Porn Stars Go Mainstream

The celebrity sex tape is one of the entertainment industry’s most salacious products, but its opposite is becoming increasingly popular as well. “Porn stars are turning up with increasing regularity on shopping mall movie screens and in prime time television shows,” the Los Angeles Times reports, “underscoring pornography’s steady migration over the last three decades from the pop culture margins to the mainstream.” Most notable is Steven Soderbergh’s decision to cast Sasha Grey, 20, in his upcoming movie, The Girlfriend Experience. Soderbergh cites as evidence of porn stars’ growing acceptability to the movie-going public the Paris Hilton sex tape, which boosted her image rather than destroyed it. “That changed everything,” Soderbergh said. “Or it didn’t change everything; it confirmed that everything had changed.”