by Rich Moreland, April 2019
This is the second post in our porn stars and camming series from the 2019 AVN trade show at Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel.
Casey Calvert is a popular BDSM performer who has expanded her acting skills and moved into the upper echelon of porn performers. Recently, she joined Gamma Entertainment’s Adult Time as a director, advancing her industry resume into Hall of Fame territory.
For the record, Casey and I have known each other for years and have had our share of frank conversations about the industry.
Photos are credited to Kevin Sayers.
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Benefits
Have you ever cammed?
Only a couple of times, Casey responds.
Because the alluring brunette shoots scenes as her primary source of income (she doesn’t dance or escort), does she believe that camming is advantageous for a porn girl?
“Yes, it definitely benefits her to cam,” Casey says, and mentions Dani Daniels. “She started as a girl-girl performer shooting scenes, transitioned to boy-girl. Now she cams and does Snapchat and other social media. She’s made that transition really seamless. Her fame that she built as a performer drove her cam traffic.”
Casey agrees that porn girls bring their audience with them when they cam. But, she suggests, that same accomplishment might be tougher for a cam girl who gravitates to porn.
“There’s a lot of cam girls who have gotten flack for shooting scenes because of their fans. Camming is a really intimate, dynamic relationship” and there is a cost involved, the University of Florida grad says.
Fans do not always take to cam girls who “are doing solos” online then “go shoot a boy-girl scene, Casey believes. Some of them will say, “’You’re taking dick on camera now? That’s not okay!’”
Fans seem to regard cam girls as their own and get a little jealous and offended when they shoot scenes. So, the bottom line of this interpersonal dynamic is risk for the cammer.
“I think that’s a part of it,” Casey says. “I think there’s some slut shaming which is inappropriate. But I know that happens.
Cam Girl Stigma
Are cam girls creating amateur porn?
“That’s exactly what they’re doing,” Casey replies. “They’re entrepreneurs, they’re businesswomen and they’re amateur performers. And I don’t mean amateur in the derogatory sense. Just amateur in the literal sense.”
In her opinion, cam girls are not porn stars, but they’re “making porn”, nonetheless.
“Some of them also see themselves as amateur performers,” she adds, while others insist, “’I don’t do porn, I am not a sex worker, I am not a porn performer.’”
Things get complicated from there.
“There’s this cam girl stigma of ‘I’m not a porn star’ and there’s this porn star stigma of ‘I don’t cam, why would I need to cam? I’m a performer.’” Casey explains.
Is that a dividing line?
“No. To me, all of us are sex workers,” she asserts, and mentions there are plenty of cammers and porn performers who agree with her. But she understands those who don’t.
“I know that there are some people who live within the stigma. When I was just a fetish model, I told people ‘I don’t do porn, I’m not a porn star.’ I was wrong. I was doing porn.”
Without penetrative sex?
“I was creating a product for people to masturbate to. That’s porn.”
The highly respected Speigler Girl elaborates.
“I didn’t know that then. I was afraid of the stigma. I didn’t want to be a porn star. I don’t do fluid exchange, I’m not making porn. But in hindsight now I see that I was being a sex worker. I just wasn’t doing ‘this.’”
I suggest that anyone can watch porn and not masturbate. But I do concede Casey has expanded my interpretation of what porn is.
From her perspective, porn’s “intention is to create something masturbatory,” as she puts it. Of course, the viewer makes that decision and there are people who don’t.
“I watch porn all the time and don’t masturbate to it,” the long-time Kink.com model says, “But it was created as a product to be masturbated to.”
For a moment we get into the phrase “porn star” and I got from Casey what I expected.
“I don’t know if I even like the phrase ‘porn star.’ I’m a porn performer. I’m an adult performer. I don’t feel like I’m a porn star. But porn star means something so I use that word to convey meaning.”
A portal
Does Casey think that camming to a portal into porn?
“No. There are thousands of cam girls and how many of those girls go shoot porn…a hundred? So, just statistically, no. Not enough people make the transition for [me to] agree with that.”
Should a cammer want to get into porn, does it matter if she gets an agent?
“Yes, it does matter because it shows an interest in sex work and an interest in creating pornography,” Casey insists.
“You have some experience talking to the camera and being sexy on camera and all of those things that an agent finds desirable. It’s not a necessity. There are plenty of girls who get into porn who have never cammed, who have never worked in a strip club, who have never done any fetish modeling and just go right into hardcore.
“But, for the most part, I find that most girls did some form of sex presentation before they started doing hardcore porn.”
In the end, Casey summarizes her take on our discussion.
“There are fans who don’t want to watch scenes ever. They just want to watch girls on cam. [Then there are] scene fans who have no interest in watching their girl on cam.
“There’s that degree of separation that a porn performer has with their fans that cam girls do not have because they ‘cam-to-cam.’ You see the guy [and] interact with them on a really intimate level. Much more intimate than shooting a scene.
“There’s no real interactions with the fans just from shooting scenes. So, I think there are fans who want that level of intimacy, and fans who don’t.”
It’s a choice, Casey Calvert concludes, that will prevail for some time to come.
