3 Naked Ladies’ Bios
Jodi Sh. Doff (aka Scarlett Fever) the dirtygirl of dirtygirldiaries.com comes from a Times Square before Disney got its four fingered hands on it and turned it into Mouschwitz, when pimps still looked like Huggy Bear. A time before AIDS, silicon implants or lapdances…the 70s and 80s. Times Square at the height of its pornographic bare bottom!
Lauri Shaw of laurishaw.com skipped out on college and the American dream in favor of NYC’s colorful nudie bars of the late 90′s, right before Mayor Rudy Giuliani took his pickaxe to Times Square as we knew it. She never regretted her transfer to the world-famous School of Hard Knocks, and she graduated Magna Cum Laude.
Rachel Aimee has been dancing in New York City strip clubs since 2004, mostly avoiding the corporate “gentlemen’s clubs” that have taken over Manhattan in favor of the low-pressure dive bars. She co-founded $pread Magazine and was editor-in-chief from 2004 to 2008.
For Essence Alexander, the next logical step after receiving dual degrees from a prestigious university, was, of course, dancing in upscale gentlemen’s clubs from New York to Vegas. Since 2001, dancing has enabled her to stave off “starving artistdom”. Her one woman show, Essence Revealed, reveals it all.
Georgina Spelvin, went from the starring dance role in Pajama Game on Broadway in 1955, to become one of the best-known figures in pornography for her 1973 starring role in The Devil in Miss Jones, epitomizing the era of porn chic. Born in 1936, her youth was spent in small oil towns throughout Texas, where her mother would locate a library and then anything resembling a dancing school. “Mother never allowed school to interrupt my education,” she quips. As a chorus girl in the 1954 Dallas State Fair Musicals she met Sammy Davis Jr., who encouraged her to “try for the big time in New York.” Her autobiography, The Devil Made Me Do It, is available through her official website, GeorginasWorld.com.
Antonia Crane is a freelance journalist, editor and sex worker from Humboldt County. She edits “The Citron Review” and is a contributing columnist for “The Rumpus.” Excerpts from her forthcoming memoir “Tales of a Sexual Outlaw” have been published in the Black Clock Journal and the Coachella Review. Her forthcoming novel is titled “Kill the Day.” Excerpts have been published in the Sylvan Echo. She can be spotted hanging upside-down in precarious positions from various poles in Los Angeles and New Orleans. For kicks and picks, check out her blog at: blog.antoniacrane.com
LZ Hansen Came to NYC with $200 and a heroin habit in 1984, and settled in the East Village. She went on to work as a street ho, massage-hand job technician, call girl, brothel worker & eventually madam. She’s working on a memoir ‘My American Dream, Going Down in Gotham’. She continues to live in the East Village of NYC with her husband and son. She can be found at lzhansen.com
Kelly Hayworth spent four years stripping her way across the world – from the dive-bars of Tokyo, to the gentlemen’s clubs of Paris. Follow her international exploits on Gilded.
After a nice middle class life of art schools & dance lessons, Candida Royalle discovered peace, love & feminism. In San Francisco she got involved with underground theater, porn films & a handful of burlesque club appearances performing what she calls ‘Isadora Duncan meets Gypsy Rose Lee’. Turned off by the crudeness and lack of a female aesthetic in porn, Royalle created Femme Productions, pioneering the concept of ‘woman-friendly’ adult films. She’s also an author and co-founder of a high end line of vibes. For a full catalog of her DVDs, Natural Contours Vibrators, books, articles and personal appearance calenders check out candidaroyalle.com.
Jessica Pauline of Tinseltown Tease is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer. Her writing has appeared in many print and online publications including LAist.com, Jewcy.com, $pread Magazine and Girl with Pen. She’s performed her work locally at In the Flesh L.A., and abroad at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Jessica lives in West Hollywood with her fiancé and their amazing dog.
Betty Dodson, artist, author, and PhD sexologist has been one of the principal voices for women’s sexual pleasure and health for over three decades. Dodson had the first one-woman show of erotic art in ’68 in NYC. At the 1973 NOW Sexuality Conference in New York she introduced the electric vibrator as a pleasure device. For 23 years, she ran Bodysex groups where women learned about their bodies and orgasms through the practice of self-stimulation. Her first book, Liberating masturbation: A meditation on self love (’74) became a feminist classic & was followed by several others. She has authored numerous articles on the subject of women’s sexual pleasure and orgasm; wrote/produced/directed 5 erotic sex educational videos on her ground breaking hands-on teaching. She’s been featured in O Magazine, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Marie Claire, Playboy; Playgirl, Penthouse, Ms. Magazine, Bust & Time Out. At dodsonandross.com, along with Carlin Ross, she explores women’s relationships to sex, money, and power to advance the ways we love, create, govern, and raise the next generation.
Dubbed the “smartest woman in porn” by Playboy, Nina Hartley is a sexual entertainer, activist, author and educator, as well as a registered nurse. She started stripping in college and has since starred in over 600 adult films since her 1984 debut, Educating Nina, including a wonderful cameo in Boogie Nights. As a “feminist porn star” and sex educator, Nina has taken her positive message to college campuses nationwide. In her bestselling series of sexual how-to videos, the Nina Hartely Sex Guide series, and Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex published in 2006, she shares her secrets on becoming an effective, competent and confident lover.
Carol Queen has a doctorate in sexology, works at Good Vibrations in San Francisco, and founded/directs the Center for Sex & Culture. She’s an award-winning, much-anthologized writer with 11 books in print (12, if you count the new edition of Exhibitionism for the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot! that will be out *any second*). She’s also 99.99% retired from whoring, but in this economy, you never know. carolqueen.com (will be undergoing a facelift shortly, stop by again next month to see what I managed to add on!) Blogs and commentary can be found pretty regularly on goodvibes.com, carnalnation.com, and http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/queen/index.
Tracy Quan’s third novel, Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, is a 21st century adventure with a medieval twist. She is a member of PONY (Prostitutes of New York) and a frequent contributor to The Daily Beast. Visit TracyQuan.net for commentary on Winnie-the-Pooh, Mary Magdalene and other Tracy obsessions.
Annie Sprinkle Ph.D. is the prostitute/porn star turned artist/sexologist. An internationally acclaimed theatrical and visual artist, she’s explored all forms of sexuality thirty six years, sharing her findings in her own unique brand of sex films, photographic work, teaching workshops, and college lectures. One of the pivotal players in the 80’s “sex positive feminist movement,” she’s also long championed sex worker rights and health care. Visit anniesprinkle.org.
Her autobiography, Annie Sprinkle: Post-Porn Modernist is a pioneering cult classic. Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits And Politics of Sex in Performance (Critical Performances), won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award (2002). Sprinkle’s last book, Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex: Make Over Your Love Life with One of the World’s Great Sex Experts was her first mainstream how-to self-help book. Currently Sprinkle’s main project is The Love Art Laboratory, loveartlab.org, in which she collaborates with her partner Elizabeth Stephens. Together they are “sexecologists” exploring the places where sexology and ecology overlap, and out ecosexuals. Their new show, Dirty Sexecology: 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth is up and running. In 2002 Annie earned her Ph.D. in Human Sexuality, making her the first porn star to get a Ph.D.
Melissa Petro is a writer currently living in New York City, her most recent work can be found in the anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex. As an undergraduate, she conducted ethnographic research on women’s participation in the sex industry. This research was presented at Sex Work Matters: Beyond Divides, a conference for scholars, activists and analysts involved in issues surrounding sex work, and published in the August 2006 issue of Research on Sex Work. In 2007, she earned her Masters in Fine Arts degree from The New School University. She is currently writing a memoir.
Jo Weldon aka Jo Boobs, is a burlesque performer and producer, as well as the founder and headmistress of the acclaimed New York School of Burlesque. She began performing retro striptease while still in high school and became a featured dancer doing classic burlesque fan dances & champagne baths as well as eating fire! She’s produced a series of how-to DVDs and her book, The Burlesque Handbook, will be available in spring 2010 from Harper Collins. Check out the schoolofburlesque.com and learn to twirl your tassels.
Caty Simon is a small town activist and escort. Over the past eight years, she’s worked on prison abolition, harm reduction, the war AGAINST the drug war, the fraudulence of pharmaceutical companies, worked with the Freedom Center for civil rights for those diagnosed as mentally ill, and of course, the decriminalization of prostitution. Along with her organization, Poverty Is Not A Crime , she and others managed to table legislation that would’ve de facto decriminalized panhandling. She voices her views at Virtues of Vice and in 2005 was voted by Curve magazine as one of the top ten activists under 25 to watch. She hopes she hasn’t disappointed them.
PJ Starr is a sex worker rights activist and filmmaker. Her videos – fictional and documentary – depict sex worker life and politics with a view to building a society where sex workers can enjoy their rights. Her films have been shown at Reel Affirmations LGBT film festival in Washington, DC, the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival and in many other indie locations. Photos and more information at her blogsite: moralhighground.tumblr.com
Jennifer Blowdryer, aka Jennifer Waters, got her dumb name from a punk band she was in as a sassy teen. Wait, a belligerent teen. Sassy is a media hologram. She’s written a few books, which are available at Amazon, ABE, and Alibris at wildly varying prices, and been widely anthologized. Her hustling experience was early, inept, and poor paying.
Photo by Gerry Visco
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