Once per month (except for this month when it’s twice), Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals will be telling us a little bit about what’s going on in adult entertainment and why it should matter to you.
People often talk about porn like it’s in a bubble – totally devoid of any input from the wider world. This couldn’t be further than the truth! Just like you and me, people who work in the adult industry have multi-faceted interests, and – gasp! – some of those interests are informed by the wider world. Here’s some wider world-related stuff I noticed happening recently…
CrossFit Drop
CrossFit is currently everywhere, to the point that just about every town has an affiliate. Some have three. And recently, adult performer Derrick Pierce launched CrossFit Drop, a CrossFit affiliate with an all-inclusive mobile “out of the box” unit. [Editor’s Note: Have you ever noticed that there’s an absurdly high number of male porn stars named ‘Derrick?’ Discuss.]
Unlike the conventional spartan warehouse/“box” settings, CrossFit Drop provides exercisers with full-service training… outside! They offer bootcamps three days per week at various locations around LA, as well as private, corporate, and on-location instruction. The traveling gym comes complete with Olympic barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, sandbags, and a pull up rig – pretty much everything a serious athlete would need.
When I heard about CrossFit Drop, I wondered why Derrick, who is an extremely successful and well-respected performer, would feel compelled to branch out in this way …so I asked him.
“Me not being twenty anymore, it had been a long time since I had had the opportunity to be a competitive athlete and I found that in CrossFit,” Derrick explained. “Once I realized that I could still be a relevant athlete and relate better to people as a coach because of my age, that was it.”
CrossFit Drop is interesting… and human. If you’re ever driving around LA, keep an eye out for Derrick’s mobile marketing gym-truck. It may look a little garish and unusual, but the perspective behind it’s pretty cool.
And speaking of unusual…
Tasha’s Pony Tales
I recently watched one of the most bizarre films I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff (porn and otherwise) – Reign Productions’ Tasha’s Pony Tales (2014). (link obviously NSFW)
Starring and produced by adult performer/UCLA undergrad Tasha Reign, Tasha’s Pony Tales is about a group of girlfriends who drink some glowy purple love juice and get transported to Magical Pony Cloud Land. There, they become anal-plug pony princesses and have sex with various leather unicorn centaurs. This of course is all a plot to milk the centaurs’ power and take over Magical Pony Cloud Land, just because.
It’s called brony porn, and the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense…
But what does make sense is the product tie-in with Tasha’s Reignbow Pony Plugs – fanciful handcrafted glass plugs that come in two styles and four ponytail colors (I know you want to know: pink, purple, blue, and bright yellow). So in the movie, when the ladies become pony princesses, they wear pony costumes – color coordinated lingerie, prick ears, and a Reignbow pony plug. It’s kind of like Lion Force, with a climactic all-girl Voltron orgy at the end.
I jest, but I also give Tasha Reign many props for this film – it’s conceptually and aesthetically unique, different from anything I’ve ever seen in adult. And it’s strategic.
Wait, guess what: speaking of strategic…
“Tranny Awards” changes its name to “Transgender Erotica Awards”
If you’ve read my book You Study What? (vol 2) and/or my research article in Porn Studies, you know I really struggle with the word “tranny” …and yet, “tranny” is used frequently within the TS porn community. FYI: TS porn scenes generally feature at least one performer who is in the midst of a male-to-female (MTF) transition. This performer is generally partnered with cisgender men and/or other MTF TS performers. And though they overlap in some respects, TS porn and queer porn are not the same thing, nor is TS porn necessarily also feminist porn.
Anyway, for various reasons the word “tranny” doesn’t sit well with me, which was extra disconcerting every time the “Tranny Awards” came around.
First held in 2007 via Grooby Productions, the “Tranny Awards” honors TS performers for their work throughout the year. I’ve attended the show twice now, and each time I was overwhelmed with loveliness… except for the damn name. So when I read that the organizers had decided to rebrand the event as the Transgender Erotica Awards (the TEAS!!), I was super pleased.
“We… never anticipated the interest and growth of the show to become the main annual event for trans women and men in the adult industry,” said Grooby Productions owner Steven Grooby.
“When we named the show the ‘Tranny Awards’ in 2007 the climate was different and the usage of the word ‘tranny’ was appropriate as a catchy title in an online porn event,” Steven continued. “As we aim to be inclusive of all areas of transgender erotica and are looking to broaden the appeal of the show to mainstream media, we believed it was time to re-brand the event to the Transgender Erotica Awards – or the TEAs.” (quotes here)
I love this, both for my own personal reasons and because it shows dimensions of adult interacting with and evolving within wider society. Bubble, be damned – porn is a part of us all.
Chauntelle Tibbals is an embedded public sociologist. Her research has been published in numerous scholarly journals, and her ebook series You Study What? is available on Amazon. She has been studying the adult entertainment industry for more than ten years.
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