Sex, Bomb and Burgers by Peter Nowak

Author:Peter Nowak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC000000
ISBN: 9781741768152
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

7

THE INTERNET: MILITARY MADE, PORN PERFECTED

The way you know if your technology is good and solid is if it’s doing well in the

porn world.1

—SUN MICROSYSTEMS SPOKESPERSON SUSAN STRUBLE

You may think a world without porn stars sounds like the distant past, but according to Tera Patrick, one of the biggest names in adult entertainment, it could also be the near future. That’s because in the world of pornography, what the internet giveth the internet can also taketh away.

Born Linda Ann Hopkins to a Thai mother and British father in 1976, the raven-haired, olive-skinned beauty is a veritable legend in the business. This status is achieved through a combination of her exotic look, some entrepreneurship and a lot of hard work. (Believe it or not, being a porn star is not just about having copious amounts of sex and going to wild parties; there are also many long and dreary hours, tiring travel and repetitive publicity to contend with.) Hopkins’s journey began early, when as a teenager she modelled for mainstream clothing catalogues. By the late nineties, she was posing nude for adult magazines such as Hustler and Swank and in 1999 she took the full dive into porn, changing her name to “Tera” to reflect her earth-consciousness and “Patrick” for her father’s middle name.

Patrick is not the stereotypical sex-crazed bimbo. She earned a bachelor of science degree at Boise State University and was set to become a nurse, but found the potential riches of porn too hard to resist. Over the next decade, she appeared in nearly a hundred films, and in 2009 was inducted into the Adult Video News Hall of Fame, the industry’s equivalent to the Oscars’ lifetime achievement award.

After working for some of the biggest porn producers in the world, including Vivid and Digital Playground, Patrick struck out on her own with Teravision, a production company devoted to putting together what she calls a “beautiful, sexy video library.” The internet gave her all the necessary tools to get a business up and running, and in 2003 she launched ClubTera.com, a website where customers could buy online access to her photos and videos and order DVDs. ClubTera also allowed her to cross-link with other adult sites, promote personal appearances and interact with fans.

Talking to me from her office in Los Angeles, Patrick is upbeat and cheerful when discussing how she wants to be seen as a positive role model for other women in the industry. Her mood darkens, though, when she starts discussing her reasons for going solo. While the producers of her films, who were always male, capitalized on her popularity, the riches she had been promised never came. “The guys take advantage of the girls. The girls work for free or cheap and the guys make all the money. The producers make all the money,” she snarls. “I was one of those girls who was working my ass off and making very little while the company took all my money ... [Now] I’m one of the few women in the industry that does make money.

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