Beauty & the porn star name
A not-boring (maybe NSFW) approach to add characterization to your art
A 👀 at what’s a scroll below in this playful tutorial:
Everything begins with a persona
The question to ask yourself
It’s all about story
The persona wears Prada
As Shakespeare posed…
The history of stage names
The prompt lurking in your old Caboodles case
WTF’s the porn star name game?
Le exercise
California Dreamin’ by The Mamas & the Papas begins to play, setting the mood...
In Wong Kar Wai’s whimsical romantic classic, Chungking Express, one of the characters, Cop 663, talks to intimate objects around his apartment.
A bar of soap, a towel, a stuffed animal, and a shirt. All as if they were a real person, subconsciously giving them emotions not unlike his own.
Honestly, it’s relatable af. Because it’s easier to look beyond the obvious or the animate in order to daydream about pieces of ourselves or our creations… This degree of removal, and the incorporation of imagination, is a powerful tool to utilize.
EVERYTHING BEGINS WITH A PERSONA
Persona, by definition, is something that can be both presented and perceived. Here, we’re focusing on its presentation.
It’s like Nadia Lee Cohen’s HELLO My Name Is book. Where she presents herself as 33 different personas, birthed from this unique found object:
It started with a collection of name badges. I was gathering loads of them and didn’t really know why, aside from that I liked them aesthetically. The more unusual the tag the better. ‘June Rogers, Square dance organiser’ is a firm favourite, though June didn’t actually make it into the book. Anyway, each time I found a new one I just naturally imagined what the person who once owned it might have looked like. Until one day I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to actually see these people?’ So I started the project.
— Nadia Lee Cohen
To deeply understand what you’re creating and how it’s best presented, you can benefit from reverse engineering it in a similar way. “Wouldn’t it be nice to actually see these people?” turns into…
The question to ask yourself
Here’s a sampling of musings which correspond to various fields of focus:
PORTRAITS / ILLUSTRATION
✧ What’s their backstory?
FURNITURE DESIGN
✧ Who owns this piece? How do they use it?
INTERIORS
✧ Who lives here?
FASHION / STYLING
✧ What person am I dressing?
LANDSCAPES / URBAN DESIGN
✧ Who will walk through this place?
WRITING
✧ Who are they and what do they want?
MUSIC
✧ Who will feel this most deeply when they listen?
IT’S ALL ABOUT STORY
A lot of unseen elements go into a creation. Some may call it research and development, inspiration, or crafting an ideal consumer...
I call it storytelling.
Even when you don’t specifically consider story, you create it with your intention. Rather: how you set about creating the thing you’ve chosen to bring to life.
While story exists in that unconscious way, there’s a lot more that can be added to it consciously. Such additions only lend more juicy purpose and play.
That’s what you’re going to focus on today. You’ll craft the story of a persona, prompted and birthed by characterizing a mashup of one of the most fun, chaotic inspiration sources. I’ll reveal it in a bit! So hang tight.
But first, let’s explore a major fashion house that’s featuring their brand’s persona in their customer-facing work. They also show us: like how a persona can contain multitudes, multiple personas can also live under one project.
The persona wears Prada
To see this in action, look no further than Prada’s spring 2025 ad campaign starring Carey Mulligan, photographed by Steven Meisel.
According to WWD, Prada shared the following about the campaign:
The campaign “explores the notion of plurality, simultaneously celebrating individuality and the ceaseless facets that comprise the complex identity of Prada — the multitudes that can be contained within a single whole,”
“…these images are not just performances, rather they are embodiments of other lives, reflections of alternate realities channeled through one individual, fashion utilized as a tool to help transform.”
ENTER: PRINT MEDIA
These still images morphed into a “magazine booklet” when the brand collaborated with Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, to craft essays on each of the “ten protagonists” Carey embodied.
If you’re curious about what’s inside this booklet, I have a treat for you:
Here’s the digital edition for your reading pleasure ↴
Download it above and get ready to meet:
Patricia
Alina
Fannie
Eleanor
Victoria/Veronica
Tara
Tabitha
Cecily
Betty
Rachel
Does the idea of a paid subscription make your wallet as commitment-phobic as Joey Tribbiani? Then you can tip me via Buy Me a Coffee. It goes a long way to help this neurodivergent, creative girlie get her basic needs met!
AS SHAKESPEARE POSED…
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. — Romeo & Juliet
Names are an easy gateway to persona. You might name your car, most definitely your pet, or even your partner’s privates 🙃. Those nomenclatures lend a distinct personality.
And it all starts with an essence, a vibe. The wordless association that is only perfectly described/embodied/summed up by that name.
The history of stage names
Persona can also be crafted for a person rather than a project, acting as a creation in its own regard. Or a sub-creation, perhaps?
It all lies in the name.
1. STAGE
From Big Picture Film Club:
Stage names were popular in the early days of the film and television industry. Performers wanted to choose names that were memorable, so they would stick in the minds of casting agents and audiences. They chose names that reflected the image they wanted to project. Some performers chose names to hide their nationalities, because they experienced racial and ethnic bias in auditions.
Stage names also extend to theatre actors and musicians. Many of these artists chose stage names for the same reasons as actors. They also craft alter egos to have a distinct medium for their creativity.
Some actors choose stage names to draw a line between their private and public personas. Since the entertainment industry can be a small world, actors can change their names to separate their talent from family connections. Some entertainment institutions, like the Screen Actors Guild and Equity, have rules that performers may not use the same name.
2. DRAG
From the BBC:
Anyone who gobbled up the US series Pose in one thirsty gulp will be aware of the drag balls which originated in parts of New York in the 1970s. These events involved owning the runway in the finest drag around in order to wow the judges and go home with a clutch of trophies.
This was where the concept of the drag mother took hold. Seasoned queens would take up-and-coming drag artists under their wing, to show them how to work a stage as well as their look. They often provided a home to youngsters who may be going through a difficult time in their lives, and not just those intending to enter the drag world.
This led to drag mothers becoming known as the head of their House, making them responsible for an entire drag family. Whatever the mother’s surname, their drag protégés were allowed to adopt it, or even have their stage name chosen for them by their mother.
Drag families feature heavily in the 1990 drag ball documentary Paris is Burning (which inspired Madonna’s Vogue), with the House of Xtravaganza and the House of LaBeija among those featured.
3. PORN
From Dictionary.com:
The practice of having a porn name has obviously been around as long as the practice of pornography has been, but it did not become an average household joke (mainly among juveniles) until recent decades. Even before pornography was called as such, sex workers and performers had stage names, which essentially fulfil the same purpose as porn names, and were used to both protect performers’ real identities and boost the commercial appeal of their acts.
Linda Lovelace is believed to be the first household porn name, being the character and stage name of actress Linda Boreman, who starred in the famous 1972 pornographic film Deep Throat, a film that achieved so much commercial success it was screened in theaters and even reviewed by Roger Ebert in 1973.
The use of alliteration has become one of many staples of a successful porn name, as demonstrated by others like Samantha Saint, Mia Malkova, and August Ames. Other staple strategies for creating a good porn name include rhyming (Alexis Texas), putting together two real words (Angel Dark, London Keys, Jynx Maze), incorporating vocabulary related to sex and desire (Kendra Lust, Dylan Ryder, Brianna Beach), using single names (Stoya, Raylene), and using the letter X in reference to the X-rating of porn films (Diamond Foxx, Rachel Roxxx), to name a few.
The idea of a porn name as something comical came to more widespread attention with the revelation in 2013 that New York politician Anthony Weiner had been using the name “Carlos Danger” to send sexually explicit messages and photos, leading to his disgrace and resignation.
THE PROMPT LURKING IN YOUR OLD CABOODLES CASE
Now to the big reveal…
The fun, chaotic inspiration source I mentioned earlier?
Nail polish names!
I mean, check out these bangers from the nail brand OPI:
Deutsch You Want Me Baby?
Gouda Gouda Two Shoes
Tickle My France-y
My Chihuahua Bites!
Teal The Cows Come Home
The puns are popping.
You can even extend your inspo pool to make-up names as well. Psst… NARS has some fab ones.
Here’s where it gets really fun: nail polish names + the porn star name game = a fun persona to bring to life.
WTF’s the porn name game?
Popularized by sites like BuzzFeed, the internet loves a good name mash-up. The steps? Take your first pet’s name and the street you grew up on and you have your porn star name!
Minnie-Daisy Eighteenth. That’s mine, lol.
As silly as it is, it gets you thinking about the persona that this name could bring life to. With a slight tweak, we have:
Minnie-Daisy the Eighteenth, an aristocratic, Marie-Antoinette-esque woman who loves a good beauty mark and pastries, while struggling to get the respect of the people around her.
You’re going to do something similar below…
Le exercise
STEP ONE
✧ Color the nails in the download below with a combo of two colors that you feel drawn to. This could stem from your personal preference OR what you imagine the persona you’re crafting would lean towards.
STEP TWO
✧ Look up the colors in the following chart. The left column is for first names and the right column is for last names, but you can swap them to your heart’s desire:
STEP THREE
✧ Put the names together and start crafting your personality, similarly to what I did above. (Also think about these questions as well.)
STEP FOUR
✧ What kind of project can you build around this persona? Experiment with brainstorming and see how approaching a creative project from this perspective opens up a new way of thinking and ideation. There are no right or wrong ways, allow yourself to be playful and silly with it!
Paid subscribers: come hang out in the chat to share what name(s) you got. It’s going to be epic!
Can’t wait to hear how it goes,
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