A version of this feature appears in the March issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition.
LOS ANGELES—Olivia Jay told no one outside of the club that she was a stripper as she danced her way through college in the nation’s capital.
“I knew that a lot of people weren’t going to be comfortable with it,” Jay says.
“But I’ve learned life is short and there is absolutely no shame in sex work at all. This is a job. Sex work is work. I paid for my education with sex work.”
So much has changed since those days, not the least of which is Jay’s public persona.
For starters, she’s no longer “closeted” with her job.
“This is the first time that a lot of my friends and family are finding out I was even a sex worker,” says Jay, who already is on track for her biggest year yet in adult entertainment after breaking into the porn business in August 2020.
Now 50-something scenes later, the independent and thriving star tells AVN she has learned a lot about being a professional sex symbol.
“I’ve always been a sexual person, but performing sex and having sex are two totally different things,” Olivia says. “Being a sexual person I would say it makes the job fun. I really enjoy what I do and I really enjoy performing.
“Opening up for the camera and certain techniques, they don’t tell you that at the very beginning of your career. There are certain things you only learn on the field.”
Jay takes charge on the field just like she did on the stripper stage, performing on a high level with every new booking.
“I feel really good about it,” she continues. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot in a short time. There is certainly a learning curve to this. You don’t just roll out of bed and be a porn star. There’s a lot to building your brand and maintaining it and maintaining a rapport with my fans online.
“I’m being very thoughtful about the types of scenes I do. I feel very grateful to be here at this point, but I’m still not where I want to be yet.
“I feel like there’s a lot more to learn and I have great people around me teaching me.”
After being laid off from her 9-to-5 job at the beginning of the pandemic, Jay started her OnlyFans—in March 2020. She also did some live camming. It did not take long after that for an agency to begin reaching out about booking her first porn scenes.
She recalls how much the decision weighed on her.
“I thought long and hard about it because I knew going into this it would have social ramifications,” Olivia explains. “I knew this was something I couldn’t take back. I did a bunch of research, watched a bunch of podcasts and interviews from other performers and I just decided to take that leap of faith and get into the industry.”
It was August 2020—and Jay had never even been to the West Coast before she started flying back and forth from her hometown of Washington D.C. to LA and Las Vegas to shoot porn.
Now self booking since last fall and a Vegas resident since 2021, Jay says managing herself has been working well for her.
“I have some really big shoots coming up with companies that I’ve wanted to shoot with,” Jay told AVN in mid-February. “I’m on a roll and I’m looking forward to a really successful year working with companies I haven’t worked with before, expanding my brand and creating my own content and collaborating with some really great people.”
In addition, she says her self-produced content has never been better. “The Juiceboxxx” posts new videos on her OnlyFans every week—a mixture of solos, boy/girl, girl/girl and threesomes. And did we mention that she squirts?
“My OnlyFans is lit,” Olivia says. “I am known for my squirting. I do a lot of squirting solos, like Wet Wednesdays. And I’ve had a few scenes come out in the past couple weeks. My BangBros debut came out—that was a wet-ass scene with Jay Bangher. And my Dogfart scene with Rico Shades and Will Tile and my Filthy Kings just came out.”
Jay also at press time toasted her first magazine cover—for Strip Las Vegas.
“I had so much fun at that shoot. I got to rock my natural hair,” she says.
Olivia explains that straightening her hair causes damage, so she prefers her natural look whenever possible.
“I think there’s another barrier that needs to be broken down in the industry that’s just accepting Black women with their natural hair texture,” she says.
“We’ve had the natural hair movement… I went to an HBCU, a historically black college, so there were many women with big, beautiful, curly hair like me. I don’t see why that can’t be depicted in porn or in an erotic setting.”
Jay doesn’t mind wearing a wig on occasion if the role calls for it.
“That’s fine sometimes,” she adds. “I don’t mind switching it up but I feel the most beautiful with my natural hair. And with these scenes being on camera, to rock my natural hair just feels better for me. I’m not going to speak for everybody. Sometimes when you wear wigs on set and you’re having sex, you sweat.
“Natural hair works best for me when I’m doing my job and wearing my natural textures without having to manipulate it, straighten it. When I straighten my hair and I’m having sex and sweating, my hair will frizz up and it won’t look the same. With my natural hair texture I don’t have to worry about that. That’s another barrier taken off. It’s just one less thing I have to worry about.
“There shouldn’t be extra barriers for performers. That’s just one small thing that can make a big difference if we felt more free to wear our hair as it is. Then it just makes the job easier and it just makes it easier for everyone I think. I’ve been told my hair was too wild and they wanted a cleaner look and it didn’t feel good to hear that.”
Jay says “it felt great” to put herself through college with the money she earned from dancing at a fully nude club in the D.C. area. She remembers nights when she even brought her books and laptop to the strip club.
"I would dance on the weekends or after school,” Olivia says. “Or I would go to my internship during the week and then I would dance in the evenings.
“I was keeping it secret from everyone. I never thought I would be doing that—at the time it seemed so naughty and taboo.
“Then once I finished school I thought I was totally done with adult entertainment.”
To say that her secret hustle was a departure from her upbringing would be an understatement.
“That was totally scary in the very beginning,” Olivia admits. “I had come from a pretty religious background and I was pretty sheltered. I grew up in a very religious household so I had to go against the grain of how I was raised.
“It definitely took a little while. I had to basically go through a little glow-up, if you will. I had to learn how to be sexy. I had to learn how to dance and be confident.
“I was never insecure about my body or anything but just being naked in general. Being nude is definitely something you have to get used to when you’ve been taught to be chaste. I wanted to be a good girl. I wanted to make my family proud and do everything right.”
Her approximately five years at the strip club however was an education in itself—one that in hindsight was priceless.
“Sometimes I’ll think about the hard days that I had at work in the clubs,” Olivia says. “A lot of people don’t realize sex workers go through a lot. When I was a dancer you have to take rejection, you have to deal with the politics of the club, creepy guys. I’m not trying to make this sound like a horror story, I’m just trying to give the reality of it.
“I think about all of those hard days and it really does feel good to know that I was able to go through all of that.”
Jay says she was the youngest dancer at her club and the only Black girl, too.
“That’s a separate set of challenges, too,” she continues. “They make Black dancers go through certain things. They have us only work the day shift. We wouldn’t be able to work certain days. When we’d go through racism at the club there was nobody there that had your back. We went through a lot.
“I’m not going to lie, it was a challenge. But it made me a stronger person and it made me more equipped to handle this business because it is a tough business. The clubs I worked at were the perfect training ground and I’m still in touch with some friends I worked with in the club. That’s what I would say to them—that the club prepared me for this.”
Another skill she honed in the gentlemen’s club was the art of listening—and relating to guys from all walks of life.
“People I would never even speak to otherwise,” Olivia says. “When I was 19 years old I was talking to doctors, lawyers, engineers, pilots… People I wouldn’t even encounter otherwise. But in this setting I’m speaking to them and relating to them.
“I’ve made a lot of money sitting and talking with guys. They’d become comfortable enough to open up to me. Lap dances were illegal in D.C. They would tell me a lot of things they were going to do. And at the end of the day we all go through the same things.
“I’ve had guys cry in my arms and tell me about their custody battles… their divorces, what they had going on at work. I’ve had guys who were about to get married and were anxious about getting married, getting cold feet. I would talk them through that, kind of like a therapist.”
Still, there were times Jay wanted to quit dancing—she worked at Hooters for a stint but “that sucked.”
Five years after enrolling in college, she earned her degree in Political Science, interning in public service positions and for non-profits in D.C. along the way before beginning her “regular” job.
Olivia says that at first she was excited about the possibilities in the public service sector.
“I had a job that I thought was going to be very rewarding,” she recalls. “I was an idealist in the beginning. I was one of those kids that wanted to save the world. I was very excited to be making a difference in the world. I felt the sex-work world was behind me.
“I thought [sex work] was a means to an end and then I finally got to the end and got to the destination of this 9-to-5 world—and it was exhausting. I was still a hard worker… I wanted to do well and I wanted to make a difference. So I was going above and beyond in the jobs I had. And it often led to me being taken advantage of and it left me just feeling really exhausted, drained and depressed.
“I was thinking this is what I worked for… I did all of this work and this is the destination? I started feeling like wow, maybe there’s something wrong with me?”
Navigating office politics was especially challenging, she says.
“I would say I just wasn’t happy,” Olivia continues. “I was working my butt off in this job just grinding, just trying to prove to everybody and myself that I can do a good job that it led to me being taken for granted and taken advantage of and it wasn’t fun. That led to me being very unhappy during that time.”
Jay says she even stopped wearing makeup.
“That’s totally not me. I like to wear bright colors. I like to express myself with fashion,” Olivia says. “I use fashion and these things to express myself. And when it got to that point and I just stopped doing that I knew something was wrong.
“I had to get therapy and re-evaluate things. I really wanted to hang in there. There were so many times when I really wanted to quit, so I hung in there, but it was taking a toll on me.
“Then the pandemic hit and that was kind of a blessing in disguise.”
She says at first it hurt to be laid off because she had always had a job ever since she was 14.
“It was a kind of scary and it gave me time to just sit and think. And I realized that job just wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t good for my mental health,” she says. “When I lost that job, it hurt at first, but it really felt like a relief, like a big weight lifted off my shoulders.
“I would probably still be there if pandemic didn’t happen. That’s the scary part.”
Olivia wanted to study art before opting for political science.
“I was told that wasn’t lucrative enough that I would never make a living with that,” she says. “But art is really my passion. I really love creating, whether it’s drawing or doing makeup. Even with what I’m doing now—creating content. I just really love creating.”
She recalls being discouraged from pursuing her passion.
“I was pretty young at the time and I was pretty impressionable,” Olivia continues. “A bunch of people kept telling me that and I didn’t do it and I really regret it.
“If I ever go back to school I would definitely take that up. Even if I could take some art classes. It’s been a lifelong passion of mine.”
Now she still draws on occasion using different mediums; she also still does makeup.
“I’ll express my creativity with styling and help out friends with their hair and makeup,” she says.
“I used to do all kinds of drawing. My favorites were portraits.”
Jay would sketch people in her life.
“People in my family, people on TV, my favorite celebrities—that sort of thing,” she explains. “I would also draw cartoons; I really enjoy drawing those. They’re pretty quick to draw. I’ll start off with a pencil, then go over it with a good black pen. It was always something I was good at.”
She drew Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, Michael Jackson and various boy bands.
“When I was a younger I would draw pictures of Michael,” Olivia says. “I’m still a Michael Jackson fan.”
Overall, Jay wants to use her growing platform to make a difference.
“I would like to see the industry be better for people coming behind me,” Olivia says.
To book her, email [email protected].
Photography by @willdothings (1 & 6); @theedgeimage (2); Scott Wallach (3 & 9); @longjohnthepa (4, 7 & 8); @thedeancapture (5 & 10)
