "Why Do The Make Queen Better Than Jack?"
- Conclusion: "The Bricolage, The Music, The Movement"
Three: Implications for the Literacy Autobiography Assignment
