Results from a deep study into the people of the pornography industry.
You can really find a data set on anything these days, huh?
A statistically-inclined aficionado of the perverted arts recently released the results from his massive study into porn stars. To compile his data, he scraped 10,000 biographies on the Internet Adult Film Database, which provides vital statistics and film history for virtually every person that appears in any mainstream pornographic film.
Before going deep into this study, it’s worth noting that we also analyzed another branch of the adult entertainment industry. Five years before this article, we discovered some mind-blowing facts about strippers that gave a new perspective on how they work. Here’s a teaser: the most common reason for getting into stripping is… wanting to dance! You might want to consider changing careers.
This time, it’s a little more intense. I’m inclined to think that the previous article served as a primer before going all out into the adult industry. Hats off to the nerd who self-exiled himself for an untold number of weeks just to crunch these juicy data.
11 Random facts about the average porn stars
There are many intriguing facts about the people who make up the porn industry. I went through his results and plucked out these 11 random facts to get a picture of what the average porn star looks like. Many of the findings are as unexpected as an angry dragon.
1 | The most common female porn star hair color and bra size are not “blonde” and “humongous,” respectively
The stereotype would say the average porn star would be a blonde with enormous breasts, but brown hair is more common (39.1 percent to 32.7 percent) and the most common bra size is 34B.
In fact, dark-haired porn celebrities (brown and black hair) outnumber light-colored ones (blonde and red hair) by almost two to one. And if we assume that most of them have huge breasts like the ones we usually see, they don’t. The order of their bra sizes is actually B, C, D and DD.
2 | The average debut age for women is 22; for men, it’s 24
That age for women has been the same since the 1970s regardless of race. Men have started getting in younger, though; the average debut age in the ’70s was 29. Who says millennials don’t have the same drive as baby boomers?
3 | The average male porn star is almost 30 pounds lighter than the average American man
At 5-foot-10, 167.5 pounds, the average male porn star is the same height as the average man, but significantly lighter. It’s not a totally apples-to-oranges comparison, since non porn star men are weighed down by all their body hair, but still.
4 | The heaviest female porn star is 719 pounds
The lightest is 74 pounds, or approximately the weight of four large bowling balls. The heaviest porn actress could be compared to the size of two giant pandas…
I’m having funny thoughts with this one. They should maybe team up for a movie together?
5 | 45.5 percent have at least one tattoo
That’s about 9.5 percent higher than the average person in the U.S., but about 54 percent lower than I would’ve guessed. Also, 43% have a body (non-ear) piercing, which is 13% above average. This applies to both male and female porn stars.
6 | The average age of a woman playing a MILF is 33 years old
That IS older than the average first-time mom, but man, it’s weird to me to be older than that. Also, twenty percent of women in MILF-themed porn movies are 20-25 year old. Only 7 percent of on-screen MILFs are over 40 and only 4 percent are over 50.
7 | Men make about one-third of what women make
The pornography industry is busting the wage gap quite well, it seems. However, the handful of men that rise up to the top of the industry can make it up in volume; of the 100 performers with the most credits on IAFD, 96 are men.
Nevertheless, this pay disparity in the porn sector mirrors that of stripping. Female performers tend to earn more than their male counterparts. Maybe because men, who often hold higher paying jobs outside of the industry, have greater spending power and are therefore willing to pay more for female performers.
8 | Top male porn stars have sex on screen with an average of 45 women per year
And over the average male porn star career of 22.4 years, that’s a total of 1,013 women. The most prolific female porn stars have sex with an average of eight men per year over a 17.7 year career, for a total of 148.
Taking things to the extreme, the female porn star with the highest number of on-screen credits, at 938, has performed with 199 different men. In comparison, the male porn star with the highest number of on-screen credits, at 2,549, has worked with 1,127 different women!
Together with the analysis on number 7, this could easily be classified into the overworked but underpaid category.
9 | It’s rare for a woman to quit porn after just one movie
The figure is roughly 20 percent. But the majority of women do at least three films and last an average of three years. Those numbers sound almost identical to what you hear about pro sports leagues.
10 | The most common (fake) last name for porn stars is Lee
The rest of the most common (fake) female last names are Love, Star/Starr, Fox/Foxx and Rose. The rest of the most common (probably fake) male last names are James, Taylor, Stone and Michaels.
Upon stumbling into this, I sometimes wonder what a person’s occupation is if they introduced themselves using one of these names. It’s just hard to unsee or unremember.
11 | The most common (fake) first name for women is Nikki
Followed by Jessica, Lisa, Kelly and Angel. The most common (possibly fake, possibly real) first name for men is David, followed by Tony, John, Mike/Michael and Steve.
So it seems very few of them are doing the “Pet’s name + street you grew up on” move, unless porn celebrities disproportionately give their pets very mundane ’80s names and all grew up on Lee St.
