I suppose it’s good that her parents are supporting her, but I can’t help but think that this marks yet another very very bad turn for American culture. Here’s a clip from the story on ABC News:
As a girl, Sunny Lane wanted to be a professional ice skater.
Her mother, Shelby, decorated her glittery competition costumes, and her dad, Mike, cheered for his only child from the sidelines.
Years later, they’re still at it — only now they’re helping their daughter chase her dreams of becoming a porn star…
Sunny Lane is her stage name, and her parents also go by the same last name. For the last year and a half, life in the apartment has revolved around the business of selling Sunny, whom they market as “The Girl Next Door Turned Hard Core”…
Once Sunny has worn an outfit, Shelby puts it — unwashed, of course — back in a small plastic bags to one day auction off on their Web site. Sunny’s underwear can bring in a lot of cash.
“They’ll pay $50 to $100 for panties,” her mother said…
“I’m a product,” she said, “And I know that, and I’m a dang good product”…
I’ve spent the last few minutes now trying to write something about this, but nothing’s coming out right. On one hand, I guess I’m alright with it, since they’re all adults, but you have to wonder what kind of fucked up childhood trauma leads someone to the point where they feel comfortable sitting around the kitchen table with their parents, packaging up the soiled panties they wore on the set of “Stuffin Young Muffins #4.” (By point of contrast, the fact that I fathered a child still makes me embarrassed around my family.) I look at her parents and I wonder what kind of evil things may lie below the surface. And, even worse yet, I wonder what if there wasn’t anything particularly evil. What if they are just your typical American family? What if this is just the natural progression of things? Fame is fame, right? It doesn’t matter how you get there. All that matters is that you arrive.
I know I’ve said it before, but we’re doomed.
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Equally as unsettling is this new article in “Rolling Stone”? on the quagmire in Iraq. (Sorry, but I didn’t have any other way to work this into tonight’s post.)
The image of Sunny Lane with her mom standing next to her smiling is from this site. (NSFW)
I have to admit, I’m fond of slippery slopes as long as they follow a logical progression. So is our prophet, Leonard Cohen, who moaned in “The Future”:
Things are going to slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure any more
The blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul…
For me, this story just clearly connects the dots of our descent. How many folks end up in porn or prostitution that aren’t there to make up for something their parents did or didn’t do. Here, we just get a picture of parents to go with the porn star they developed.
Personally, I’ve never seen the logical difference between porn and prostitution (I’ll pay you ten bucks to suck my cock vs. I’ll pay you ten bucks to suck his.)
Humans have proven their willingness to sell their offspring for personal gain, whether to pop music or law school. And, globally, we continue to prove our ability to sell kids to prostitution. (Young lookin’ Sunny hides her age so she doesn’t ruin “the fantasy” for fans.)
The slippery slope, of course, goes both ways — foward into child prostitution or backwards into puritanism, unless we can develop a logic for the middle ground and hold it. Otherwise, our daughters will be asking:
…When they said repent
I wonder what they meant
(I orginally was just going to post something about how much you could purchase my daugther’s training panties for, but I couldn’t find the humor in it. I guess I have some devolving to do if I’m going to make it in the new economy.)
Connecting additional dots, between us, children, the future, and the Iraq War (per MM’s addendum post) . . . a child-friendly gathering w/o (apparent) porn or prostitution:
SATURDAY, MARCH 17
UM DIAG – 1pm Rally & 2pm March
On the 4th Anniversary of the War
Contact Michigan Peaceworks to VOLUNTEER!
On the 4th anniversary of the Iraq War, let us gather in strength and show the power of our democracy. Let Congress and the community know that we stand united – The time is NOW to end this war!
Reclaiming. Reconnecting. Recommitted. Democracy, I Do.
March 17th – UM Diag
1:00pm sign-making, face-painting, music, sign-ups and activities
1:20pm Rally and Challenge – How do you do democracy?
2:00pm We March!
* University feeder march – 1:15pm, Michigan Union
* Youth Activist Network High School feeder march – 1pm, Community High
* Interfaith feeder march – 1:15pm, Canterbury House (at the conclusion of the Interfaith Prayer Vigil, starting at 12:30pm)
(michiganpeaceworks.com)
..a pitiless righteousness, a righteousness that will condemn everything except money…
When that time comes anything that resembles virtue – nay, anything but ardent devotion to Plutus – will be regarded as vastly ridiculous. Justice – if, in this unfortunate epoch, any justice can still exist – will forbid the existence of citizens who are unable to make their fortunes.
Your wife, O Bourgeois, your chaste other half, whose legitimacy is your poetry, giving to legality an irreproachable infamy, vigilant and loving guardian of your strongbox – your wife will be nothing more than the ideal type of kept woman. Your daughter, in her childish nubility, will dream in her cradle that she is selling herself for a million. And you yourself, O Bourgeois – even less a poet than you are today – will make no objection; you will have no complaint.
– Charles Baudelaire
“I’m a dang good product.”
It’s a nice slogan for the new generation, don’t you think?
Hey Mark, I’m also wondering what your take is on the whole “300” thing — now that I’ve heard Frank Miller’s rant:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24146_Batman_Artist_No_Moonbat&only
it’s become for me like “48” is for you — something I want to watch but feel could very well be evil…
A very endearing aside.
From the site linked in comment 2,
Sunny’s dad says she could’ve turned out worse. “She could’ve gone gay on us.”
Oh, wonderful. Perfectly happy with her being in porn, but gay? Never.
Murph, you followed that link? I tought the “NSFW” tag was pretty clear. Hmmm….
And, while we’re on the subject of porn, someone recently told me that Kami Andrews, the porn actress who left comments here on occasion, has since left the business… So, there’s a slot available, if Sunny is up for it.
I love you guys…. It’s so cool that I throw something up on the web and, as if by magic, you come back with Baudelaire quotes, news of prayer vigils, and references to the sale of training panties. This is the best cocktail party ever.
And, Ol’ EC, I think you’ve stumbled on what might make a very nice tag line for this website: “Mark Maynard dotcom… connecting the dots of our descent”. It’s a hell of a lot better than, “Come for the ball shaving, stay for the paranoia.”
The rabble, the groundlings, the hoi poloi … they have always been with us. Their prominence in our media suggests to me a nearly complete breakdown in values (“ethos” as they say at EMU) in our society. Nothing with any substance would ever appeal to them … it’s gangster hip-hop, NASCAR, table dances, porn and meth.
As I posted elsewhere here … there is a similar breakdown occuring at other levels of our society, ie.: among corporate execs, politicians, educators, writers, musicians, sports figures, and other artists.
Get what you can, all that you can … and body count DOES matter, because that’s called publicity.
As parents, as teachers, as associates, as neighbors, as co-workers, as citizens … we have forgotten that we have a social contract with one another from which all common law and civility flow. Without this as a foundation, the next step is anarchy.
From pop porn (panties for sale) to corporate porn (Ken Lay) to presidential porn (Iraq) … and its all legal (Gonzales) … it’s all OK … just don’t get caught or lose track of your e-mails.
Another former ice skater calls out for help.
As long as we’re on the subject of creepy staqe parents, have you read about Thora Birch and her dad.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03272007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm
Thora’s dad, it should be noted, met her mom on the set of Deep Throat.
A reader of this site that writes for “Hustler” sent me a note after I posted this telling me that it’s not that rare for porn actresses to be managed by their parents. We agreed that it was fucked up.
Does anyone know if there’s been a Stuffin’ Young Muffins 5?
If you think that’s bad, you’ve never heard the story of Summer Verona.
Very NSFW link of her and her stepdad.
WARNING:
http://fapdu.com/howard-stern-summer-verona-fucked
The world is coming to an end.