Brittni Ruiz is not blinking “torture” in her XXXChurch video, and she certainly seems well-fed and physically healthy, so why does it seem that the former Jenna Presley has just swapped one form of exploitation for another?
Presley has joined a growing group of former porn stars who have become born-again Christians through the efforts of in-house porn reclamation teams at startup churches.
XXXChurch has long been a staple at adult conventions, handing out New Testaments under their “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” banner. Why only New Testaments rather than full Bibles? I suspect it’s because the New Testament’s three main women, Elizabeth, Mary, and Mary Magdalene, were either got with child via divine inspiration (Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist when she was very old and Mary conceived Jesus via the Holy Spirit, which is why Jesus referred to Joseph as “Dad,” in quotation marks) or were reformed prostitutes, much more in line with evangelical Christianity than the Old Testament’s tales of sexual exuberance, such as The Song of Solomon.
But there have been other ministries, too, including JC’s Girls, Running Light Ministries, and the roundly-discredited Pink Cross (headed by former performer Shelley Lubben—see her saga as depicted by filmmaker Michael Whiteacre), who have also reached out to porn personnel. Sometimes these organizations only admit to offering scriptural comfort to porn performers, and other times they seek to get performers out of the business altogether. In all cases the underlying agenda is that porn isn’t right with God.
[read Sophia Lynn goes back to the garden]
Ruiz recalls a life of drugs and doubt while she was in porn. I remember her work, but I don’t remember her as anything but confident. She, like the late Haley Paige, was a pinup’s pinup, in demand by high-end erotic photographers like Ed Fox as well as the upper reaches of the glamor porn world. But the confidence was a front, apparently, and the life drove her to attempt suicide.
Reading from a prepared text, Ruiz appears less sure of herself in the video, as if she is trying on a new character.
She is all blinged out in crucifixes, even on her pants. It’s like she traded in the porn star’s leased Lexus for that getup. And she is reading from a script. How underconfident must one be to read from a script in an interview?
This tells me that Ruiz brought this underdeveloped sense of self to porn, and now she is bringing it to church. Might she do less harm to herself and more good for the world with a church’s collective sense of purpose? Doubtless. But my point is that porn is not bad in and of itself, which is what ministries often say. It’s just that there might be more of a chance for a weak-willed person to find acceptance and a purpose in church than in porn.
I am not a porn apologist and have no doubt that Ruiz encountered some bad shit in her time here. I’m also not surprised that a person who came into the business with such an underdeveloped sense of self might find out the hard way that this business wasn’t a substitute for actual self-esteem.
But like so many people who “find Jesus” (or God, or Allah, or the Landmark Forum, or AA), it’s just substituting one addiction for another. I am not saying this is true of everybody who turns to these entities for help, but I can’t help but feel Brittni (another example of how the porn name sounds less porny than the real one) is just as lost and exploited now as she was before. It is telling that conservative website WND, on which the video is posted, describes Ruiz as a “brunette stunner” and references Maxim’s description of Jenna Presley as “the world’s hottest porn star,” saying nothing of Ruiz as a person.
I thank director/writer Jacky St. James for turning me on to the Jenna Presley video.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: The Voluptuous Feet of Ed Fox (and Jenna Presley); “Vampire Sex Diaries”—who knew they could write?; Glory (Hallelujah) Days—”When They Were Sinners”; Gun to the Head—Tales of Porny Coercion
See also: World’s Hottest Porn Star Gives Life to God
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