Asa Akira doesn’t want your teenager learning about sex from her videos any more than you do.
“It’s devastating to me that someone’s first experience of sex could be a gang-bang scene of mine. Like, that’s not OK,” says Akira, 40, from inside a spacious villa at the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood, where she and other adult stars are getting their hair and makeup done for the seventh annual Pornhub Awards at the nearby Saddle Ranch Chop House.
The suite, which features a grand piano currently topped with different styles of fake eyelashes, has the distinct slightly burnt smell of recently straightened hair. A TV plays music videos by Lady Gaga and Avril Lavigne—I’m told a Katy Perry track was mocked relentlessly earlier in the day.
Akira, a 5’2” titan of the industry who according to the Internet Adult Film Database has appeared in more than 900 adult films, understands the concerns about minors looking at porn, but she doesn’t think it’s a problem for her industry to solve. More so, she thinks it’s a societal issue that should be addressed with more practical sex education.
Asa Akira at the Sunset Marquis hotel.
Photograph: Skye Battles
“If we had better sex ed, young people would not look to porn as education, just like they don’t look to a movie to learn how to act in the world … When it comes to sex, or even being nude, we talk about it so little. Of course, when they’re naturally curious at a certain age, the only thing to look at right now is porn, and of course they’re gonna look.”
They might have a harder time looking these days, depending on where they live. Last week, the Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill requiring adult websites to verify that their visitors are at least 18. If signed into law by Governor Katie Hobbs, Arizona will become the 21st state to pass a similar measure since Louisiana started the trend in 2022. But in most cases, rather than rely on third-party services to collect people’s identification data, Pornhub has opted to remove its content from the impacted jurisdictions, meaning it is no longer available in at least 17 states.
Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community for Pornhub, says the site agreed to verify user ages in Louisiana, but it resulted in an 80 percent drop in traffic because people didn’t want to hand over their IDs. While Kekesi says Pornhub is in favor of preventing minors from watching porn, the company doesn’t believe these bans are the right way to go about it. Still, Pornhub remains one of the most visited websites in the world, which shows that the consumption of pornography, despite being controversial, is in fact extremely mainstream.
From left to right: Jordan Firstman, Asa Akira, Queenie Sateen, Elly Clutch, and Alex Kekesi
Photograph: Skye Battles
WIRED spent a day in Los Angeles with Akira and several of Pornhub’s other biggest stars as they got ready for and attended the awards show. The event was Western-themed, in spite—or perhaps because—of the fact that most of the age-verification legislation in the US is coming from the southern states. The stars in attendance discussed how social media censorship and Pornhub’s greatly reduced footprint are impacting their bottom lines, the pros and cons of shooting “mainstream” studio porn versus self-publishing their own videos, the struggles of online dating, and celebrating transgender porn—a category that’s been steadily rising in popularity—under a presidential administration that is openly hostile to trans bodies.
Last week, US senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, introduced a bill that would criminalize pornography federally.
“Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee stated in a press release promoting the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act. The bill targets “actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person” and content that “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
A hidden-camera video published last year by the British nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting showed Project 2025 coauthor Russell Vought saying the age-verification laws were a “back door” way of enacting a federal porn ban.
“We’ve got a number of states that are passing this and, you know, what happens is the porn company then says, ‘We’re not going to do business in your state,’ which of course is entirely what we were after, right?” said Vought, a Christian nationalist who is now head of the federal government’s Office of Management and Budget.
The age-verification laws have resulted in lawsuits, both from state governments suing website operators for allegedly failing to comply and from adult entertainment groups suing states for violating free speech laws. The US Supreme Court is currently reviewing a Texas case, which could have huge implications for the future of age-verification laws.
These measures appear to be, at least in part, ideologically motivated as part of a larger push for Americans to return to ultra-traditional Christian values, have lots of kids, and embrace old-school gender roles.
The funny thing is, when I ask Akira how she balances a porn career with being a mother of a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, she says her job has actually allowed her to be around her kids all the time.
“In my kids’ eyes, I am a stay-at-home mom,” she says, sitting in front of a six-foot-tall mirror, her glittery turquoise eyeshadow popping in contrast to the baggy gray T-shirt and sweats she has on. “I’m kind of worried that they’re not gonna understand the concept of work, because I’m home when they are.”
Akira’s own parents are Japanese immigrants, but because they are both creatives, she says they weren’t as strict on her as one might expect. Still, they did send her to private school, and while supportive, “they would literally rather have me do anything else in the world,” she says, laughing.
Queenie Sateen and Asa Akira arriving at The 7th Annual Porn Hub Awards.
Photograph: Skye Battles
When she and her husband decided to start their own family, around seven years ago, she stopped shooting scenes with partners because it’s too time consuming. Plus, her husband would be too jealous, she adds.
“There’s no way he could handle it,” she says.
Though she’s open with her kids about where babies come from and the proper names for private parts, they’re too young to understand what she does for a living, so she tells them she’s a video producer.
“I don’t want to lie to them, you know. And I’m hoping that I’m laying all the building blocks so that when the time comes when it’s appropriate to tell them, I can be like, ‘Oh, well, you know how I make videos—they’re only for grown-ups,’”
Studio porn vs. self-published videos
Akira started out as a dominatrix in her native New York City at age 19 before moving into adult films. Initially, she mostly did movies shot by studios, and got off on it.
Asa Akira at the Sunset Marquis hotel.
Photograph: Skye Battles
“Being on set, people watching me … You and the other performer are forcing this chemistry to make this product that people are going to jerk off to. All of that to me is hot.”
But self-publishing solo videos on Pornhub or OnlyFans, as she now does, means she gets to keep a much bigger cut.
“There are people who make millions a month on OnlyFans,” she says, though she won’t disclose her own earnings. At the height of her studio career, she was earning up to $4,000 for some threesome scenes, but she says studio performers don’t typically see any additional money beyond what they make on the day of the shoot.
Fellow Pornhub ambassador Queenie Sateen, who is up for the award of top lesbian performer, has only been in the game for three years, and has primarily done studio porn—“it’s more glamorous,” she says. She admits that having focused less on developing a massive OnlyFans audience may have been to her detriment. But even that’s not fail-proof. She says the top self-published earners she knows are seeing “big, big decreases in their subscribers.” She’s also heard about some studios using AI clauses in fine print that would allow them to use actors’ likenesses to create scenes they didn’t perform, another possible threat to their bottom line, in addition to potentially being unethical.
Queenie Sateen at the Sunset Marquis hotel.
“There’s peaks and valleys, and I feel like we’re in a valley,” she says. As a musician, she says she’s considered a “re-pivot” in that direction if porn continues to be less lucrative. Akira chimes in that her primary source of income has varied over the years, from strip club tours to Snapchat Premium subscriptions to her branded fleshlight.
Frequent social media bans and censorship don’t make things easier. Akira, who is nominated for favorite social media personality, is on her seventh Instagram account because she says Instagram shut down the previous six. To avoid further scrutiny, her current account is so heavily sanitized “that it’s practically fraudulent.” Pornhub itself was kicked off Instagram, where it had over 13 million followers, in the fall of 2022.
“It hurts my feelings on a personal level,” Akira says. “On a business level, it makes things very, very hard. It’s hard to sell sex when you can’t promote it on any type of mainstream platform.”
Natassia Dreams, who is nominated for favorite trans model, is on her 16th Instagram account. As a Black trans star, she says being “one of the most marginalized on top of the marginalized, marginalized, marginalized in all of the fields, it’s really special to have these moments and lift each other up.”
Dreams got into porn in 2004 because it felt safer than escorting. But it hasn’t been easy, even with trans porn growing in viewership—there’s data suggesting it’s especially popular in red states—and being recognized for more awards. (Pornhub had five trans categories this year, after adding a new one in 2024.) She attributes it to an increase in fluidity around gender and attraction across the culture, but says trans characters in mainstream porn are often fetishized for the male gaze.
Natassia Dreams at the Sunset Marquis hotel.
“I just feel like they don’t want to project the trans woman as a beautiful woman, because it’s in their fantasy. They want to keep a trans woman as that little dirty secret,” she says, adding that she wants to see more trans writers and directors, along with more romantic storylines.
While all of the women have their “no lists”—sex acts they won’t do—Akira says it’s a privilege to be able to turn down work. It’s a luxury she didn’t always have. When she started out, “I built my name on shooting Asian fetish content.” When she still shot with men, her no list ended up including reverse cowgirl because it’s uncomfortable. Sateen’s? “No mommy shit.” Dreams, meanwhile, says her no list includes a man she shot with for 11 years. One of the job’s occupational hazards, she says, is catching feelings for someone who is great in bed.
“You’re building this relationship but then it’s like, OK, this is just work.” On the flip side, being on dating apps like Raya, is “very frustrating.”
“People expect that you’re like this person they’ve seen in the videos.”
Showtime
After six hours of hair, makeup, salads, and getting into Western costumes designed by Chris Habana, who has outfitted and accessorized stars like Beyoncé and Rihanna, it’s almost showtime.
Akira wears a baby blue dress made of belts, Sateen is in chaps, and Dreams dons a floor-length purple fur coat lined with cash. The three of them and a handful of other stars storm the Sunset Marquis’ hallways and grounds to take a million sexually charged family-photo-style pics, as non-Pornhub-affiliated hotel guests gape in confusion. Then they pile into a party bus and continue to pose for paparazzi-style photos as they clamor out into the night.
Natassia Dreams, Asa Akira, Queenie Sateen, Jordan Firstman, Alex Kekesi, Elly Cultch, Jak Hammer, and designer Chris Habana on the red carpet at The 7th Annual Porn Hub Awards.
Photograph: Skye Battles
A woman on the sidewalk outside Saddle Ranch asks her friend who these people are.
“Those are the people your friends jerk off too,” her friend responds.
The Saddle Ranch has a red carpet, set against a wall of bounty-hunter-style “wanted” posters depicting famous porn stars. It’s an informal affair—90 percent just a party, with stars like Kim Petras and Diplo in attendance. There’s a mechanical bull, a giant banana mascot in a bandana and cowboy hat, and gift bags with weed gummies.
Photograph: Skye Battles
Photograph: Skye Battles
Host and comedian Jordan Firstman hands out the awards, which go by quickly, with acceptance speeches featuring lines like, “Thank you for everybody in this room who has fucked me so good.” The only speech I catch that approaches a political message comes from Girthmaster, an Aussie who ties for “best dick” with Spanish performer Jordi El Niño Polla.
Jordi El Niño, and Girthmaster recieiving their awards from host Jordan Firstman.
Photograph: Skye Battles
“I guess this is another reason immigrants are good,” the 6’6” Girthmaster says, to loud cheers.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect is that it’s pretty tame, sexually speaking. Firstman, who tells me he’s been to Pornhub after-parties in the past and noticed a distinct lack of orgies, has a possible explanation.
“I think it’s like when you have sex for a living, the work events tend to be more social than turned up.”
Akira says for her the night is about celebrating sex positivity at a time when that’s getting harder to come by. Then she gets a little defiant.
“I’m 40 years old. I can do whatever I want with my pussy. It’s kind of sad that that’s radical.”
