Short Hair Pornstars, Look by Look

Career

At eighteen, in early 2012, Rotten came into the industry as a fetish model and feature dancer. In 2014 she became the first alt or tattooed performer to win AVN Female Performer of the Year. That January she also launched her own production company, Mental Beauty, Inc., and directed for Girlfriends Films and Digital Playground. The Weeknd’s 2013 Kiss Land video features her. Pipedream released her product line in 2015. She also ran a tattoo shop in 2017 and 2018, and she retired from performing in 2020.

Signature: The breakout window is not only for girl-next-door marketing. The industry's top female title went to a heavily tattooed performer with an openly alt persona.

Studios

Award record

• 2014AVN — Female Performer of the Year
• 2014AVN — Best Group Sex Scene
• 2015AVN — Kinkiest Performer (Fan Award)
• 2014XBIZ — Best Scene — Non-Feature Release
• 2014XRCO — Superslut
• 2014Venus Award — Best Actress (International)
• 2014Fanny Award — Kink Performer of the Year
• 2013NightMoves — Best All Sex Release (Editor’s Choice)
• 2014NightMoves — Best Female Performer (Fan’s Choice)
• 2016NightMoves — Triple Play Award (Dancing/Performing/Directing)
• 2012NightMoves — Miss Congeniality

Beyond performing

• Founder, Mental Beauty, Inc. (2014)
• Directing for Girlfriends Films and Digital Playground
• Pipedream product line (2015)
• Tattoo shop (2017–2018)

Mainstream credits

• The Weeknd — Kiss Land video (2013)

Career

Taormino went to Wesleyan University and wrote the Village Voice sex column "Pucker Up" from 1999 to 2008, sharing the space with Dan Savage. In 1999 she began directing, with a video version of her own book The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. From 2006 she made the Chemistry series for Vivid Entertainment. It was openly unscripted, and performers chose whom they had sex with and where, with no director setting the scene. That format earned Chemistry an AVN Best Gonzo Release and a Feminist Porn Award in the same year, along with Adam Film World’s Best Couples Movie. She then created Vivid Ed, Vivid’s sex-education imprint, which won three AVN Best Educational Release awards in a row. She has written eight books on sexuality and spent ten years editing the annual Best Lesbian Erotica anthology. She is queer and a visible advocate for polyamory and non-monogamy.

Signature: She is this list’s clearest bridge between the couples-market feature and the feminist-porn movement. The same film, Chemistry, won a mainstream AVN category and a Feminist Porn Award in one year.

Best known for

Studios

Award record

• 2006Feminist Porn Awards — Award for House of Ass
• 2007Feminist Porn Awards — Hottest Gonzo Sex Scene / Hottest Diverse Cast — Chemistry
• 2010Feminist Porn Awards — The Trailblazer Award
• 2007AVN — Best Gonzo Release — Chemistry
• 2009AVN — Best Educational Release
• 2010AVN — Best Educational Release
• 2011AVN — Best Educational Release
• 2007Adam Film World — Best Couples Movie — Chemistry

Beyond performing

• Creator and director, Vivid Ed
• Village Voice sex columnist, "Pucker Up" (1999–2008)
• Author of eight books, including Opening Up: Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (2008)

Mainstream credits

• Regular expert, Ricki Lake (2002–2003)
• Real Sex (HBO)
• The Howard Stern Show
• Script consultant, Spike Lee’s She Hate Me (2004)

Career

Joanna Mostov, known as Joanna Angel, was born in Brooklyn. In April 2002, still a college student, she co-founded BurningAngel.com with Mitch Fontaine. The site is widely credited as the company that made alt-porn commercially viable and not a niche curiosity. She works as actress, director, writer and producer for her own label. AVN's own winners list confirms her 2016 AVN Hall of Fame induction, and she is also in the NightMoves Hall of Fame. Her own Wikipedia biography carries a claim, widely repeated, that she was inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 2016. It appears nowhere on Wikipedia's own curated list of XRCO Hall of Fame members, and the matching Wikidata statement has no reference at all, so we do not score it.

Signature: She started a studio at nineteen with no outside backing, and made a whole aesthetic subculture into a lasting production company she owns herself.

Studios

Award record

• 2016AVN — Hall of Fame
• 2013NightMoves — Hall of Fame
• 2011AVN — Best Porn Star Website
• 2013AVN — Best Porn Star Website
• 2014AVN — Best Porn Star Website
• 2015AVN — Best Porn Star Website

Beyond performing

• Co-founder, Burning Angel (2002)
• JoannaAngel.com

Career

Christine Mackinday is her birth name. English Wikipedia gives 1991 or 1992 as her birth year and 2011 to 2014 as her working years, and the year arithmetic alone means her debut came at eighteen or older. She launched her own site in 2013. The next season, 2014, she was twenty-one or twenty-two, and won XBIZ Best New Starlet and AVN’s fan-voted Most Promising New Starlet. She left performing that year and publicly confirmed her retirement in April 2015. In August 2014 a former partner violently assaulted her. He was convicted of sexual assault and kidnapping and sentenced to life, with parole possible after thirty-six years. In 2016 she brought out a clothing line with Pornhub to raise funds for survivors of domestic violence.

Signature: Two newcomer titles in one season, three years on from a verified adult debut. For so short a career she also built a big second act around a cause, not a brand.

Award record

• 2014XBIZ — Best New Starlet
• 2014AVN — Most Promising New Starlet (Fan Award, 31st AVN Awards)
• 2013Venus Award — Best Actress (International)
• 2013FreeOnes — Miss FreeOnes, Best Newcomer
• 2018Inked Award — Bill Snyder Achievement Award

Beyond performing

• Official site launched with Puba (April 2013)
• Fleshlight signature product line
• Clothing line with Pornhub raising funds for domestic-violence survivors (2016)

Career

Yahshua started in 2004 at 34 and has had a career of two decades centred on Urban X. That body was created to honour performers who the mainstream AVN and XBIZ circuits covered too little. He won its Male Performer of the Year title for three years in a row, 2010 through 2012. In 2012 XBIZ separately gave him a Performer Comeback of the Year award. His own Wikipedia biography also mentions more AVN and XRCO scene-category recognition but names no titles or years, so it is not counted in the record above. His career includes two documented on-set injuries, in 2010 and 2013, and the second needed over $32,000 of medical treatment.

Signature: Three consecutive Male Performer of the Year titles came from the award body built to close the gap that this article’s own weighting adjustment addresses. No one else here has a recognition run so concentrated.

Award record

• 2010Urban X — Male Performer of the Year
• 2011Urban X — Male Performer of the Year
• 2012Urban X — Male Performer of the Year
• 2012XBIZ — Performer Comeback of the Year

Career

Skin Diamond was born Raylin Christensen. Her background is part-Ethiopian and part-European (Danish, Czech, Yugoslavian, German). Before her 2009 adult-film debut she worked as an alternative and fetish model. The Urban X Awards named her Female Performer of the Year in 2012, and she took three more AVN category wins in 2014–2015. In 2016 she left adult film to play Dylan Quinn in Showtime’s BDSM drama Submission and to follow music. Later she fronted the reggae-punk band The Calamatix.

Signature: Her own documented heritage, part-Ethiopian and part-European, fits badly inside one marketing tag. That is exactly the point this article makes about the word "ebony."

Best known for

Award record

• 2012Urban X Awards — Female Performer of the Year
• 2014AVN — Best Oral Sex Scene (Skin)
• 2014AVN — Best Double Penetration Sex Scene (Skin)
• 2015AVN — Group Sex Scene of the Year (All About That Orgy)

Mainstream credits

• Submission (Showtime, 2016)
• Recording artist; lead singer, The Calamatix

Career

Jake Miller grew up in the San Fernando Valley itself. Buck Angel started his gender transition in 1990, and in 2004 entered adult film. A year later he became the first trans man in an all-male production by a major gay studio, in Titan Media’s Cirque Noir. AVN gave him Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2007, and no other trans man has won it. He built his own label, Buck Angel Entertainment, so that he did not work only inside other people's systems. From about 2012 his public work moved to sex education, and he used the trademark phrase "the man with a pussy."

Signature: He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, took the Valley's studio model and rebuilt it around his own name and niche. He did it years before "personal brand" was a normal industry term.

Best known for

Studios

Award record

• 2007AVN — Transsexual Performer of the Year
• 2017AVN — Best Transsexual Scene
• 2008Feminist Porn Awards — Boundary Breaker of the Year

Beyond performing

• Founder, Buck Angel Entertainment
• Sex-education and public-speaking practice from c. 2012

Mainstream credits

• Honorary award, Tel Aviv Film Festival (2016)

Career

Jiz Lee's debut was in 2005, in Shine Louise Houston’s The Crash Pad, the first release in what became the queer-audience Crash Pad Series. Since then Lee has mostly worked outside the mainstream AVN and XBIZ studio system. They won a Feminist Porn Award in 2010 and were nominated by AVN more than once, for group and girl-girl scenes, without ever winning a competitive AVN or XBIZ award. Under the name Karma Pervs, Lee makes work that raises money for reproductive health, LGBTQ support and sex workers' rights. Lee edited the 2016 essay collection Coming Out Like a Porn Star and had a recurring role in the television series Transparent. On the record, Lee has said: "My sexual orientation is queer; so is my gender," and they use they/them pronouns.

Signature: This career rests most directly on the distinction this article exists to make. The work was made for a queer audience, by a performer who has said on the record that they are queer. No one else has read that meaning into an all-girl credit.

Best known for

Award record

• 2010Feminist Porn Awards — The Boundary Breaker
• 2010AVN — Best New Web Starlet (nomination)
• 2015AVN — Best Girl/Girl Sex Scene (nomination)

Beyond performing

• Karma Pervs (fundraising production for reproductive health, LGBTQ and sex-worker causes)
• Editor, Coming Out Like a Porn Star (2016)

Mainstream credits

• Transparent (recurring role)
• Mommy Is Coming (Cheryl Dunye, dir.)
• The Residents, God in Three Persons, MoMA (2020)

Career

Sagat shot his first adult scene at 25, under the name "Azzedine", for the French studio Citébeur. He then moved to the United States, worked for Raging Stallion under his own name, and became a Titan Media exclusive. He won GayVN Performer of the Year in 2007. In October 2011 he directed the two-part Incubus for TitanMen. From 2009 he moved into mainstream cinema. He had a part in Saw VI, led Bruce LaBruce’s L.A. Zombie (2010) and led Christophe Honoré’s Homme au bain (2010), and both of the latter were shown in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. His music album Videoclub came out in 2023, and he has worked in fashion campaigns.

Signature: Of his generation he is the clearest crossover from gay porn to arthouse cinema, with two Locarno competition entries and not festival sidebars.

Best known for

Studios

Award record

• 2007GayVN — Performer of the Year

Beyond performing

• Videoclub (music album, 2023)

Mainstream credits

• Saw VI (2009)
• L.A. Zombie (2010)
• Homme au bain (2010)

Career

Ryan has a Master of Social Work degree. She worked as a stripper before entering the industry in 2004. She starred in the first release from Shine Louise Houston's newly founded Pink and White Productions, keeping a promise she had made Houston earlier. In 2009 she won the Feminist Porn Awards' Heartthrob of the Year, and AVN nominated her in 2010 and 2015. She has since worked as a relationship therapist and sex-worker-rights advocate, and calls herself a "porn superhero" and not a conventional performer.

Signature: She anchored the launch of one of the clearest independent studios outside the Valley on this list. She then moved into the same kind of clinical advocacy work that several other performers here chose.

Best known for

Studios

Award record

• 2009Feminist Porn Awards — Heartthrob of the Year

Mainstream credits

• Practising relationship therapist
• Sex-worker-rights advocacy and LGBTQ+ community organising