From barely-legal to has-been MILF... by age 28
By Aaron LawrenceTuesday August 10, 2010 at 12:54 am PDT
For the most part the straight side of the porn industry bore me, but once in a while I run across a story that gives me pause. A short autobiography of Aurora Snow is one such story.
Like so many young starlets, Aurora started in porn at age 18 to pay for bills in college. At first she did nude layouts and basic fuck scenes, which is all that she was comfortable with doing. As the money rolled in and her comfort level with porn acting increased, she started doing girl-on-girl scenes, anal scenes, threeway and group sex scenes, and so forth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Aurora changed her major in college to business. There was money to be made in porn and she knew it.
Aurora Snow
Unlike the gay porn industry where models are usually considered "old news" after 40 scenes and rarely hit 100, the straight porn industry is much larger. There are many times more companies in straight porn than gay porn, each with their own niche and marketing strategy. As such, female performers are capable of much greater heights and can command much higher prices than their gay male equivalents. Aurora learned this as her career skyrocketed towards the top.
Around the time she filmed her 250th movie at age 22, she was honored as the Adult Video News's Female Performer of the Year. As anyone in the straight industry can tell you, this is an incredible boost for one's career. It's the porn equivalent of winning Best Actress at the Oscars. She was already working with great regularity, but offers with increasingly higher pay began flooding in.
It wasn't long before her career left the front of the camera. She found herself on the Howard Stern show and hosting her own show on Playboy TV. She had finally made it big.
And then it all came crashing down.
Porn, like mainstream Hollywood, values youth in actresses much more than in actors. Today's starlet is tomorrow's has-been, and there are never a shortage of faces waiting to replace her. Once Aurora turned 24, the phone calls slowed down. Directors began refusing to work with her because she wasn't young enough. The fact that she still looked 21 and was a skilled performer made no difference. If she wasn't really 21, many directors wanted nothing to do with her.
It finally hit home the day a director told her she was being cast as a MILF. For those not in the know, MILF stands for "mother I'd like to fuck". It's the straight equivalent of a "daddy", and certainly not something you would expect a young-looking 24 year-old to be. There she was though, watching her career going down the tubes merely two years after receiving the industry's top honor, and now directors wanted her to play the mother role.
After what I am sure involved a significant amount of soul-searching, Aurora began to bounce back. She took ownership of her career and began redefining herself. She left the genre of "teen" and "barely legal" porn in favor of videos featuring an older look, with the outlook that she was making an inevitable transition and now had an opportunity to reach a fan base that may not have seen her before.
She stepped out from the front of the camera and started directing films. She began diverging into fetish videos. She started choosing roles that emphasized acting, which worked well for her as the straight porn industry has experienced an explosion of parody videos over the years. One of her roles there was in Not the Bradys XXX (she played Jan). Her publicity reached a pinnacle as well and she started receiving mainstream film offers doing cameos in movies such as Superbad.
Aurora Stone
Aurora is 28 years old now, and continues to work in the porn industry on both sides of the camera. She still experiences a high level of fame, if not the ego-inflating accolades from her AVN award-winning days.
What I found so fascinating about her story was the sheer volume of porn that she did. The Internet Adult Film Database lists her as appearing in a whopping 507 videos. Even if you figure 15% of those are the same footage re-released in varying complications, that's still more than 400 different movies in which she has appeared.
The only gay porn actor I can think of that comes even close to that number is Drew Andrews with 301 movies (perhaps 25 of which are compilations). Drew was famous never having trouble getting hard, always cumming on command, and never suffering from sexual exhaustion. These abilities made him a staple of the gay porn industry. Need a last-minute replacement actor? Call Drew. No matter how much sex he'd had during the prior week, he'd give a flawless performance by the time he arrived on set. Legend has it he did four strip shows per day for a week at the Nob Hill Theater in San Francisco, and prided himself on jacking off during every one of them.
The Drew Andrews of the industry are rare though, and the Aurora Snows are not. Women in the porn industry are typically paid well, can work much more often than gay men can, and have a fair higher "salary cap". For a gay performer to strike it rich, he either has to open his company (like Michel Lucas) or become a successful escort (like yours truly, Aaron Lawrence). For male actors who truly want to make good money just doing porn, they're pretty much out of luck. With the exception of a small handful of top-end talent on retainer for a few years, the industry just doesn't pay well enough to make a good living. He may be able to make $1000 per day doing videos, but there aren't a lot of those days.
Ultimately, all successful stars must retire from the front of the camera. Some sink into the mire of their problems and die early deaths, while others disappear off the public's radar and vanish from sight. The smart ones though like Aurora or myself take ownership of their career and transition themselves as they grow older. For Aurora, a woman that will be beautiful well into her thirties, that means becoming a MILF, a dominatrix, a performer, and a director. For me, it meant accepting my looks were cute in my twenties but weren't going to cut it into my thirties. I left the camera altogether, started GayGeek, and became a father.
Perhaps that's what intrigued me about Aurora so much. I see a bit of myself in her, as well as a bit of fantasy on what might have been had my porn career (and the gay porn industry itself) been larger and more glamorous. Either way, I am glad to see she wrote that autobiographical article about herself. Having written two books on the sex industry, I know that writing is an excellent form of self-promotion and is rewarding on a personal level.
So Aurora, I salute you. You have taken your sexuality and made it your own. I hope you continue to transform your career successfully to match your changing physical and emotional selves.
Like so many young starlets, Aurora started in porn at age 18 to pay for bills in college. At first she did nude layouts and basic fuck scenes, which is all that she was comfortable with doing. As the money rolled in and her comfort level with porn acting increased, she started doing girl-on-girl scenes, anal scenes, threeway and group sex scenes, and so forth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Aurora changed her major in college to business. There was money to be made in porn and she knew it.
Unlike the gay porn industry where models are usually considered "old news" after 40 scenes and rarely hit 100, the straight porn industry is much larger. There are many times more companies in straight porn than gay porn, each with their own niche and marketing strategy. As such, female performers are capable of much greater heights and can command much higher prices than their gay male equivalents. Aurora learned this as her career skyrocketed towards the top.
Around the time she filmed her 250th movie at age 22, she was honored as the Adult Video News's Female Performer of the Year. As anyone in the straight industry can tell you, this is an incredible boost for one's career. It's the porn equivalent of winning Best Actress at the Oscars. She was already working with great regularity, but offers with increasingly higher pay began flooding in.
It wasn't long before her career left the front of the camera. She found herself on the Howard Stern show and hosting her own show on Playboy TV. She had finally made it big.
And then it all came crashing down.
Porn, like mainstream Hollywood, values youth in actresses much more than in actors. Today's starlet is tomorrow's has-been, and there are never a shortage of faces waiting to replace her. Once Aurora turned 24, the phone calls slowed down. Directors began refusing to work with her because she wasn't young enough. The fact that she still looked 21 and was a skilled performer made no difference. If she wasn't really 21, many directors wanted nothing to do with her.
It finally hit home the day a director told her she was being cast as a MILF. For those not in the know, MILF stands for "mother I'd like to fuck". It's the straight equivalent of a "daddy", and certainly not something you would expect a young-looking 24 year-old to be. There she was though, watching her career going down the tubes merely two years after receiving the industry's top honor, and now directors wanted her to play the mother role.
After what I am sure involved a significant amount of soul-searching, Aurora began to bounce back. She took ownership of her career and began redefining herself. She left the genre of "teen" and "barely legal" porn in favor of videos featuring an older look, with the outlook that she was making an inevitable transition and now had an opportunity to reach a fan base that may not have seen her before.
She stepped out from the front of the camera and started directing films. She began diverging into fetish videos. She started choosing roles that emphasized acting, which worked well for her as the straight porn industry has experienced an explosion of parody videos over the years. One of her roles there was in Not the Bradys XXX (she played Jan). Her publicity reached a pinnacle as well and she started receiving mainstream film offers doing cameos in movies such as Superbad.
Aurora is 28 years old now, and continues to work in the porn industry on both sides of the camera. She still experiences a high level of fame, if not the ego-inflating accolades from her AVN award-winning days.
What I found so fascinating about her story was the sheer volume of porn that she did. The Internet Adult Film Database lists her as appearing in a whopping 507 videos. Even if you figure 15% of those are the same footage re-released in varying complications, that's still more than 400 different movies in which she has appeared.
The only gay porn actor I can think of that comes even close to that number is Drew Andrews with 301 movies (perhaps 25 of which are compilations). Drew was famous never having trouble getting hard, always cumming on command, and never suffering from sexual exhaustion. These abilities made him a staple of the gay porn industry. Need a last-minute replacement actor? Call Drew. No matter how much sex he'd had during the prior week, he'd give a flawless performance by the time he arrived on set. Legend has it he did four strip shows per day for a week at the Nob Hill Theater in San Francisco, and prided himself on jacking off during every one of them.
The Drew Andrews of the industry are rare though, and the Aurora Snows are not. Women in the porn industry are typically paid well, can work much more often than gay men can, and have a fair higher "salary cap". For a gay performer to strike it rich, he either has to open his company (like Michel Lucas) or become a successful escort (like yours truly, Aaron Lawrence). For male actors who truly want to make good money just doing porn, they're pretty much out of luck. With the exception of a small handful of top-end talent on retainer for a few years, the industry just doesn't pay well enough to make a good living. He may be able to make $1000 per day doing videos, but there aren't a lot of those days.
Ultimately, all successful stars must retire from the front of the camera. Some sink into the mire of their problems and die early deaths, while others disappear off the public's radar and vanish from sight. The smart ones though like Aurora or myself take ownership of their career and transition themselves as they grow older. For Aurora, a woman that will be beautiful well into her thirties, that means becoming a MILF, a dominatrix, a performer, and a director. For me, it meant accepting my looks were cute in my twenties but weren't going to cut it into my thirties. I left the camera altogether, started GayGeek, and became a father.
Perhaps that's what intrigued me about Aurora so much. I see a bit of myself in her, as well as a bit of fantasy on what might have been had my porn career (and the gay porn industry itself) been larger and more glamorous. Either way, I am glad to see she wrote that autobiographical article about herself. Having written two books on the sex industry, I know that writing is an excellent form of self-promotion and is rewarding on a personal level.
So Aurora, I salute you. You have taken your sexuality and made it your own. I hope you continue to transform your career successfully to match your changing physical and emotional selves.
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