Maybe this is old news, but I just heard mention of it tonight on the O'Reilly Factor.

A men's club in Dallas was busted for having a 12-year old girl dancing naked for a couple of weeks. She was not able to produce an ID that proved she was at least 18, so the club took her at her word that she was 20.

Is that even remotely possible - a girl that young passing for an adult? Who's fooling who here?

Even stranger - there appears to be no laws on the books in Dallas that allows the city to shut down such an establishment under these circumstances.

It's stories like this that can make life harder for those trying to run legit adult entertainment venues.

I know of a 14-year-old who said she passed for a 22-year-old, and I know a 16-year-old who passed for 21.

I hate to say it's this simple: those two had DD cups. In both cases, guys went weak in the knees for them and took the extra size as proof instead of the ID, when actually these days girls can develop a lot size very quickly.

Still it's rare for a 12-year-old. But even a strip club doesn't want to be known for having hired a girl that young. They have enough trouble staying open.

There would have to be an emotional component to the girl as well that makes her appear much more mature than she really is. I've never known a 12-year old that didn't act like .... a 12-year old. I know plenty of adults that could pass as 12-year olds, so I suppose the reverse is possible.

The news story made it sound like life at home was hard. I guess that can have an effect on a young person to make her act and sound older than her years.

She was a runaway that was taken in by a woman that worked at the club. The woman got her in with the club. Probably a career-limiting move on the woman's part...

I remember Traci Lords was 15 and claimed to be 22. Nobody was more shocked than I was when the news came out.

Some girls get physically mature very soon and add to that the fact that many girls are forced to 'grow up' a lot faster than they should. It probably was not difficult for her to pick up the behavior that made her act as well as appear far older than she was.

Not to mention how the rap songs glorify being a stripper.

I feel so sorry for her. To be a stripper at 12! I couldn't imagine. When I was 12 I was still playing with my Barbie dolls. And the people that pointed her in that direction need to be severely punished.

Jas

And Christy Canyon's. Traci being under-aged did not just send them into a panic, it stunned them. For one thing, she was a total queen who kept everyone on the set jumping at her very whim-- and gladly, because she just had that allure. For another, she gained a reputation for being sexually ravenous, doing ten guys over a lunch break.

It's strange to learn that it was all a teen acting out. A very angry, drug addled teen, for whom having sex aggressively gave her a sense of power and control-- over her own sex appeal, which always had caused her nothing but trouble.

So stunned were people in the business, that they thought she turned herself in. They weren't the only ones, FBI agents treated her disrespectfully, one of them calling her a brat.

Getting her out of porn saved her life, and was probably the only good thing accomplished by Ed Meese.

young girls today develop physically VERY quickly. and some of them have the mental and emotional maturity level to match the physical equipment. my younger cousin was a D cup and 5'8" by the time she was 11, no one looking at her or talking with her would have known she was anything younger than 18. we'd go to the beach and men in their 30s and 40s would be hitting on her, which being 11 yrs old naturally she loved the attention! can be a dangerous minefield for a gent indeed.

last halloween I opened my door to see a 13 year old in heels ,thigh high stockings & ashort dress
I said "who are you supposed to be ?"
she said " I'm a stripper"
i said " why do you even know about those things"

the better question is why did the parents allow her out of the house dressed like that

and make this analysis?  wow!  Nice to see that Tracy can still influence someone.

She was a calculating shrewd businesswoman.  She struck while the iron was hot.  She understood that as an under 18 none of her films would be legal... and she used that fact to control a piece of her final film - filmed AFTER she was 18 and for which she negotiated a piece of the action - therefore - limited product (supply) with a greatly created market (demand).  Yea... poor poor little Tracy.

Puhleese.

As far as saving her life?  she saved herself - Read interviews about her by her then co-star and sometimes boyfriend - Tom Byron... or get her candid interviews about still going to high school while all this was going on... yea... poor poor little Tracy....


I still remember going into the adult book store... and overnight all of Tracy Lords' videos were off the shelves... (I destroyed my videos with her in them...).

She very much calculated her entry and exit from the biz.... to think otherwise is naive.

In short Z, once again - ya drank the kool-aid.

I have posted frequently that there are vast differences between strippers and escorts... (or at least escorts who would be more appropriately titled "courtesans").  Deception comes to mind.  Never when with an escort have I ever been led to believe that the relationship is one - other than fantasy... and while I do have a greater than business relationship with some escorts... it would not be characterized as more than a friendship - with sex in there somewhere... This cannot be said for strippers... their role is to find a different type of fantasy - that is - they want you to believe that they are there and available...

That said, it is easy to see that the life in the strip club world is one of lies.... fabricated from the wet-dream desires of men.  That a 12-year old could walk in and lie well enough to convince the club that she was old enough to work there - well... I can believe it.  As far as others who encouraged her to work there...they may not have known.  When my kid was 11 - I chaperoned a class trip.  On the trip on of the students (a female) wanted to do something that the group I was in charge of did not want to do.  I had a hard time convincing her that she should go with the group... in fact, I kept looking at her and thinking why is she acting like a 10-year old... in fact she was... but she was my height.. and better endowed than many of the strippers and escorts I have seen!!!!  difficult.... but probably more difficult for her.  

When I was a kid... I remember the gal in my class that "Developed" fast... it was not easy for her - lots of heartache.  

I do feel for this young lady - for it is one thing to enter adult entertainment out of choice.... but another to enter out of necessity.  When in clubs... I remember two things... 1) they let girls dance in them when they are 18!  So if I question a gals age - I offer to buy her a drink... if she refuses... I know to move on... and 2) there is no sex in the champagne room.

oddly enough, I was recently in my favorite club... and started talking to one of the dancers who I had not met... I asked how she came to the biz... the story she told me was she was raised by welfare protectiver services... her mom had died... and her dad was an alcholic.  she had a younger sister... who had become pregnant and she was supporting the sister, her sister's baby and herself... while aspiring to go to college... this afforded her the way to do that.  

I do feel sorry for this gal - but Tracy Lords... cut me a break... that is one calculating woman

-- Modified on 4/3/2008 6:45:24 AM

We just had a club in KY get busted a week or so ago for hiring a 14 year old as a stripper. Easily the worst club in town, not even close contest. She gave an ID that according to the news reports looked nothing like her.

Club manager has been charged as has the girls aunt and aunt's boyfriend who took her to work.

Unbelievable.

Large breasts on an attractive female sometimes cloud the mind.  This is another case of the little head making the decisions.

Once a female understands the strip club game of milking the guy as if he were an ATM, all bets are off.

For me, I am sticking to well reviewed ladies here on TER.  PERIOD.

I'm so glad my 13 year old is flat chested with facial acne & doesn't go anywhere alone.

my kids come back from their mom's house... where they are "exposed" to the comments & "dress code" from their step-siblings... Takes me a couple of days to reeducate them.  

so.... what was my then 12 yr old taught by his 14 yr old stepbrother... about strip clubs...  

upon much probing the stepbrother finally told me where he got the info - his "religious 'sing in the choir' right" dad's friend told him all about the local night spots....

yea....  right.  

And that is how... the step-dad in this case only yells at his kids... but there is no enforcement... nor is there any conversation.... a must when managing or parenting.

I had the very same impression that you did till recently-- when I read Traci's and Christy Canyon's book. Christy, BTW, was hardly sympathetic toward Traci, who had powerful sex appeal, but who would lie five times over breakfast-- not even caring to keep the lies consistent, and who acted like a queen over everybody.

Think of it in reverse Bizzaro, like you're on a jury trying to decide given the evidence, that an 18 year old committed the "crimes" you describe.

It doesn't seem too likely. A person who lies pathologically is not the one who could execute the scheme you suspect. She would give it away within two lies. A person about the age 16 would have been unlikely to pull this off.

Now, say she could and she's an "evil genius," they generally stay evil and keep on playing games. If she had the personality, craftiness and worldly intelligence to pull that off at at 15-18 years, she would be in prison now for pulling something else, because she would be psychopathic. With that personality, if she had a drug problem, she should still have a drug problem, and we would be reading about her rather than Amy Winehouse.

IMHO, you're taking the word of people who were blind-sided by the very notion that she was under-aged, and in shock, they had to revise their impressions of her after having been dominated and lied to all the time by Traci, while having the best sex of their lives with her. Also, they are feeling very dumb in being fooled on her age.  

You felt the same way when you found out. So did I. And I believed exactly the same thing you did.

The final point being that people will convince themselves that their dumb mistake was really an evil plan by a diabolical mastermind rather than just a dumb mistake.

Denial is another thing that makes it easy for girls to repeatedly pass as women.

She is 12 and tells them she is 20 but doesn't have any ID, so they believe her.  Imagine a 20 year old female who doesn't have any ID.

They knew exactly what they were doing and deserve to go to prison for a very long time.

lady had to say... and much as linda lovelace before her - she was going to denounce the biz once she got out of it - what she needed to try to do the cross-over bit.

Lovelace detailed an account in "ordeal" (not ordeal trial by hunger -the tragic story of the Donner party the early CA settlers trapped by snows not far from Squaw Valley & lake Tahoe) that is hard to grasp.  Was Tracy aware of Lovelace?  it would have been hard to miss in the 80's... and use as a guide....  

Many - who were aware at the time - were aware of the woman's ability to use her looks and appeal to get whatever she wanted.. why else do you think the Christy Canyon wanted nothing to do with her... Christy is ethical...  so were others who worked with Tracy... but she sold movies....

and... to top it all off - Tracy at first put it out that she now wished to go the cross over route....  

now, do I think that she did all this with a firm Gant chart... leading to the dependancies necessary to achieve maximum publicity when she turned 18 - no - I do not.  but I do think that she had an incredible ability to have an overview... and to know what she needed - name changes... false ID.... you name it - that was ALL TRACY! she herself admits to that.

Read Luke Ford on Tracy... quite an intesting take (I think he has since removed his original work from the web - but you may be able to buy his book...).  most of his research was fairly extensive and he usually had more than one source...  

so.... do I think that Tracy is a great person who was taken advantage of... or a scheemer... you decide... suffice to know - i have heard worse plans that the one she carried out.

Tracy has done what Linda Lovelace was unable to do... and what jenna J does not care to do - that is rewrite her own history - to suit her needs.

. . . where, years afterward, she had a chance meeting with Traci, and agreed to have lunch with her. I think this was after Christy's second comeback. She didn't say what they talked about, she described it as being amicable. It was hardly a total aversion by that time.

Earlier on, there's an interview where Christy is scornful of Traci, the trick she pulled, and the terrible things she said about people in the industry. So, really I was surprised that Christy had a forgiven her, at least for curiosity's sake. She recalled there, and in her book, that Traci was an animal, who would bang ten guys on the diving board over lunch, and would have sex two-three times off camera.

I happened to read Luke Ford's original writing about Traci-- on the web, in the mid to late 1990s, on the usenet boards. First, it was hard to tell who was more unpopular in the business, Luke Ford or Traci Lords. All pornstars really despised him, and thought he was doing a hatchet job on the industry for money. In one post, Ginger Lynn sounded like she was ready to gouge his eyes out. And it wasn't just her who wrote whithering posts about him. And, hell-- Brandy Alexander said it: his writing wasn't good.

When he called Traci's performances "mechanical" I got the idea we existed in two different universes. In other words, I don't think Luke Ford is the best source.

So, Bizzaro, my thinking is based on some pretty widespread reading over the years, and it has evolved. Traci does say some questionable things in her book. For one thing, she doesn't admit to knowing anything about anyone in the industry. The only ones she mentioned are Ginger Lynn, Christy Canyon and Jim South (she gives him the pseudonym Tim North) and one male star (I think it was Tom Byron). Except for Ginger and Jim South, all of them are mentioned in passing. She doesn't admit to any of what Christy Canyon says she did, and instead just says: those days were all a blur. It isn't a book that tells you anything about the business. It's hard to believe that she had such a meteoric rise to porn stardom unless she was very motivated.  

The little it does say is very different than what Christy Canyon says. If Traci turned herself in, the idea wasn't hers. It was convenient that she goes to Paris after her 18th birthday to make her final movie there. I tend to think the producer of the movie was behind the idea, maybe after reading the interview where she says she wants to cross over.

Lastly, I do remember Traci's sex scenes, and I am absolutely certain that she did them with a fury that gave her a sense of power. Of that much, I'm certain.

was how she made the transistion to main stream acting. . . and was quite good at it, IMO.

-- Modified on 4/3/2008 6:09:06 PM

He looks for the sensational angle, and has been known to omit details that do not support his political agenda.

Take anything of Fox News with a large amount of skepticism.

Indeed, Bill O'Reilly does need to be taken with a grain or two of salt, but there are articles online about this story from local papers. The account seems to be accurate.

Here's one example. A google search for "12-year old stripper" will find several more.

In there, Christy never says Traci's book was a pack of lies. The last thing she says about Traci is that she had no idea how deep Traci's deception went.

It was close.

Gene: What are your impressions of the Traci Lords book. Ginger Lynn had a few things to say about that.

Canyon: I read her book. Somebody gave me a free copy. God forbid I bought one. I think her book could have been fabulous except that she was lying throughout the whole thing. I think her book could have been so great. I think she had a great story but she's so fucking worried about her image for her straight career which she's never going to have.

**Looks like Cayon called that one wrong**

Really, your question seemed to come from nowhere and I mistook it for levity. Why would you hint that I felt I was the "most" shocked?

I said "it was close" only to say I was pretty shocked.

-- Modified on 4/4/2008 7:08:47 AM

Really, the two descriptions they have of the guy couldn't be more different. However, Christy's book isn't too complimentary about him, and in her story, he was totally manipulative in getting her to do video.  

I'm trying to remember, though, too lazy this time of night, who else Traci badmouthed. She said that Ginger Lynn treated her badly-- and called her a bitch on two wheels. Though given the way Traci was treating everyone, maybe she just treated Traci as she should have been treated.

My guess is that people are upset more from what Traci's book didn't have in it, that is to say anything much about her days in porn, nor any responsibility for the way she did act. Those were my burning questions. In that way, the book was less than commendable. Christy Canyon and Jenna Jameson are at least truthful and not evasive.

Then there's the ending, where she says she considers those who say women are liberated by porn are irresponsible. But besides all that, she doesn't seem to have much to say about her time in it, and what she was thinking when she did it.

-- Modified on 4/4/2008 7:16:07 AM

-- Modified on 4/4/2008 7:03:16 AM

Z -

Tracy calculated all that she did.  think about it, as she wanted to move to mainstream - she HAD to denounce her porn past.  so... she fabricated not remembering it... but did she fabricate her falsification of ID?  Age? and you believe her.  lol!  as what she does commit to writing is a self promotion piece.  Just because she does not say that she read Linda Lovelace's book or cite her as influential doesn't mean that she was not aware of her.... or learn from her....  heck, if I were to write a story of my life I doubt I would put in all that contributed to my history.

Jamie Gillis, Ron Jeramy, Jenna and Kobe Tai (and some others have all appeared in mainstream media without denouncing their porn star past  - and in fact, to some extent capitalize on it.  This is a counterweight to Ginger Lynn - who walks between the two worlds... and has notoriety of who she dates...

As to Luke Ford, yea, his writing style is rough and unpolished and many do not like what he has to say about them... but that may be more a reflection of the fact that much of what he says is unflattering.

ya gotta process the stuff Z - just as on the P&R borad, it is necessary to compare what is said by a person - by what they do - and how they are perceived by others...

If I were to judge you only by what you write... that would not be a complete picture of you.  However, If I look at your life's work, your interactions, etc... then I've a more complete picture.... and Tracy?  well, she is what she is...

Christy Canyon!?  Class act...

Or have we forgotten Dan Rather so quickly... there are other examples of mainstream "news media" that are similar in their rush to be sensational - I have no love of any of the media... to me - they are parasites - sometimes symbiotic... but mostly parasitic.

Have you read the book? I didn't think it was fair to judge her without reading it.

She had the ID falsified for other reasons, like finding a job outside of porn. When her mother's ex brought her to do "nude modeling" that ID came in handy.

I know, too, and I agree with you that she fabricated not remembering it.  She didn't want the book to be about that, she didn't write it with the intention that guys jack off with it.

It doesn't make sense to me now that Traci planned it from beginning to end. I believe she had help getting out of the business-- by Scott Bell, the producer of her last movie. That makes sense to me. I think he knew Traci wanted to get out, and probably contrived the plan that gave her rights to her last movie as a way to keep her afloat till she could find something else. Very likely they then planned on having her snitched out. This isn't Traci's story, but it's what I think likely happened.

About her attending high school, she did until a boy confronted her in cafeteria with a porn magazine with her on the cover. That was pretty early on in her career.

I hate to say people in the business, Christy Canyon included, tend to forget when they dis Traci: she was 15. That's not just a minor, that's very minor. Her experience of it is of course going to be different than everyone else's.

As for the way she acted and treated everyone, I'm reminded of something that one slave girl said to another: "If you act like a queen, they'll treat you like a queen." It worked.

I have been wonderfully traumatized for life.

I simply cannot fathom how anyone on the outside looking in (such as you) could come even close to someone who had actually had sex with her in comparative emotional energy levels, after each made the “shocking” discovery.  In short, you overrate your own level of shock.

Of course I couldn't be as shocked and beside themselves as they were. It's clear that nobody expected that she was under-aged. And she really kept up a smoke-screen, and never confided to anybody.

And I could imagine the horror of all the people who thought they might go to prison over it.

The more I think about it though, other things come across. For one thing, it doesn't make sense to produce her last film in Paris, unless . . . she and Stephan Bell were afraid she was going to get outed prematurely, which would have brought production to a stop in the USA-- even if she was of age then.

Really, I'm beginning to think that Traci got into it more or less accidentally, but it was Stephen Bell's plan to get her out.

Traci turned him down for marriage, BTW.