"I am Shunned by Society and Broke": Former Porn star

NEW DELHI: The past for porn stars catches up very fast with their present; at any rate it doesn’t seem to ever take leave of them. Bree Olson, a former porn star, who started in the porn industry as a 19 year old and left it aged 25 in 2011, doesn’t have a very flattering view of the egalitarianism and inclusiveness of our society. She recently recounted the challenges that she faced in her daily life after quitting the industry.

“My name is Bree Olson, I'm a former porn star, and since retiring I remained silent. Silent about being discriminated. Silent about being segregated, silent about being threatened, silent about being depressed, humiliated, and disgraced,” she begins, in a video she made for ‘Real Women Real Stories’ a filming project by Marat Uziel.

“When I got into the industry at 19 I was just experimenting sexually. I found it fascinating. I was a full time student at Purdue University studying pre-med biology and also had a full time job as a telemarketer. I flew out to L.A. just to try it and was very shocked at the money to be made. I decided to drop out of school eventually and make the most I could.

“It wasn't until I decided to leave the industry at 25 that I realized how much society was judging me. I had always pushed them out of my mind but because I had gotten sucked into a media frenzy I was exposed to the masses and it killed me to see how they thought of me,” she said in the video.

She further says that she left an industry where she made millions only because she wanted to start afresh and “gain respect”. But disappointment was the only thing which was in store for her as she realized that “I could never go back and be a nurse or a teacher, or work for any company really that can fire me under morality clauses for making customers feel "uncomfortable" because of who I am.”

Olson doesn’t harbor any rancor for her ex-profession. She made a lot of money off it, instead it’s the countless consumers of her work who have now shunned her. It’s those people that she feels disappointed in now, as she ends in saying , “My biggest regret was leaving the industry. Leaving all of that money and trying to get the world to like me. They still don't, and they never will… People hate me and if they knew me, I'm one of the nicest people they'd ever meet. It's a shame. It's a shame for everyone.”

Olson’s is not the only case where ex-porn stars have found it immensely difficult to fit back in the society and ended up facing the scathing barbs alluding to their ‘deviant’ past.

India’s own beloved former porn star, Sunny Leone, this week, found herself being questioned by a clearly presumptuous and condescending reporter when she was asked what her rate was for a night. The incident happened when Leone, accompanied by her husband was in Surat for a performance. In the hotel corridor there she was asked by a media person that now that she’s a film star so how much she charges for “night programs”. Leone reportedly replied by slapping the reporter and told the organizers that she will only perform when there are no media at the venue.

Leone’s husband, Daniel Webber, said they will think “thousand times before coming to Gujarat.”