Gene sez: This addresses all those who ever written emails or called the AVN office in recent days voicing questions about the Best New Starlet category.
Because so many people have their own personal favorites among female performers, or their own bias in the selection of Best New Starlet, this category has always been one of the more controversial ones in the history of the AVN Awards Show. Over its 17-year history, AVN has made some universally acclaimed decisions and some that were not.
A Best New Starlet candidate is nominated on relatively the same criteria as your garden variety beauty contest winner - there's looks, poise, personality and charm to consider. Except, sexual performance, and a consistent, high level of it, is subsituted for the evening gown and swimsuit categories. But the most hotly contested evaluation is the one that determines just how "new" is the Best New Starlet. AVN's Best New Starlet is nominated for the year that reflects her most active in the adult industry. Taking into chief account the fact that the adult industry is one where performers come and go on whim, under the AVN guidelines, a female performer, theoretically, can come into the business at the beginning of this decade, appear in several features, leave the business, then re-emerge ten years later to give the business a second go-round. Assuming all else is equal and she's one of those timeless beauties, that performer can be nominated for Best New Starlet.
There's no hard and fact rules on the number of videos that she appear in, but one generally assumes she's appeared in a sufficient number to have made some solid impression or impact upon the business, which, in the final analysis, stands to be the most important criterion of all.
