Jenna Jameson, revealed

It's become a standard joke that all actresses in porn films, no matter how insignificant their careers, are referred to as "porn stars." Jenna Jameson actually has been a star in that field: even if you don't watch porn, it's near impossible not to be aware of who she is, since she gets so much press.

(It's hard not to think that's because a lot of reporters are inveterate porn watchers.)

Two weeks ago the NY Post ran an article about her, Jenna Jameson goes on rant slamming Muslims and defending KKK. She evidently said there was a "Muslim rape epidemic."

Jameson, who is now engaged to an Israeli jeweler, Lior Bitton, and has converted from Catholicism to Judaism, compared Islam to the KKK:

“Do the klu klux klan follow a religion that orders the death of apostates? When was the last time we saw a klan member blow up infidels?,” she tweeted.

The star, who is due to give birth in April, has lashed out at Muslims before. In January, she drew fire for tweeting that Islam “promotes child rape, female genital mutilation, butchering non believers and polygamy.”

To say that the KKK is not as violent as radical Muslims hardly seems like a "defense" of them. And what Jameson said about Islam is true, even if such honesty is usually not a good career move. 

The article featured this recent, virtually unrecognizable picture of her:

Jameson does seem to have gone though a lot of changes in appearance over the years. Her pictures tell the story of someone who's never been happy with herself, despite having starting out as a beautiful woman. Here she is early in her career:

She looks vapid, and her implants are too big, but she's undeniably beautiful. And she seems to be glowing with health.

A little while later she became borderline anorexic:

When someone is constantly changing her appearance, it usually signals a deeper discontent. Here's Jameson with some ear piercings:

She has also decided to adorn herself with tattoos: 

As she got older, she seemed to acquire the soulless look of a sex worker:

And finally, as she slid further into drug addiction and alcoholism, she let herself get fat, even by the standards of pregnant women. 

Jameson always presented herself as nothing more than a sex object. She would put on a lascivious look, a sort of half sneer meant to convey sexual desire, or possibly sexual invitation. Maybe she figured that as a porn star this was how she was supposed to appear. But it came across desperate and pathetic. And obscene, in both senses of the word. 

And it made me wonder about her childhood. The cliche about women who become strippers -- or porn stars, or prostitutes -- is that they come from broken homes and dysfunctional backgrounds. As is often the case, the "Early life" section of Jameson's Wikipedia bio held the key:

Jenna Marie Massoli was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her father, Laurence Henry Massoli, was a police officer at the las Vegas Sheriff's Department and program director for KSNV-DT. Her mother, Judith Brooke Hunt, was a Las Vegas showgirl who danced in the Folies Bergere show at the Tropicana Resort & Casino. Her mother died of melanoma on February 20, 1976, two months prior to her daughter's second birthday. The cancer treatments bankrupted the family and they relocated in Nevada, Arizona, and Montana, usually living in a trailer home or living with her paternal grandmother. She and her older brother, Tony were raised Catholic, though they were essentially left to parent each other.

So Jenna grew up missing -- and undoubtedly romanticizing -- the mother she never knew, the glamorous showgirl in the Folies Bergere. Wikipedia does not explain why the family moved around so much; you'd think a police officer would be able to provide at least a middle class existence for his family. But the bit about how Jenna and her brother were "essentially left to parent each other" makes it sound as if the father was mostly absent as well.

So Jameson's early life, right down to the trailer parks, was straight from that stripper playbook.

It was nobody's fault that Jameson grew up without a mother, an anchor to guide her, a steadying influence, and, mostly, someone to love her. But her entire life has reflected that early loss. 

I never would have expected to feel this way, but I actually ended up feeling sorry for her. 

Jameson is undoubtedly a difficult woman, and probably impossible to live with. But she doesn't deserve the bad press she's gotten recently, especially since what she said about Islam is largely true. It does promote a culture that's abusive to women. 

So maybe all those reporters who are taking such glee in her downfall and simultaneously preening about their political correctness should take a hard look at themselves. They might realize that they're mostly just angry that they never got a girl who looked like Jenna. At least not the early version.