Girlvert: A Porno Memoir

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While Jenna's was all flourish, the most grandiose highs, and depressing lows, Small managed a matter-of-fact memoir that seemed mostly for her benefit and anyone with an interest in it was welcomed for the ride.

The product of a wildly dysfunctional family, Small is fully aware of her shortcomings, including a need for attention and approval, and while she acknowledges an unyielding desire to be in a healthy relationship, she has few, if any, regrets.

To hear Oriana tell it, she did a hundred heavy-duty porn scenes in about a year while inhaling about half of Bolivia. Therefore, due to the drinking/drug input and just having a great deal of cash around - the focus is only for the next 12 hours or so. Sure, the war years instilled a sense of noble sacrifice in the 'Greatest Generation,' but DPs are free. Performers and actors of the female persuasion starring in modern pornography exhibit more bravery and gamut more emotions than many display within an entire lifetime.

I haven't read something I couldn't put down and put down something every chance I got, where i couldn't read any more until this book. I really enjoyed the pacing, the thoroughness of Oriana Small's stories and the intelligent way this woman's life is portrayed. She portrays porn as an industry full of abusive sleazeballs and druggie degenerates, but she's also quick to point out when someone she met while working went out of their way to treat her kindly or respectfully.I mean the catalogue of abuse when she's first getting into porn, being egged on by her abusive controlling boyfriend (who she loved and would do anything for, including essentilaly being raped) is really hard to read. We learn about how she got into the industry and how she decided that she would do the most disgusting hardcore stuff right from the get go. Honest, raw, fun, shocking, sad, brutal, sweaty-bad in many moments, sweaty-good in others--a human story that transcends its subject matter simply because it is so monumentally bare in all of its aspirations, trappings, glory, and more. The part where she met her future husband, Dave Naz, was far too rushed as were the parts where she briefly mentioned working for Playboy TV. This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising.

It occasionally dips into the past, psychological reasoning, ethical dilemmas, or philosophical quandaries about pornography, however, too often these come as asides or rhetorical questions asked in the dark. Small says it's acting out rape or violence against women as fantasy, as if that somehow justifies portraying characters who are abused so egregiously, but I know there have to be people who take that subject matter at face value. She readily admits that when most of the events describes in this book took place, she was easily manipulated, too eager to please men, desperate for attention, and high or drunk almost all the time. A lot's been written about how visual images allow the viewer to judge the subject being photographed, but Ashley -- or, rather, Oriana -- seemed to keep this from happening: when you watched her get treated roughly on camera, you couldn't help but feel complicit, almost guilty. I dont usually read stuff like this because they tend to turn to jokes like Jenna Jameson's autobiography.But because she 'loved' the abusers forcing her to do things, it was 'okay', it seemed like it was 'her choice', and she was therefore fine with it. Starting off with the writing, while the author is not without some talent in setting some scene and describing some pretty gross situations, the fundamentals seem shaky.