remember the duke university student that was paying her tuition by doing porn? and then a friend outed her publicly and the death threats began? this is her story.

this was interesting and surprisingly honest.

from alternet:




Miriam Weeks, known professionally as her porn star name Belle Knox, is the focus of a new five-part documentary, Becoming Belle Knox, produced by Condé Nast. The mini-series chronicles Weeks’ journey from broke college student to one of the top new adult film stars, providing a stark look into the realities of the porn industry along the way.

At the beginning of the series, Weeks explains that she initially made the decision to get into porn to pay off her astronomical college tuition bills after seeing her parents struggle with student debts. She googled how to be a porn star and the next day was paid $1,200 to do a “facial abuse” scene after responding to an online advertisement.

While initially she wanted to keep this new part of her life a secret, she was soon outed by a fellow student who stumbled across her porn scenes online. Weeks became subject to death threats, slut-shaming, online abuse and was shunned by her family and friends.

“A lot of sh*t in my life has been ruined because of sex. A lot of my family doesn’t even f*cking talk to me anymore. I lost my best friends because I joined the sex industry and decided to be a porn star,” she says.

Yet, Weeks was able to rise above the criticism and become an outspoken advocate for the porn industry. She has since spent much of her time defending her decision to work in porn to the media. She claims that her experiences in porn have given her back a sense of self and attributes the assertive, passionate person she has become to porn. However, she adds that it "gets kind of annoying...always having cum in your hair.”

In the second episode she says, “I know who I am, I know my identity. I know what I need and I know what I want — sometimes. And, with porn, everything is on my terms. I can say no whenever I want to. I can do what I want to, I can do what I don't want to. I'm in control.”

Yet, as the series progresses, we see it becomes increasingly harder for Weeks to keep her "alter-ego," Belle Knox, separate. She seems insecure and unsure of herself, and eventually concedes that she was naive to think she could keep Belle and Miriam separate. She struggles with balancing her two lives: “I don’t know, this is so weird. I think I am Miriam right now?”

She reveals that she has endured vaginal tears and that she felt disgusted after a scene in which she had to have sex with an older man. She said she felt like crying during the entire scene.

“If you work too much or you have sex with guys with big dicks all the time, then you get tears in your vagina. It’s not just like a normal 20-minute [session] and then you’re done. You’re having sex for hours on end. Like, this time I had a tear, the entire time I kept like just waiting for it to be over…like, okay, c’mon, hurry up, you know?”

Weeks also provides a glimpse into the seamier side of the porn industry as we follow her to get STD-tested, which she explains porn stars must do every two weeks.

She details the financial hardships of the industry and how she cannot be a successful porn star without a strong online and social media persona, which takes a lot of time and effort and makes it hard for her to survive financially and remain Miriam.