The Future of BBW Porn: An Interview with Lasha Lane

When Lasha Lane was 19 years old she wanted to get into pornography. She made an audition tape that landed her a part in a film with an all-Black cast of women. It was a great experience, so she jumped headfirst into the industry. She was still young and didn’t give much thought to how to approach it as a career. After floating around for some time with no agent, she decided this line of work wasn’t for her.

In late 2017, almost 20 years after her initial foray into the porn world, Lane was living with her daughter in Calabasas, CA when fires hit. They lost their home and found themselves living in various shelters for almost two years. Though Lane had experienced homelessness before, her daughter hadn’t, and it wasn’t what Lane wanted for her. Close to a nervous breakdown, she reflected on her stint in porn as a youth.

“I have been in this industry before, I know what I’m capable of,” Lane tells me over the phone.  

So, she jumped back into porn thinking it would be easy to get the ball rolling again. “Boy was I wrong!” she says with a bit of surprise in her voice.  

I asked her about what it was like to return to the industry after so many years away, as well as her particular challenges as a Black BBW performer. We also talked about her hopes for her own career, the future of BBW porn, and the industry as a whole.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What does your career look like now that you have re-entered the industry?

Right now, because of the pandemic—our industry has been shut down for just over 3 months—I am shooting my own content primarily. I had an OnlyFans account, but I left OnlyFans because I like to know where my money is going and who my business is supporting. There are too many questions with OnlyFans.

I figured I wanted to go to a platform that was created by sex workers and run by sex workers so I went to JustFor.Fans. JustFor.Fans is working out really well for me. I really loved MySpace back in the day and something about JustFor.Fans feels kinda myspace-y (not in a bad way), and I love it.

I have also been building my content base to make my own site. In the long run, I want my own company: my own stuff, my own productions. I don’t want to have to give my money to anyone but my talent. I am working on a summer venture right now in Vegas, and I have a Halloween short porn film that I am going to be crowdfunding.

It sounds like you’ve been really busy since your return! What was it like to come back? 

There are a lot of politics involved in [booking porn shoots] and a lot of personal feelings that are involved in the industry. I’m not used to that as far as business is concerned. I was taken aback that it is still, “If I don’t like you, you don’t work.”

I don’t have a quiet mouth, and this has always served me. But I know that I can be much; I can be a lot! I have mastered the art of the apology for this reason. Because of this, the mainstream industry has been difficult, but it is taking a turn for the better because people are learning that I am not out for blood; I am just out for understanding.

Independent is rocking, though. [Outside mainstream porn] you don’t have to worry about stereotypes, you don’t have to worry about who you work with, you don’t have to impress your agent. In independent production, you are free to do what you want. A lot of us have come to a place in our art that it is our art, and we make it and we hope that it resonates with our fan base. But if it doesn’t, we don’t really care.

Do you also feel like there is more space in independent production for a wider diversity of representations?

Yes, I am a very different bird. On the outside, I look like your typical African American girl who is trying to make her way in porn. But, I’m a really dark, alternative, goth-y type girl. I have a very creepy outlook on the beauty of the world. I love tattoos, I love dark subculture, and I really love avant-garde high fashion. I want to take what I do with my magazine [Symbols, which had its first issue in 2019] which is really conceptual, and create real movies with real sex.

Stereotypically, when Black women are used in porn it is either the ghetto trope, the sassy Black woman, or the submissive Black woman.

But in reality, there are multiple types of us out there! I don’t see many tattooed Black women, for example. I know they are out there, but the variety and the lens through which we are portrayed is very narrow. If every time we are producing a porn film and it has some sort of Black whore trope, that doesn’t do much to say, “We can do something more than that.” 

You have made similar criticisms of the narrowness of BBW [Big Beautiful Women] porn as well. Do you want to say more about that?

Yes, I was taking Plumperpass to task for the way they portrayed their models, especially African American ones. When it comes to BBW culture there are usually specific body types that are considered ideal: white women with ginormous boobs, extreme proportions but flat bellies. That is the norm. They cast for this particular type all the time.

When you only have a handful of companies that put mainstream BBW porn out, what does that do to the rest of the market? 

There is more space for everything in independent porn. There you see a bigger variety: you see BBWs that are bald, for example, or BBWs that don’t necessarily have large boobs but they still have butts. There are so many types of women in that sphere that are doing amazing on their own. They would still do even better, though, with mainstream BBW porn backing them. And this would open the door for mainstream porn to start welcoming BBWs into their sphere.

Without the support of the mainstream industry, the BBW companies have no reason to pay us more than what they want to for the content that we provide for them, even though we make them a lot more than that.

It is no secret that BBW porn pulls in a lot of money, but BBW performers are still struggling to make ends meet.

What do you hope for in terms of the future of porn?

I would like to get to a point where we don’t worry about the size or the gender of a person. I want to get to the point that we are just shooting porn with people who are really talented at what they do. We aren’t anywhere close to that yet.

Honestly, we still have hope. I don’t want to throw these companies out of the water. They have merit, they have been here for decades. I just think times are changing, the formulas are changing, and these companies should reflect those changes.

Criticism of these companies isn’t the end of the world, they can survive. In fact, it should open discussion, instead of closing it off.

What do you think would have to happen in order for there to be positive changes in the industry?

I think it is important for people who are casting for any talent to really do their research. In the music industry, record labels have a division called artists and repertoire (A&R), and it is their job to find talent, under a rock if that is what it takes. They work to be new and fresh and innovative; not to spot the trend, but to spot the talent. That is what is really missing in the porn industry.

In porn, people are focusing on the trend, on what has sold in the past instead of taking some chances, or creating a different, new stream of revenue.

There are so many things that the adult industry is capable of doing. We are capable of shaping minds; we already shape perception. We can demonstrate a new way to treat each other, we can be a tool used to change the way people perceive each other.

BBWs know this. A lot of the fat women in this industry wouldn’t be here if they didn’t think they could change the way that people look at big women. Most of us are not here just for the money. Most of us are here to feel good about ourselves, and to make others feel good about themselves.

I also think that women should be running porn. If women were running porn—Black women and white women together—we wouldn’t have as many of the issues we have now. We are the ones who are using our bodies the most, we are the ones who can see when we are being discriminated against, and we are the ones that tell everyone else what is going on. I really feel like, if women were the ones in charge, we would have a better system. It seems like that is what is going to happen.

It sounds like you are calling for women to take over the industry.

It’s amazing what can happen when you step into your power, when you get that fire lit up underneath you because you realize you wasted your power.

Women and Black people especially are finding that they had a certain amount of power that they didn’t know they had before. The matrix has been opened to them. We are seeing it, and we are taking it. It is scaring people—and that’s okay. We were scared too, but now is the time. There are certain points in history where we change, and this is one of those times.

This change can be one of care. When you care about Black people in porn, you care about fat people in porn, you care about trans people in porn, you care about all of us in porn.

You can also find Lane at AVN Stars.