Think of your favorite porn stars from yesteryear. I can vividly remember spanking it to my porn faves— Christy Canyon, Chasey Lain, Celeste, Stephanie Swift, Felecia. These girls were porn goddesses, women who defined the meaning of porn stars. But today, a new genre of adult has emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, where the girls are pierced, inked, and packing lots of attitude. These are the new porn vixens—hipster girls and Goth chicks who are redefining the rules of porn and making their mark in an industry that once embraced silicon-inflated boobs. These new porn starlets are taking their place among the porn elite; girls such as Joanna Angel, Charlotte Stokely, Brooklyn Night, Dana DeArmond, Riley Mason, Pixie Pearl, Roxy Deville, Veronica Jett, Kimberly Kane and Lexi Bardot. This is the future of porn, and it’s got ink written all over it.

The Origins of Alt Porn—The Suicide Girls to Art School Sluts

Girls with tattoos are nothing new in porn. The most famous of all tattooed porn stars, Janine, has been and continues to be a major performer in adult, almost 20 years after she entered the adult industry. When Janine first showed her new tats off, it caused a stir but nothing significant to hamper her career. The opposite occurred, and in fact, Janine could arguably be given credit for making tattoos a permanent fixture in porn, and most importantly, making them sexy.

Janine is hardly “alt” by any means, though. As the 90’s wore on, porn would also move on and redefine itself. The groundbreaking website, SuicideGirls.com, would be among the first websites to feature scantily clad young women who did not fit the mold of the stereotypical “porn chick.” From websites devoted to girls that were more anti-porn than porn, alt porn grew and expanded into specific subcultures—goth, punk and raver.

The SuicideGirls has become an Internet phenomenon for featuring soft-core porn and profiles of goth, punk, emo and indie-styled young women—known as the "SuicideGirls"—that incorporates styles reminicent of the 1940s and 50s pin-up models (The term Suicide Girl is from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Survivor).The concept of The SuicideGirls was created by " Sean Suicide" (Sean Suhl) and " Missy Suicide" (Selena Mooney) in late 2001, "Just to see hot punk rock girls naked," and on a more serious note, to give women control over how their sexuality is depicted. "SuicideGirls is a term my friends and I had been using to describe the girls we saw in Portland's Pioneer Square with skateboards in one hand, wearing a Minor Threat hoodie, listening to Ice Cube on their iPods while reading a book of Nick Cave's poetry,” says Mooney. “They are girls who didn't fit into any conventional sub-culture and didn’t define themselves based on musical taste like punk, metal, goth, etc. I think the only classifications right now people identify with are mainstream and outside of mainstream. That is why the site is called SuicideGirls."

“I was around when SuicideGirls first started and I was taking photos of their early models,” says alt porn pioneer and director Eon McKai. That’s kind of how I got hooked into the fact that I wanted to see this type of look represented in regular adult films. With how much SuicideGirls grew and how fast it grew . . . now SuicideGirls is part of pop culture. That just told me that there is a need for this in the market. This type of girl. With SuicideGirls, it’s not a bunch of punk rock boys looking at punk rock girls. All kinds of people like these girls. It wouldn’t have gotten to the size that it has if there wasn’t a more universal appeal to the way these girls look.”

McKai, who directed the now cult classic alt-porn film, Art School Sluts, goes on to say, "There was a void in the video market. But to truly make an alt-porn flick, it was more than just casting a guy with tattoos and a girl with purple hair getting it on in a standard adult feature. In order for it to be alt, the movies McKai wanted to make had to be darker, grittier and awkward, or risked having questions arise about its authenticity. “There is a subtle something in the way alt-porn is made," he says. "You have to live it to make it. You have to acutely be attracted to that type of girl and be active in the scene."

Alt Porn’s East Coast Roots

Anyone who says porn is dead in New York City is absolutely, 100 percent right! Much of, but not entirely, the roots of alt porn had its start in New York City, which had long been abandoned by mainstream porn companies. Today, New York City is the home of a burgeoning breed of a distinctive brand of smut. "There's a punk, underground attitude here, due to a lack of money, that you don't get on the West Coast," says Kenny Law, an editor at the newly revamped porn periodical Screw. "It's real and relatable. It's not just some palm trees swaying in the wind."

And according to Gram Ponante of GramPonante.com, “ New York films are grittier. The girls are fleshier and more dangerous. I think New York porn will always be a niche market."

People will always want the kind of porn that the bigger budget plastic companies produce in the West Coast; the sunny exteriors, blonde, blue-eyed, fake tits, all-American types. But with the growth of the Internet, much looser morals, and more choices to choose from, today’s porn buying consumer is demanding and almost dictating to the adult industry what they want to see in porn. New York’s adult companies are more than happy to provide the public with what it is that they want—an alternative to the same old big budget, gonzo-themed adult fare being churned out of the San Fernando Valley. New York’s answer to the usual smut being hashed and re-hashed out West would come out of the bedroom of a tiny apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and reclaim New York City’s place in the billions of dollars a year adult industry.

From BurningAngel.com to Vivid Alt

Started in 2002, BurningAngel.com has been the most successful of all the alt porn websites to feature naked goth, punk, hipster and rave chicks. “It’s a punk rock porn site,” says Angel. “All the girls have piercings and tattoos, and they’re more unique-looking than your average porn star. You get to know their personality and jerk off to their photos. It’s a really cool, friendly, comfortable porn site to look at.”

"She has a bad-girl accessibility to her," says Ponante. "She doesn't have that Amazon blond, rail-thin, machine-crafted porn starlet look that is characteristic of the Valley." To date, Angel has appeared on the cover of AVN, has had numerous articles written about her, from the New York Times to The Village Voice, and nominated for several AVN Awards (and won for Most Outrageous Sex Scene in the Re-Penetrator).

Much of the reason for the success of Burning Angel is the looks and the personality of the girls Angel features. “It’s the personality for me that matters. Of course, they have to be hot but I think that lots of different girls are hot for different reasons. If a girl is really hot and her personality sucks, then I’m not going to want her as part of the website. I want girls with attitude, with a sense of humor. Those are the girls I really like.” As for her fans, Angel describes them as loyal followers who do what they can to pass the word around about the site, almost unprecedented for an adult site. “People really love BurningAngel. How many people write to a porn site’s email and say, ‘I love you guys, you’re amazing. I totally support you guys.’ How many other people want to help support a porn site? It’s like a family. That’s really the last thing you’d think what a porn site would be. This really is my family. The whole staff, the girls that we work with, it’s just a very comfortable, nice environment.”

With an anything goes feel to her site and her films that capture the beauty and the flavor of New York City, Angel has no plans to pack up and move out West. Although she faces challenges shooting porn in New York, Angel admits, “Sometimes I'm like, 'Let's pack it up and move to Los Angeles. It's so much easier there,’ But I don't want to. I know that my films would lose a certain personality that New York gives."

"In L.A., from the locations to the makeup artists, there is a scene, a machine. So a lot, but not all, of what comes out of the machine is predictable. In New York, we shoot in places where porn has never been shot. And the people are different. For the most part, they are new to porn and really excited to be a part of it. It's not, like, the 10th movie set they've worked on that week. We are all discovering our style as we go along."

With the popularity of alt porn growing, viewers are noticing these girls appearing in bigger budget, non-alt porn flicks, a sign that these alt-porn vixens are invading the sacred ground of the usual, run-of-the-mill porn queens. But thanks to the success of such films as the Kill Girl Kill and Gothsend series, Joanna’s Angels 1 & 2, Art School Sluts, the remake of Neu Wave Hookers, and films by Vena Virago and Rob Rotten (who insists he’s not alt), the major porn studios have capitalized on alt porn’s success by casting these girls in non alt-porn roles and releasing their own line of alt flicks. Vivid, the leading porn company in the industry, has taken it one step further by establishing its own alt imprint, Vivid Alt, headed by Eon McKai. Initially skeptical about aligning himself with a big budget studio, Mckai was reassured by Vivid co-chair Steven Hirsch that he would have total creative control. “Steve hasn’t put any expectations on us about the type of movies we’ll make,” McKai said. “It was really amazing to see on paper that we’ll be able to do what we want to do” — which includes hiring talent, and directors he has admired in the past, such as photographers Octavio Winkytiki and Dave Naz.

“I’ve always been a big champion of the genre, and I just want to see the channel opened up a little wider so that distributors will continue to take it seriously,” McKai said.

At Vivid-Alt, McKai will oversee the production of movies by other directors, directing his own films, and mentoring new directors. “I’m bringing in new directors and helping them make some of their first movies or some of their second movies. So yeah, my responsibilities are here and basically overseeing that and making sure these other directors have the kind of experience that I always wanted to have, which was to have total freedom to be creative and make the kind of movies they want to make.”

He also wants to make sure that the essence of alt porn remains intact, which is one of the reasons McKai had it written in his contract that he wouldn’t have to use any of the Vivid girls in his movies. “I wanted to protect ourselves. We’re not part of that system that has to crank out movies with Vivid girls and I wanted to make sure our directors had the freedom to cast however they see fit. The cast is a big part of what’s made alt porn great. Alt porn is good because if you’re a kid in a scene and you get a movie that matches that scene and you put it on, you’re like, ‘Wow! This is made by people who really feel the way I feel.’ It’s a really personal experience.

“You’ll notice that the people successful at delivering alt are the people who are living it,” says McKai. I’m one of them. Winkytiki is living the psychobillie style, bringing another voice to alt. Dave was in the Chemical People. He’s legit to the core. People who are just dressing up girls to look like punk rock girls, that’s not going to fly in this market. There are a lot of people faking the funk, and the young adults who buy alt can tell the difference.”

The Future of Alt

It may be a bit premature to start discussing the future of alt porn, but those who live it say its future is bright. “I see it becoming a lot more broad and covering a lot more territory,” says McKai. “I just see it becoming bigger and bigger. I see it affecting the talent pool in the business. I think girls will start to feel that they can express more of who they are and what their style is. As we make more movies I can just see the talent pool changing which is great. When a girl really is who she is in a movie, I think you get better sex scenes and it makes it easier for you to connect with her in the film.

“I’ve already come to the conclusion that’s it’s a contemporary alternative to what’s going on out there. If you want porn with a little bit more contemporary style to it that’s what alt porn is.”