MAINSTREAMLAND — Forbes recently presented readers with a “portrait of a (new) porn star as a gig economy hustler.” Though clever punctuation might highlight the fact that performer Della Dane, having just entered the business six weeks ago, is herself new to the industry, what’s not new is gigging in adult.
A gig economy is an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term, task-orientated engagements — work this event, complete this project, etc.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the concept of gigging isn’t new; however, companies connecting workers with jobs through websites or mobile apps is. So, rather than utilizing an agency (a gig) to hire a temporary assistant to work in-house (another gig), today a company can find a remote person via services like Fiverr or UpWork.
There is nothing new about gigging for work, not in any industry, including porn. Universities rely heavily on adjunct and contingent faulty, retailers take on seasonal part-time workers, freelance writers are the norm and the vast majority of porn performers have historically worked on a booking-by-booking basis. For that matter, so have porn PAs, MUAs, publicists, lawyers and even accountants.
Which brings us back to Della Dane.
According to Forbes, a person like Dane epitomizes the gig economy. She utilizes multiple streams of income. She uploads (unmonetized?) content that she creates to social media sites like Insta and Twitter. She also uses Snapchat and may, presumably, be charging for snaps. On other adult content-friendly platforms — sites like OnlyFans, for instance – subscribers pay to access Dane’s explicit content. Others pay to text or talk with her, presumably via services like Verified Call or DreamLover.
The need to have multiple streams of income makes sense though. According to Forbes, Dane lost interest in becoming a therapist – she has a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, specializing in sex therapy – and has “only done half a dozen or so [porn] scenes.” In attempting to find out more about Dane, I was unable to locate a listing for her on IAFD.com and was only able to find one credit via Adult Empire.
Forbes continued, describing the “costs” of being a performer – going to the gym, hair and nails, tanning, fillers and facials and STI testing every 14 days. Dane is interested in hiring a publicist for upcoming trade shows and looks at sex as a hobby that also happens to be her job.
“This is how it goes, when you’re working in Porn Valley’s gig economy,” Forbes wrote, with a tone that registered somewhere between a big reveal and a cautionary whisper.
Without putting too fine a point on it, this mainstreamland coverage of porn struggles with the “new” gig economy is dumb.
Assuming Dane is attempting to cultivate a new career, be it in porn or in some other industry different from her previous occupation, then all of these gig practices make perfect sense. Hustling and gigging and promoting in order to cultivate and enhance one’s business is part of the job.
Consider for instance Jenny Longworth, @jennynails on Instagram and a “session nail technician” who works with the likes of Rihanna and Lea Michele. None of this gig economy hustling is even worth mentioning, partly because Longworth is further established in her career, but I suspect also because being the person responsible for a key element of a cultural icon’s look is thrilling – whereas society is conditioned to think of porn as less so.
What’s further, the idea of gigging itself is not noteworthy, neither in today’s porn or mainstream industries, nor in iterations of either space gone by. Even a conventional 9-to-5 job is – ultimately — just another gig, only without the knowledge upfront that the position will ultimately terminate.
Image via Bill Davenport.
