Mireille Miller-Young, "Hardcore Desire: Black Women Laboring in Porn-Is It Just Another Job?"

In "Hardcore Desire: Black Women Laboring in Porn-Is It Just Another Job?," Mireille Miller-Young discussed the life of young Black dancers and raised questions such as "How do young Black women entering the adult entertainment industry understand their motivations and places in a culture that for the most part foregoes eroticism and reproduces two-dimensional stereotypes of Black women in hardcore as tasty brown sugar and nasty ghetto hos?" (Miller-Young 32). In the sex industry, which is mainly run by white men, Black dancers only get paid half of what the White dancers make, which is why the author argues that “Black women are less desirable in the sexual marketplace than white women” (32). Miller-Young discovered that most Black women who are a part of the hardcore sex industry maintain that this work helps support them financially and allows for personal advancement. In fact, the sex industry allows working class women to earn better wages in a shorter amount of time than other industries. Women that Miller-Young interviewed were using the sex industry as a way to fight against racism and sexism, and saw it as an opportunity to reach stardom. Women such as Jeannie Pepper, stated that they were in the business to reinforce the notion of black as beautiful and wondered why more black women do not partake in the sex industry. It is a way to access “wealth and […] resources that lie outside of their communities, but also they seek greater visibility” (34). These women are constantly fighting against the stereotypes held within the white community and are often unheard within the industry. Although, dealing with inequality within the sex industry, they faced the fact that it is a job that help them with their bills.