With all the choreographed blowjobs and cheesy soft jazz, we often forget porn stars go home to their families after shoots. Women encompass a huge chunk of the porn industry, so naturally many of these women spend their time balancing their careers and raising kids.
“While ‘MILF’ is one of our top categories, when you picture your favorite star, you aren’t fantasizing about [her] changing diapers or packing a lunch for school,” a PornHub marketer told me. “There are very few advantages to girls exposing their families and private lives to the public, but things seem to be changing in recent years with stars like Lisa Ann becoming mainstream.”
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For many mothers in porn, coming clean about their personal lives can have benefits. One actress, Marie Williams, even told me her eldest son’s friends wanted to come over once they had discovered she worked as a professional MILF.
Assuming this role may feel glamorous, but there are also serious ramifications for stars’ children.
“What we know is that kids who grow up in overly permissive households develop a more restrictive outlook on sex,” said Dr. Laurie Betito, a psychologist, sex therapist, and radio show host. “It could affect their friendships because of the responses from peers. It could have repercussions everywhere, depending on the constitution of the child. You’re imparting values. How are they supposed to make sense of what a healthy relationship looks like, let alone a marriage?”
To learn more about the working moms of porn, I spoke to two* professional MILFs about their careers’ impact on their family lives, what they buy their kids, and the pros and cons of being “cool moms.”
Photo courtesy of Nina Elle
NINA ELLE
A self-described “pretty blonde with big boobs,” Nina Elle didn’t always use her looks to support her family. She once worked as a dental hygienist, but when she learned how much porn stars made, she figured it was too lucrative to pass up. To her, starring in porn meant paying for her five-year-old daughter’s singing and ballet lessons and buying her 11-year-old son Nike sneakers.
At the start of her porn career, she kept the fact that she had a family a secret to protect her kids from scrutiny, but eventually she decided to go public to correct some misconceptions about being a mom in the industry.
“You can be a better mother because you’re more open,” she said. “Things don’t shock me as much. I’ve seen this, done that, so when my kids do it, I’ll be like, ‘Meh.’”
Elle is still keeping her occupation a secret from her kids, however. Her son has started to dabble in social media, and she worries he will find her account where she interacts with her fans: “I blocked him and told him he can’t have an account until he’s 16 or 17,” she said. “He was like, ‘God, mom, you’re being weird.’”
Elle anticipates the day her children will discover her job. What will that day entail? Will she prefer her kids see her perform a blowjob rather than get gangbanged? “Basically,” she said.
Photo courtesy of Alana Evans
ALANA EVANS
Alana Evans has worked as a porn star for over 15 years, but when she’s not on set, she prefers to bake cookies and play video games with her kids. In her eyes, her family embodies straight-edge values—traits she says motivated her 21-year-old son to join the Marines.
“I like to believe it’s my parenting that led him to be what he is,” she said. “We’re careful about the movies and porn magazines we keep around. We’re model parents because of the stigma.”
She was wary of that stigma from the start; her ex-husband works as a cop, and when the daughter of his supervisor appeared in Playboy, as a joke he and his coworkers decorated their boss’s office with spreads of his nude daughter.
“He took it fine,” Evans said, “but I remember thinking, This is what I’m in for, dealing with people wanting to put [my porn career] in my family members’ faces .”
She was sort of right: By the time her son was 12 years old, people started recognizing Alana during their trips to the grocery store. She had to come clean to her son about what mommy did for a living.
“I had to start explaining why they know who I am. It’s the most crucial thing,” she said. “My dad was in the military and a hippie lover-man and my mom had lots of male suitors, so sexuality was something in my life that’s not frowned upon. I know there’s something like that in my son.”
*UPDATE, 1/6: This article originally contained a section on a third actress and her family, but after the article’s publication she disputed several quotes attributed to her; as a courtesy to the actress we have removed that section.
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