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Short answer: the “Other” Industry in this 2017 headline is a coy reference to the adult-film and adult-entertainment business. But the original article’s exact 10-versus-10 roster cannot be independently recovered from the available evidence, and public careers do not support such a neat division.
Some performers publicly built businesses, defended their work, or used adult entertainment as one part of a larger creative career. Others later described regret, harassment, addiction, stigma, privacy loss, or a desire to leave. Several fit both descriptions at different points in their lives.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
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| 1 |
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Educated: A Memoir | $16.27 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage | $18.74 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
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Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice | $15.80 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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Greenlights | $10.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
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This Is Me: A Reckoning | $20.98 | Buy on Amazon |
What the headline means—and what cannot be verified
The title appears to come from a TheRichest article dated March 24, 2017. “Other” is not a separate business sector; it is a euphemism for the adult-film or adult-entertainment industry. The available search indexing associates the piece with Natasha Nice and places it near a 2017 AVN/AEE preview mentioning Jessica Drake, Tasha Reign, Natasha Nice, Joanna Angel, and Chloe Amour.
That search record does not expose the original article text or prove that all of those women appeared on its list. It also does not establish why any performer was classified as someone who “loved” or “didn’t love” her career. Reproducing an exact 10-versus-10 list would therefore turn an unverified piece of listicle framing into a false fact.
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A more accurate question is: What have individual performers publicly said or done that indicates professional identification, criticism, regret, transition, or mixed feelings? The examples below answer that question without pretending that a public career can reveal a person’s entire private experience.
Three women who publicly built, defended, or diversified their careers
“Loved her time in the industry” is too strong a conclusion from career longevity alone. These cases are better described as women who publicly built businesses, defended aspects of their work, or exercised significant professional agency.
1. Brandi Love: professional identity and advocacy
Brandi Love is documented as a long-running adult performer and author. She also founded Parents in Adult, described as a legal-support organization for parents working in the adult industry.
That record supports a careful conclusion: Love has publicly identified with the profession and has worked to address practical problems faced by people in it. Advocacy is evidence of engagement and professional commitment, not proof that she enjoyed every job, contract, relationship, or consequence associated with the industry.
2. Riley Reid: commercial success with later reassessment
Riley Reid illustrates how adult entertainment can develop into a broader creator business. Available biographical coverage describes her expansion beyond conventional studio work into independent content, subscriptions, licensing, promotion, and related ventures. Those activities can give a performer more direct control over distribution, audience access, and revenue than a purely studio-based career.
Her story is not an uncomplicated success narrative. The same coverage reports that motherhood led her to reconsider aspects of her public identity and that she has cautioned people against entering the industry without understanding its emotional, social, and long-term consequences. Reid is therefore better understood as a commercially successful performer who also recognizes substantial costs—not as evidence that success automatically equals satisfaction.
3. Sasha Grey: adult work as one chapter of a wider creative career
Sasha Grey moved from adult films into acting, music, publishing, streaming, and other media work. Her career is useful because it challenges the assumption that a performer must remain permanently defined by one industry.
Rank #2
A transition into mainstream or adjacent media does not, by itself, prove that someone hated adult work. It may represent ambition, changing priorities, a desire for privacy, creative curiosity, or a practical decision about long-term opportunities. Grey’s public career is best described as a self-directed transition rather than a simple rejection.
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These examples provide stronger evidence for the “didn’t look back fondly” side of the original premise. Even here, the evidence concerns particular experiences and periods—not a universal judgment about every performer or every part of the industry.
4. Mia Khalifa: regret, harassment, and control of the narrative
Mia Khalifa has publicly described her brief period in adult films in strongly negative terms. A Daily Beast account reports that she expressed shame and regret and faced severe harassment and threats connected to the visibility of that work.
Her case shows why the consequences of adult content cannot be measured only by the length of a career or the money earned. A short period of work can remain highly searchable and socially consequential for years. Khalifa has also sought greater control over how that period is discussed, which is different from simply disappearing from public view.
Her experience should not be treated as representative of every performer. It does, however, demonstrate how permanence, public judgment, and harassment can overwhelm any narrow calculation of professional benefit.
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5. Jennie Ketcham, known professionally as Penny Flame: leaving and recovery
Jennie Ketcham’s memoir examines her departure from the adult industry alongside addiction and recovery. Publishers Weekly characterizes the book as an account of trying to change her life while dealing with the pull of money, sex, and drugs.
That makes Ketcham a strong example of a former performer who later framed the career as part of a difficult personal history rather than an uncomplicated success story. It would still be inaccurate to reduce her life to the industry or to infer that every challenge she faced was caused by it. The useful point is that her own post-career account emphasizes change, recovery, and the difficulty of building a new identity.
6. Traci Lords: a legally and ethically sensitive case
Traci Lords is an important example, but her story requires unusually careful attribution. Her memoir describes entering the adult industry while underage, appearing in numerous films before her age was discovered, and later moving into mainstream acting and music. Some industry insiders have disputed elements of that autobiographical account.
The responsible formulation is that Underneath It All presents Lords’s account of those events; contested details should not be repeated as independently proven fact. Her subsequent move into acting and music also means that her career belongs in a transition category. A person can describe serious harm associated with an earlier period while still turning that experience into a broader creative life.
The ambivalent category the original list leaves out
The most important group is neither “loves it” nor “hates it.” It includes people who value income, audience access, creative control, or professional recognition while criticizing studios, contracts, piracy, stigma, privacy loss, or the long-term permanence of online material.
Riley Reid already illustrates that tension: she built substantial commercial activity while also warning about the emotional and social consequences of entering the business. Sasha Grey illustrates another version: adult work became one stage in a much wider media career. Traci Lords represents a third: a publicly described and contested early experience followed by a major effort to control a new professional identity.
This spectrum is more realistic because a job can provide genuine benefits and genuine costs at the same time. A performer might enjoy performing but dislike studio practices. Someone might appreciate financial independence but resent piracy. Another might value direct contact with an audience but later want distance from the permanence of old material.
Why the same industry produces opposite experiences
Adult entertainment is not one job
The 2018 Fortune profile of popular adult performers described income streams that could include filming, custom videos, feature dancing, personal websites, and endorsements. It reported approximately $800 to $1,000 for an actress in a male/female scene at that time, but that figure is historical and should not be presented as current or typical pay.
The larger lesson is more important than the old number: “working in porn” has never described a single uniform occupation. A studio performer, independent subscription creator, dancer, director, author, streamer, and business owner may face very different levels of control, income volatility, exposure, and dependence on intermediaries.
Rank #4
Direct-to-fan work can increase control without eliminating risk
Academic research on premium social-media accounts treats online adult-content creation as platform-mediated labor at the intersection of professional social-media production and sex work. Other research examines pricing and popularity in online sexual-service markets.
This work helps explain the shift from studio employment toward direct-to-fan and platform-based models. Creators may gain more control over pricing, scheduling, branding, and audience relationships. But direct access does not erase platform rules, account bans, piracy, privacy risks, pressure to remain constantly visible, or the permanence of digital distribution. Research about a labor model also cannot establish any particular performer’s motives or emotional experience.
History matters
The adult-film business has also been shaped by changing technology, law enforcement, court cases, organized-crime allegations, violence, celebrity culture, and the economics of distribution. The Other Hollywood approaches that history through interviews, newspaper accounts, police reports, court testimony, and the experiences of performers, producers, and other participants.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFor readers who want adult-film industry history rather than a celebrity ranking, The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry is a useful background-reading choice. It should be read as historical context for the structures surrounding performers—not as proof of what any individual woman felt about her own career.
What documentaries show about life after adult entertainment
The documentary After Porn Ends is especially relevant to the question behind the headline because it follows former performers with varied post-career outcomes. Its subjects discuss different combinations of acceptance, pride, stigma, family pressure, addiction, reduced employment opportunities, and difficulty separating a public persona from private life.
That range is the point. Some people leave and feel relief. Some leave while retaining pride in parts of their work. Some continue in independent or fan-funded formats after leaving conventional studio work. Others find that the old professional identity remains socially powerful long after they have moved on.
Readers interested in life after adult entertainment can use After Porn Ends as a starting point for thinking about those transitions. It is better treated as a collection of individual post-career accounts than as a scientific survey of all former performers.
How to interpret claims about whether a performer “loved” the industry
| What you observe | What it may indicate | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|
| A long career | Professional opportunity, financial benefit, persistence, or adaptation | That the person enjoyed every aspect of the work |
| Retirement or a career change | Changing priorities, privacy concerns, new opportunities, or a desire to leave | That the person hated the industry |
| Independent content or subscriptions | More direct audience and business control | Freedom from platform rules, piracy, stigma, or pressure |
| Public advocacy | Identification with the profession or concern for fellow workers | Approval of every industry practice |
| Regret or criticism | A painful personal experience or objection to particular conditions | That every performer had the same experience |
| Mainstream acting, music, or writing | Creative expansion or identity management | That the person is ashamed of all earlier work |
Further reading for the complicated cases
For a firsthand account of exit and recovery, I Am Jennie: A Memoir is relevant to the discussion of Jennie Ketcham’s post-industry identity. It should be approached with appropriate content notes because the memoir addresses addiction, recovery, and difficult personal experiences.
For Traci Lords’s account, Traci Lords: Underneath It All provides a firsthand memoir connected to the issues discussed above. Because aspects of the account have been disputed, it belongs in a source-notes or further-reading section—not as the sole authority for contested historical claims.
These books and documentaries are most useful when read together. A memoir shows how one person interprets a life; an oral history supplies wider historical context; a documentary can show varied post-career narratives; and labor research helps explain the economic systems that shape individual choices.
Source and evidence note
The original TheRichest article was available only through search indexing in the research record. Its date and general subject are identifiable, but its full text and exact roster were not. The names associated with the nearby 2017 AVN/AEE preview should not be treated as confirmed members of the original list or as evidence of their private opinions.
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The career examples above are based on the available biographical account of Riley Reid, documentation of Brandi Love and Parents in Adult, coverage of Sasha Grey’s transition, a Daily Beast account of Mia Khalifa’s regret and harassment, Publishers Weekly coverage of Jennie Ketcham’s memoir, and attributed discussion of Traci Lords’s autobiography. The structural context draws on the 2018 Fortune profile, The Other Hollywood, research on premium social-media labor, research on online sexual-service markets, and After Porn Ends.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “Other” Industry mean in the title?
It is a coy reference to the adult-film and broader adult-entertainment industry. The available record identifies the title as a 2017 TheRichest article.
Can the original list of 10 women who loved the industry and 10 who did not be verified?
Not from the available evidence. The original page and full text were not recovered, so an exact 20-name roster would be speculative.
Does leaving adult entertainment prove that a performer hated it?
No. People leave for many reasons, including privacy, changing priorities, new creative opportunities, family considerations, or a desire to control their public identity. Retirement alone does not establish a person’s feelings.
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Why include independent subscriptions and fan-funded work?
Because adult entertainment is not one uniform job. Direct-to-fan work can change control over pricing, scheduling, branding, and distribution, although it does not eliminate platform dependence, piracy, stigma, or privacy risks.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: the original “10 who love it, 10 who don’t” framing is not verifiable and is too binary to describe real careers. Brandi Love, Riley Reid, and Sasha Grey show professional identification or diversification; Mia Khalifa and Jennie Ketcham show publicly described regret, harm, or difficult transition; Traci Lords demonstrates why contested and complicated histories require careful attribution. The honest conclusion is a spectrum: the same industry can offer income, visibility, and agency while also imposing permanence, stigma, exploitation concerns, and personal costs.
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