Stoya

As of right now, the Twitter profile of Stoya says that she is the co-owner of TrenchcoatX.com, an occasional writer and highly skilled at avoiding pants.

The character limit of Twitter, perhaps mixed with some modesty on her part, doesn’t really tell the full story of Stoya. It’s true to say that pants avoidance is perhaps the reason why the vast majority of you know her and a large part of why she has become one of the most visible, popular and respected figures in the adult industry since she entered it in 2007.

As things stand right now, there is a lot more going on with her than just nudity, and that is likely to remain the case for quite some time. As co-owner of the aforementioned TrenchcoatX.com with Kayden Kross, she is in the process of creating high quality and artistic erotica that seeks to offer fair prices for consumers while offering fair pay to those performing for the site.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, she has seamlessly moved into mainstream recognition with none of the need for mic-dropping theatrics that many other adult stars have felt the need to effect when trying the cross-over. The difference with Stoya is that she has seen that there is no reason why she cannot join the two together. She has written extensively, and to critical acclaim, for Vice, The New York Times, Esquire and many other publications and websites, about the state of the industry, but also about other matters such as sexuality and feminism to name but two.

She has positioned herself as one of the industry’s most forward thinking and progressive women, all the while freely admitting that being an adult star has been a journey of sexual exploration for her. Before landing her first contract, which would be a three year deal with Digital Playground, she had not seen a huge amount of porn and what little she had seen had tended to be more plot-driven and artistic with fetish themes that she discovered through internet news groups, according to an interview she gave to Fleshbot.

Her signing with Digital Playground was groundbreaking in itself. She was advertised as being the company’s first ‘alt’ contract star and it is widely acknowledged that her signing and subsequent success with the company has opened the door for other ‘alternative’ performers to make an industry breakthrough. She left the company in 2014 and now, working independently on her own projects, she has continued to explore fetish themes in her work.

It is in those areas that she has received most acclaim and attention, and where she is almost certain to be focusing her career going forward, perhaps as much as a director as a performer. Her dalliances with the mainstream have not just directly surrounded her work, too. A romance with Marilyn Manson shot her into the gossip columns for a while, and her past relationship with James Deen had seen them both referred to as porn’s power couple. They are no longer together, however.

In many ways, however, it will be important that Stoya remains a link between the adult industry and the mainstream. She is a notable member of a new generation of female stars keen to offer a product that actually appeals to women as well as one of the industry’s most intelligent and thoughtful voices. Her work in giving porn a strong feminist voice as well, increasing sex positivity in the mainstream media, and, lest we forget, continuing to be one of the most naturally beautiful and gifted adult actresses of the last decade, has meant that we’re very lucky to have her. So significant a figure is she now that what she choose to do or say next could be strong enough to change adult entertainment all by itself.

Name – Stoya
Porn aliases – Stoya Doll, Nina Blue
Place of birth – Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
Nationality / Ethnicity – American – Sc