Burgeoning porn star Belle Knox is the subject of a new
docu-series focusing on her introduction to the adult film industry
and the notoriety that comes along with it. Produced by
Condé Nast Entertainment and Stateless
Media, Becoming
Belle Knox consists of five short segments in which
we watch the now 19-year-old transform from bookish Duke University
freshman Miriam Weeks into “The
Duke Porn Star“—a young woman who made her porn debut on
FacialAbuse.com, quoted
Sheldon Richman in her Time writing debut, gets
gangbanged on film in pigtails, participates in a
libertarian-feminist discussion group I’m a part of, has appeared
on The
Independents, and tweets
about buying lingerie with Bitcoin donations.
Weeks didn’t set out to become the latest sex-work poster girl;
she set out to make some money to pay her tuition. Having seen her
parents struggle to payoff their student loans, she elected not to
go that route. “I Googled how to be a porn star,” she explains at
the start of the docu-series. The next day, she was paid $1,200 for
the Facial Abuse scene.
At the time, Weeks thought she could keep her “alter-ego”
secret. But a male classmate soon found out and blabbed. Rather
than wallow in embarassment or let others spin the narrative, Weeks
began telling her own story online.
“I like the assertive, passionate person that I’m becoming
because of porn,” she says in chapter two of the series
(although it “gets kind of annoying…always having cum in
your hair”). In chapter three, she talks about doing porn simply
being “like acting.” Belle, she says, “is Miriam’s very sexual
side.” But by chapter four, Weeks says she was naive to think she
could “compartmentalize” Belle and Miriam.
Most of the tension seems to stem from the
realities of the Internet and the porn industry these days—you
can’t be a really successful adult film star without an online
presence and persona. Yet being so publicly out there as “Belle”
makes it hard for her to remain Miriam in the eyes of those of
around her. (I was reminded of William Deireiwicz talking about how
the millennial self is by necessity “an entrepreneurial self”,
since the digital world has obliterated the lines between
personal and professional worlds).
It’s not solely a problem of others’ perceptions, however.
Watching the series progress, it’s clear Weeks herself is
struggling—as anyone who plays a public role must—with how much to
give and how much to withold. “If you start becoming Belle,” a
colleague told her, “you need to leave the industry.”
By the final segment, Weeks has been traveling a lot and is
homesick, feeling alienated from family and old friends and
frustrated with some of the working conditions in the porn
industry. She’s tired. Her early, unadulterated enthusiasm for
getting paid to have sex has worn off (“the experience has aged
me,” she says). Some will undoubtedly use this as evidence of the
unconscionably negative toll porn takes on women.
But I thought of that inevitable scene in tour documentaries
where the lead singer is sleeping fitfully on a bus seat or talking
forlornly with someone back home. Life as a musician on
tour—it’s not all peachy! Life as a rising porn starlet—sometimes
it sucks! “Porn is like any other job, it’s labor, and I
think that liking it is irrelevant,” Weeks says in segment
five.
Response to Becoming Belle Knox has been positive,
Weeks told me, and she’s happy overall with how the series turned
out. “I think that the documentary told my story beautifully, and I
am so glad that I was able to reach people through my open and
honest discussions of what it means to be a sexual woman,” says
Weeks. “I have garnered an incredible response from my fans, who
have written me to tell me that I inspired them and that they
related to the issues I discussed.”
Watch the
whole series at Sex.com.
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