When you hear a pornstar talking about fine art or quoting the most esoteric of books, it can come off as forced, as if the knowledge was gained solely for the purpose of proving that an adult actress can be intelligent. Stoya, however, who can have a conversation on topics ranging from art to feminism, simply comes off as smart and well informed, as if she had a genuine interest in a topic and took the time to educate herself on it with no regard as to how others would view it. She’s genuine and when speaking to her, you can tell she does what she wants for no other reason than because she wants to do it. She speaks on subjects with a well -balanced and realistic view which is probably why fans relate to her the way they do. When Stoya entered the adult business, she did so with a bang. You couldn’t talk about porn and not mention Stoya. She was spoken of as this enigmatic being, a sort of antithesis to the traditional pornstar. It should be noted, however, that Stoya is absolutely stunning. Her fair skin is flawless, her body incredible, and her face just beautiful. Stoya would not look out of place in a room full of Vogue cover models and that’s likely one of the reasons why she’s been featured in major publications. The bottom line is, Stoya is charming, approachable, and well-spoken. There’s no attitude at all, just a pleasant demeanor. She truly is a breath of fresh air and it’s nice to speak to somebody who gained and keeps their notoriety for all of the right reasons.
Mens Mag Daily: Every once in a while, a girl comes into the industry that kind of stirs everything up and has everybody talking. You were obviously one of those girls. Why is that?
Stoya: I don’t know. I guess it was a combination of good luck as far as timing. Having Digital Playground’s press machine on my side didn’t hurt. I don’t know.
Mens Mag Daily: You’re pretty as well, which helps.
Stoya: Thank you.
Mens Mag Daily: You’re into things that your average pornstar might not be, like art for example. Do people embrace that or are they kind of like, “you’re a pornstar, we don’t care what you think about art.”
Stoya: I would assume that the people who don’t embrace that tend to move on to bubblier territory. (Laughs) If you’re not into a performer that does the things I do or is interested in the things I’m interested in there’s plenty of other choices out there. My fan base seems to embrace it which is probably why they stick around.
Mens Mag Daily: I was reading an article and you were talking about how you had to tell your grandmother that you were a pornstar and that you were using her name as well.
Stoya: Yes, I did have to tell her that at one point.
Mens Mag Daily: That was the funniest shit I’ve ever read in my life.
Stoya: What version of the story did you read? That’s one thing about the internet, you as a person say something and it either gets recorded or written down by a journalist or someone pretending to be one. Sometimes they move stuff around and skew reality a little bit. And then it goes out on the internet and once that happens it’s like this really high tech game of telephone where you may have heard the real story or you may have heard some bastardized version of it.
Mens Mag Daily: Basically, the gist of it was that she was very understanding.
Stoya: She was very understanding. She said, (Starts speaking in an old lady voice) Oh, so you’re a nudie girl in the moving pictures.” Once we established what I was doing for a living and that I was using her name her main concern was that nobody at the nursing home would come and try and put her feet behind her head because she doesn’t bend that way anymore which tells me that she totally knew what hardcore, XXX porn is and that I didn’t need to start our conversation off talking about Bettie Page naked because she knew. I could have just said I was doing porn.
Mens Mag Daily: The greatest part of that story is the fact that she said moving pictures, did she really say that?
Stoya: Yes she did. She’s funny and she’s completely in charge of her life and she doesn’t give not one sixteenth of a fuck about respectability, politics, or social norms in regards to how she’s supposed to act. She’s amazing and I want to be just like her when I grow up.
Mens Mag Daily: This is a pretty broad question but you’re a very attractive girl.
Stoya: I’m a woman now I think. At the age of 25 I think I kind of became a woman but thank you.
Mens Mag Daily: Okay, you’re a very attractive woman. You’re intelligent, well-spoken, and not that there aren’t pornstars like that but those aren’t exactly pre-requisites for being an adult actress. What made you take this path?
Stoya: It sounded like fun when the opportunity first came up and I said, “Okay, I want to have complete control over who I have any sexual activity with.” They said that was no problem and it was mostly no problem although I did have to put my foot down and cause a scene a couple of times. Ninety-nine percent of the time that was adhered to and I thought I would have a little adventure, do a few scenes, and then maybe go to college and it would just be that really fun thing I did when I was in my early twenties. I’m not overtly sexy, all those social cues of hot and pornographic, and all that sort of thing. I don’t check any of those boxes really so it becoming a career definitely was a surprise. I’m grateful for that. It’s been fun, fascinating, and quite an adventure.
Mens Mag Daily: Speaking of checking boxes off in terms of standard beauty and everything, you know you might have changed the definition of sexy.
Stoya: I would be honored if that was the case although I don’t have enough of an ego to think that’s true nut I do find that flattering and thank you.
Mens Mag Daily: This is off topic, but what are you reading right now? Anything interesting?
Stoya: Right now, I’m reading the last section of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. It’s a great book. I think it’s on the New York Times best seller list right now though I’m not sure. It’s a book of essays with stuff centering around feminism. Roxane is a woman of color and I’m obviously not familiar with that whole world. Sometimes when you realize there’s a gap between what you understand about other people’s lives you can kind of educate yourself and be less of an asshole. Sometimes I’m an asshole because I’m uneducated about stuff.
Mens Mag Daily: Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Stoya: That is a loaded question most of the time so I would like to know what you mean by feminist.
Mens Mag Daily: I’ll say it’s a woman who is seeking economic and social equality with men.
Stoya: Defined that way, not so much. Here’s my thing with feminism. My mother was a feminist, like second wave, marched in the streets, was all up in the political actions and all that type of stuff. I’m not what she envisioned for her child. I’m not a doctor and I’m not a lawyer. In fact, a large part of my job is engineering displays of stereotypical femininity. For a long time I struggled with the ideas of feminism because the feminism I saw growing up was definitely not what I was doing with my life. However, when it comes to the basic principles of, “I am a person even though I happen to have a vulva”, then yes I’m a feminist. When it comes to a person being denied rights based on their sex, religion, sexual orientation, the color of their skin then I am absolutely a feminist. I believe it’s your right as a person to do what you want to do with your life and your body as long as you aren’t harming others. If you’re discussing if red lipstick is anti-woman or not I don’t want to hang out with you regardless of what ideology or label you’re applying to yourself. There are so many larger things that need to be worried about right now other than whether or not we should wear fucking red lipstick or shave out God damn pubic hair. Because of all of the feminists who have worked so hard for decades, in the mid 2000’s I was able to say that I want to engage in sex work and that I want to engage in all of these stereotypical displays of femininity. Having that choice is just so important and to deny feminism would be extreme ingratitude towards all of those people who made it possible for women to make real choices.
Mens Mag Daily: Now, you’re quite the performer. Is that you or are you giving something extra for the camera? If we could see you in your bedroom, is that what you would look like?
Stoya: I have this theory. It’s sort of like the Kinsey scale where you have extreme heterosexuality as well as extreme homosexuality. You have this sliding scale of the way a person is when they’re alone, in their own bedroom, with the lights off and the door closed, completely alone, masturbating is zero. You proceed to introducing a partner or the lights are on, you’re visually aware of your body and that scale continues through things like voyeurism, a camera, and things like that. Then you might have engaging in sex at a party, hopefully it’s that kind of party so everybody is okay with that. You get all the way to the other end of this scale and that’s where adult video exists. You are performing sexual acts with at least one other person in a room full of other people, who are the crew, and there’s a camera and you’re aware of the fact that it’s being documented for public consumption. In other words, it’s not how I am when I’m alone in my dark room masturbating but it’s still very much me.
Mens Mag Daily: Earlier in the interview you mentioned journalists or those pretending to be. I take it you’ve had some very bad interviews.
Stoya: (Laughs) There are an array of different experiences. There are people who really think they’re journalists so they feel they’re entitled to just come up and ask you whatever they want for their whatever, their BlogSpot, their blog dot com. There are also people who will strike up a conversation and then go report it to Tumblr or some web forum and that’s very strange to me. I am technically a public person now but I do feel like that is a slight invasion of privacy. It seems like all bets are off in terms of any kind of privacy which is okay. I mean, it’s part of life, the sky is blue. It’s a porn problem partially too. I’ve dealt with real journalists from real publications and they’ve done perfectly good work in other industries but then when it comes to porn they think, “Oh, this is so simple and so basic. I know everything after four people questions so now I’m going to write about it as the absolute authority. “Would they treat any other industry like that? No and this is why when I talk about serious things to “serious members of the press” , it’s like I’m going to give my time to the person who has experience covering sex work in a non-superficial, jokey, obnoxious kind of way because it’s really irritating. It fires me up man. It gets my panties all up in a twist. Get my soapbox. (Laughs)
Mens Mag Daily: With that said, how much does this question piss you off? What is your favorite sexual position?
Stoya: Not at all, it just makes me want to look at the clock and see how much time we have left. It’s just kind of boring. My big pet peeve right now is the use of the word outbreak when there’s a moratorium on adult productions. While technically correct, when you put that in a headline, the general population just thinks we’re full of HIV everywhere and it’s just not accurate at all and what’s being conveyed to them is just flat out wrong.
Mens Mag Daily: Outbreak isn’t a good word. I think outbreak and I’m thinking monkeys, particles flying and infecting people, all kind of chaos, it’s not good.
Stoya: It’s like that one case of Ebola in Texas because nobody expected to see Ebola in the United States. That’s an outbreak technically but are the calling it that? No, because it would cause panic. Nobody needs to panic over one case of one isolated thing. They shouldn’t be calling it an outbreak when it’s one positive HIV test in adult.
Mens Mag Daily: Okay so way off topic here, but the 9th Anniversary of Headquarters in NYC.
Stoya: Yes, I will be there, I will be naked at some point as will Kayden Kross. It takes place October 9th at 9 P.M. I have never done this before, I’ve never feature danced. I stripped once. I auditioned at a strip club once and the owner told me that some of the girls that come through his club are destined for bigger and better things and I was definitely destined for different thing which was his very nice way of saying I was really bad. (Laughs) We’ll see how it goes. It’s guaranteed to be interesting. Oh, also I have a Fleshlight, so everybody should go and purchase that.
Article By: Jon DaBove
