Nina Hartley, a woman beloved of everyone she meets, turns 50 today.
“Tonight I’ve got a hot date,” she said. “I’m waiting for the weekend for the fancy dinner.”
A week seems too short a time to celebrate Nina Hartley. Streets should be closed down. There should be sacrifices or something. But Hartley has always been practical.
“I can’t have the fancy sex and the fancy dinner the same night,” she said. “I’m just not capable.”
To be fair, “Nina Hartley” is actually 25 this year, which is itself a tremendous achievement in a business one can’t even think about until her 18th birthday. But the person who would bring Nina Hartley to life was herself born 50 years ago today.
Hartley began performing in the video era, a few years after shooting porn was decriminalized in California. Porn had already changed drastically from its film-only, New York and San Francisco-centric “Golden Age,” and Hartley slowly made her name in a world dominated by the likes of Ginger Lynn, Annette Haven, Sharon Mitchell, and Serena.
“I was in awe (of the stars) and I wasn’t a ‘porn star’ for several years,” Hartley said recently. “Today you make one movie and you get to wear the ‘Porn Star’ t-shirt. I think you need to get something under your belt first.”
Oddly enough, one of Hartley’s first movies was the girls-only underbelt romp Anal Annie And The Backdoor Housewives (“Shot Live on Video Tape”), which co-starred Serena. According to the Internet Adult Film Database, Hartley has appeared in 815 movies, which probably places her output well past 1,000. There is not a millimeter of Hartley the world has not seen.
But there’s still some mystery in all that nudity, which is something the public doesn’t seem to apprehend about porn. Things can hide in plain sight. While not every performer can boast of such a rich inner life as Hartley, she stresses the value of not buying the “porn star” lifestyle wholesale.
“Go home,” she said recently. “Read a book. Open a savings account. Have non-porny friends.”
Hartley has maintained an admirable throughline in her career, taking every opportunity to educate women in particular and the public in general about porn’s role in relationships and society.
“The public perception of porn has changed dramatically,” she said. “At [porn conventions], at first, it was all guys. Then guys with horrified-looking wives. Then women who would get autographs for their husbands. And then young women who would get autographs for themselves.”
Born to well-read parents in liberal Berkeley, the person who became Hartley helped effect that change. She had a strong understanding of who she was at an early age, and a Bay Area vibe still looms large in her conversation.
“I’m still the Me I thought I was when I first thought the word ‘Me’ when I was ten,” Hartley said today.
And I suspect that her San Francisco attitude helped her weather the changes manifested by an Eisenhower-era birth, her early childhood in the turbulent Sixties, and a Me Decade adulthood that made cynics out of people from other parts of the country. Hartley has always had a positive outlook – or at least gives that impression.
The emergence of the MILF and Cougar genre in porn has been a boon to Hartley, although she is a sought-after lecturer who also hosted a groundbreaking series of How To videos for Adam & Eve and co-authored, with husband and #1 fan Ernest Greene, a sex manual (“Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex“) that approaches that act and all its variations with a mixture of science, psychoanalysis, and humor, similar to the recent trend in cookbooks.
In fact, Hartley herself is like the hostess of a great Thanksgiving dinner, except it’s a sexy Thanksgiving dinner; you show up hungry and leave laden with doggie bags. “No, I couldn’t,” you say. “Really. I can’t. You’re too generous. I’m full. Well, one more pie.”
My friend P. Weasels fulfilled a lifelong dream a few years ago when Nina took a strap-on to him. In a tribute to her on Fleshbot he wrote: “You have been getting off to movies starring the legendary Best Ass In Porn now for at least as long as you weren’t before she got into porn 25 years ago.”
So if you see Nina Hartley any time this year, buy her dinner.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene – O (the power of submission) the places they go; Sex on the nest with Nina Hartley; O2 – The Surrender of O; These milves are on the move!
See also: Nina Hartley
Leave a Reply