So, if you’ve read my ZL bio, you know that I go to Oberlin College. What you may or may not know is that Oberlin College is one of the most “liberal” Liberal Arts colleges in the country. Maybe everywhere, actually. Most people on campus are very politically active, socially conscious, and, well … hairy. And I don’t just mean on their faces. Throughout the course of my freshman year, I became more and more used to seeing girls with hairy legs and underarms and, well, as Cosmopolitan is putting it on the cover of their latest issue,  hairy va-jay-jays, up to the point where it stopped shocking to me in the slightest a long time ago.
Well, apparently we all should be getting comfortable with hairy va-jay-jays, because Cosmo has declared it to be the “in” sexy style for us ladies down there.

But can we really do that?

Porn Star Sasha Grey recently appeared on Entourage. Naked. With an …

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I cut my teeth in the newspaper biz, so when I read this New York magazine piece on the possible correlations between the future business models of the adult entertainment industry and the newspaper industry, I was, naturally, intrigued.

And not because I sometimes wonder what kind of crazy (nude) stunts I can pull to compete with old Diablo Cody.

Both industries are facing competition from  free online services. Seriously, when the whole Blu-Ray-HDDVD thing was still up in the air, and I was afraid to buy movies because I wasn’t sure which format would win out, everyone kept telling me to wait and see which one the porn industry endorsed, because historically —  technologically – the porn industry always wins. I always countered with, “Um, who watches porn on DVD anymore?”

It’s just an unofficial survey, but I don’t know ANYONE who watches porn on the telly — through paid cable or video/DVD — and in fact, several seem to have developed a tast for amateur porn. Similarly, I can only think of a handful of folks who subscribe to newspapers or magazines these days.

The Los Angeles Times article the NY mag piece refers to was certainly skewed toward sourcing female talent — but it was eye-opening nonetheless. Performer Susannah Stern’s income has dropped to one-third of what it used to be, down to about $50,000 annually. (Now, I know a lot of writers who would be pumped to make that in a year, but let’s face it, “fellatio” isn’t listed in their job requirements.) Many female performers have turned to exotic dancing or appearing at private parties to augment their income. Stern is thinking of changing vocations entirely.

As in the newspaper industry, porn execs are taking advantage of hungry young talent. These actors and models are willing to perform sex acts for less than their more established brethren. One adult filmmaker said he felt kind of bad for taking advantage, but, basically, “oh well.”

Execs say they plan to focus on the potential market in mobile devices, which is not legal yet with many providers, but could be. And of course, the big — er — names, continue to sell on DVD and on paid websites.

New York thinks papers like the Times should focus on this second tenet:

It seems to us that this is something newspapers … ought to try doing: focusing on their talent. They should work harder at establishing their talent as brands — not the editorialists, like they did with Times Select; you can get opinion anywhere — but the people whose work has actual value: the reporters. Like a good talent manager, the Times could nurture and advise these reporters, guide their careers, and manage all of their creative output. They wouldn’t just publish their stories, they’d also publish their books, book them on speaking engagements, broker their movie deals — and offer them lucrative contracts in exchange. The Times already has the best talent, and it’s possible people will pay for it. Just like they’re willing to pay for the best porn.

So, what do you think? An apt suggestion? I’m always pro-branding, but — and maybe this is primitive of me –doesn’t the whole orgasm thing kind of weaken the argument? A great article might blow your mind, but it won’t make you blow your load.

Take that, Sasha Grey! You may know what existentialism is (kinda), but Stormy Daniel is running for Louisiana’s U.S. Senate seat. In her own words:

Today, I am excited to announce that I am taking the next step in exploring a possible run for United States Senate. Two weeks ago, I embarked on a listening tour where I had the pleasure of hearing the thoughts and concerns of my fellow Louisianans. These conversations were highly encouraging and convinced me to officially explore the possibility of running for the United States Senate. To this end, I have formed an exploratory committee to gauge Louisianans’ support for my potential candidacy.

I do not take this step lightly. While I have been humbled by the overwhelmingly positive response my potential candidacy has generated thus far, my decision to run for United States Senate will only be made after I have had the opportunity to discuss this prospect with as many people across the state as possible. Too many in government ignore the voices of those whom they claim to represent. I promise you that I will not.

Forming this committee will allow me to raise the funds necessary to explore a possible run and will provide Louisianans an opportunity to continue sharing with me their concerns and ideas. I invite you to visit www.teamstormy.com and join me in taking this next important step.

In the coming months I will continue my listening tour and am eager to visit western and northern Louisiana. I look forward to discussing further the vital priorities facing our state and nation–including reforming the tax code to a system that rewards, rather than penalizes, success, protecting our children and promoting personal responsibility as an alternative to government intrusion.

Stormy is a Republican (???), and, if she does run, will compete in the Republican primary against incumbent against Sen. David Vitter — the Christian right conservative whose career became mired in the D.C. Madam prostitution scandal of 2007. Her campaign will likely involve, for the most part, reminding the constituency that what she does is at least legal.

Whatever happens here, it’s all be worth it for the header on her campaign website:

Dakota Fanning’s got nothing on Sasha Grey. At the age of 21, Sasha Grey has appeared in over 150 films. The catch? They’re all adult films. At the age of 18, she moved out to Hollywood with one goal in mind: Become an adult film star. Done and done — she’s one of the biggest names in the business today. Now she can add another kind of film to her resume — she stars in Stephen Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, playing a high-class Manhattan escort against the backdrop of late 2008’s economic tumble and Presidential election. I watched the film’s screener a couple days ago, and I was genuinely impressed. She’s not a Traci Lords or Jenna Jameson, where any mainstream effort feels unnatural, like a fish out of water. She acts like an actress. She’s a natural. There’s a lot of buzz around this young woman, and rightly so. She’s got the chops to be the first actress to cross over from adult films to a viable mainstream career.

I talked to Sasha around four o’clock, in the middle of an all-day press junket. As a previous interviewer tweeted: “Jeez, who didn’t talk to @sashagrey today?” She was exhausted, understandably. “I’ve been up since six,” she says, “and I’m not a morning person. But I’m hanging in there.” Since Sasha’s positioned herself as the “intellectual” porn star — she loves to talk to reporters about existentialism and Jean-Luc Godard and other topics suitably pretentious — I had hoped to spend the second half of the interview grilling her with a spelling bee. Tragically, we ran out of time. Here’s what we did get to:

I’d expected your character in your film to be more like the person you are in interviews. I expected you to be playing yourself. But you’re not – you’re really playing a character here. Were you nervous about whether or not you could make that transition, since you’ve said that in your adult-film work you play yourself?

Yeah, I was really excited and happy to be able to prepare for this character, and I did as much as I could. Obviously, the thing I was nervous about the most would be a) working with Stephen and b) Relaxing in front of the camera. Because it’s so easy to be yourself in front of a camera, but to embody this person and talk the way this person would talk was really difficult for the first three or four days – settling in and getting used to that aspect of it.

Your character in the film is both worldly and, in a lot of ways, also naïve. You came to Hollywood knowing exactly what you wanted to do, and exactly what you were getting into. I’m wondering if it turned out like you expected.

Even better than I expected. Because I was going to porno Hollywood. [laughs] I expected to be in this business for seven or eight years, and direct a few of my own adult films, and kind of make an effect in the inner industry. And that impact, socially and culturally speaking, has gone a lot further than I’d ever expected. And my career and my life has gone even further than I ever would have expected – in a positive direction.

You embrace your sexuality and the outer limits of female sexuality, and you’ve talked about one of your goals being to promote acceptance of female sexuality. Where did that come from? How were you raised with regards to those issues? When did this mission start?

I was the oldest virgin out of all my friends. I was never really able to have an open dialogue with my mother or my sister about sexuality. I was always made to feel so ashamed. I think once I finally started having sex, it was like a light bulb went off, almost. I found it ridiculous that I was made to feel so guilty about the fantasies that I had. In talking to my girlfriends about their sexual experiences, sometimes they would think some of the stuff that I was into was crazy and weird. And I just thought, you know, why should we have to have that outlook on our sexuality? Everybody’s different, and everybody’s allowed to have their own tastes, as long as they’re not hurting anybody.

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I’m interviewing her on Thursday afternoon — as part of the publicity blitz for her new non-adult film, The Girlfriend Experience — and I thought I’d come here to see if you guys had suggestions for comments. I wrote about her on this blog earlier — she set out to be a porn star, she loves having sex with men and women or all shapes and sizes, and she hopes the she can help women to fear their sexuality less. All this from a 21-year-old girl. You can hear more about who she is and what she’s doing in the video above.

So.

Do you ladies (and men?) have any questions to suggest?

Meet Sasha Grey.

At age 21, she’s been in more than 150 films. That’s Dakota Fanning levels of prodigiousness. But unlike young Dakota and Hounddog, the sex in Sasha’s films is both consensual and real. She’s a porn star. And she’s also about to be a movie star.

Sasha has a leading role in the new Stephen Soderberg flick, The Girlfriend Experience, which premiered at Tribeca on Tuesday. In it, Grey plays a $2,000-an-hour escort whose Manhattan customers are mostly Wall Street executives stressed by their falling fortunes. Soderberg admits that he intentionally cast nonprofessional actors in similar situations as their characters. He encouraged improvisation.

And unlike many of her adult film co-stars who come to Los Angeles looking to be the next Angelina Jolie and accidentally wind up as Angelina Blow-me, Sasha claims she planned to do porn all along: “I came into this industry wanting to get into this industry,” she says. “I planned it for seven months before I moved to L.A. I knew what I wanted to do.”

There’s something that doesn’t sit right about that for me: The idea of a teenage girl, barely old enough to drive, sitting at home plotting her rise in the adult film industry. In fact, unlike Tracy Lords before her, Sasha’s not in a big hurry to leave her adult film career behind her; she calls the Soderberg film a “happy accident” and says she “does enjoy exploring myself as an artist.” She wants to continue doing mainstream films, but also notes she felt “more energy and more vigor” when she returned to pornography.

You can check out the trailer for the flick below — she’s not half bad as an actress, to be honest, and the film looks fantastic. Sasha also made waves when she starred in a pornographic ad campaign for American Apparel. (The ad is after the jump — it’s NSFW.) This girl fascinates me. I have a feeling she may be the one who moves from a full-fledged adult career to a full-fledged acting career on the merits of her talent rather than her vagina. We’ll see.

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