A version of this story ran in the January 2020 issue of AVN magazine. Photos by Keith Ryan; click here to see more in the digital edition.
Adult entertainment—is it art or commerce? Naturally, it’s both. And the beautiful women who have appeared on the cover of AVN magazine are not only artists but also entrepreneurs.
That couldn’t be more true of Violet Doll. She’s a one-woman show, plying her trade as an independent adult content producer and a dominatrix. Doll was an early adapter to AVN Stars, a new platform where members of the adult community can share content and interact with fans. Once Doll joined, she topped the site as effortlessly as she dominates her submissives, keeping fans engaged with a steady stream of photos, videos and salty commentary.
The uninitiated who visit Stars.AVN.com can’t take the full measure of this curvaceous Midwestern beauty without paying the modest monthly subscription fee, but they can enjoy her exhortations to supporters and the glimpses into her personal life. But as one can see in the photos of Doll in this month’s issue, she knows how to turn it on in front of the camera.
How did this native of Detroit find her way into working as a domme? Doll says she was “involved in some of the lifestyle aspects of BDSM, just kind of experimenting.” She also was intrigued whenever she encountered BDSM in mainstream movies. “I really like the movie Secretary, even though she’s in the submissive role. I found it really thrilling to watch the dom/sub relationship.”
And there was one situation in particular that tapped into her dominant side. “I had a boyfriend who enjoyed when I used strap-ons on him. It was a complete surprise. … And it was fun. I really enjoyed it. You’d think at that point I would have thought, ‘Whoa, I should be a dominatrix.’ But it didn’t occur to me. I didn’t think I could make money off something I could feel so passionate about. I thought you had to play the vanilla role to make a lot of money out of sex work. It always felt like play to me. I didn’t think I could make a career out of [BDSM].”
So Doll started out with other forms of adult entertainment. First she tried her hand as a dancer. “I wasn’t a stripper for long,” Doll says. “I wasn’t very good at it. I really admire strippers. It’s a hard job and a lot of them are extremely talented and beautiful to watch, but it wasn’t for me.”
Next she tried camming and stuck with that for several years. “Camming has changed drastically since I began,” Dolls recalls. “When I first started as a webcam model there was no free cam at all. It was all text chat, and if a customer wanted to see you he would have to pay. Now the freemium site is the big thing.”
Doll explains that in the beginning her cam sessions were “mostly vanilla. I did have a lot of fetish customers but I noticed the more time I spent with the fetish customers, the more I realized I was a dominant person and I enjoyed playing the role of a domme. And then eventually I did see customers one-on-one as a dominatrix, and that was before I got into producing clips and content.”
Overall, she found camming “a very comfortable job. … You can sign on at any time, and eventually there’s going to be money if you stay on.” But there were downsides. “You deal with a lot of disrespect because you have so many people coming into your chat room all day and a lot of those guys are internet trolls who want to harass you. I reached a breaking point where I wanted to be done with all that, so I started producing clips to sell.”
This new kind of work rapidly became a big part of her creative life. “I have more control of my environment on a day-to-day basis in what I do and I have more control over whom I choose to interact with. I needed to love what I did. I wasn’t loving camming; I liked it and I felt comfortable with it and I felt really safe with it, but now I feel passionate with my work.”
Doll muses, “When a woman becomes a domme, it feels like such a new thing. It’s such a new experience for women. We feel like we’re expected to be submissive, or the damsel in distress. So when you’re able to take on this powerful role, it’s a lot different than a man calling himself a dom.”
Doll has been working as a dominatrix even longer than she’s been producing content. And she’s learned a lot about what her clients are looking for. “It’s not like I tell people I’m a therapist, but what I do is absolutely very much therapeutic and it is a form of release for a lot of these men who come to see me. It’s also very mutual. I feel that I get a lot of therapeutic benefits on my end as well. For me it is very much about taking back control of my career, my life, my sexuality. And for them it’s about giving up control.” Her clients often feel stressed with their families or careers, and “are just seeking to forget all that and to not have to think and feel for a little bit, or to just feel the experience of the session.”
We reached out to a couple of Doll’s clients to find out what they think about her work. “The marketing work is remarkable, considering she is networking and figuring this out on her own. Her branding, use of social media and online sales ability are all excellent. Violet’s biggest strength is that she is all in regarding her career. She takes care regarding each facet of her business, and it shows,” said a regular who goes by the name Panty Bitch. “Violet creates her product in a couple ways. There is content, such as videos and pictures on platforms like AVN, which are relatively low cost and consistently well thought out and high quality. Then there is the premium work, which is individualized and more profitable. Violet is really smart about driving traffic to the content, then encouraging clients into the premium area from there. Violet is not afraid to spend money; expenses are part of business. She spends quite a bit on automation, spa maintenance, and her extensive, gorgeous wardrobe.
“Lastly,” he adds, “Violet works hard, yet does not act like it. Her standards are high and she meets them day in and day out. She is very creative, very smart, and savvy about adult entertainment. When Violet switched to AVN Stars as her preferred platform, it was immediately evident she was more relaxed and personal. My favorite thing about her presence there is getting glimpses into her life behind the camera. We get a better idea of the complete Violet; her humor, her interests, and what she finds sexy.”
A regular who goes by the name Scumbag says he appreciates “the level of care and effort she puts into her content. She never settles for ‘good enough’ and thinks about every little detail. She’s always bringing something new and unique to the game as well and you can see her content’s influence spread through the community. She has been in sex work long enough to provide an interesting insight into the adult industry. I find it admirable how she tends to lend that insight and experience to newcomers.”
Doll does, in fact, have a lot of good advice to impart to others in her lines of work—both content producers and dominatrixes. Asked about the key personality trait needed, she answers without hesitation: “Confidence for sure. … You can’t be a downer to your fans. It’s not that you can’t be real and true to yourself. You just have to filter the things that you say. Customers come to you because they want an experience, they want a fantasy. … I understand that when things get stressful you want to vent. But you can’t vent to your customers. Definitely confidence and self-control. Maintaining a certain persona online. You can stay true to yourself, but you want to make sure you stay on brand.”
Among other tips, Doll says, “You have to be careful not to rely too heavily on one client. That’s something girls have to learn the hard way. You might have a very generous client who’s been covering a lot of your bills for months but you have to remember that’s not really income. It’s a generous client. He might run out of money, he might get sick of paying for everything. You have to think of it as a business and you always have to be thinking about increasing your earnings and gaining more fans, because some of those fans are going to disappear.
“And another thing is safety. Even though you’re at home when you do this kind of work, you have to look out for your private information being leaked, which happens a lot. Girls get doxxed. And you have to protect your locations, because there are some online stalkers out there. I think everybody who does this kind of work for a long period will have at least one unhinged stalker, unfortunately. The business attracts that sort of person. I think they see us as easy targets, so we have to be prepared and be safe.”
Building relationships with other members of the community can also be beneficial. “It can be very isolating and lonely if you don’t get to know your peers,” Doll advises. “It’s healthy to befriend people in the industry and talk to them online. You can learn a lot from other people in this industry too. A lot of people are really generous with helping each other.”
And it’s also important to maintain a good balance between work and leisure. Doll finds joy in quiet pursuits. “I love gardening. I don’t get to do it all the year round since I am in Michigan, but I find that extremely therapeutic. I do that part of the year. And I also love to read. Anything. I like a lot of biographies. History and biographies. Mostly strong women. Women I might look up to. Recently I read Joanna Lumley’s book. I think she’s great.”
She also has a domestic side, as evidenced by her Amazon wish list. “Lately I’ve been seeking a lot of household stuff, which might be boring to some people, but my fans and my subs have been wonderful about getting things for my home.”
That domesticity fits in with Doll’s brand, apparently. “A large portion of my submissive clients refer to me as Mommy. I’ve learned so much about that. It’s not as if they’re fantasizing that I’m their actual mother who birthed them. It’s much like [family roleplay] porn. I think it’s the thought of it being dirty or wrong that turns them on,” Doll explains. “I like to provide a safe space for fantasy that we’re both comfortable with. And there’s also a nurturing aspect to being a Mommy Dom.”
Asked about other interesting requests she gets, Doll shares, “I get more and more shrinking fetish clients, and that’s always an interesting one. Difficult as well. I do that in sessions too, which is even more difficult, because you have to roleplay that you’re shrinking them. And you’ve got to get real creative to make them feel like they’re getting shrunk. In a video it’s a little easier. You can use special effects if you know how to do that. I know some special effects but not really to that extent where I can look like I’m growing or they’re shrinking. That’s a big one lately and one that I’ve been catering to more often.”
She elucidates further: “To become small compared to me. They want to view their dom or whoever’s playing their fantasy out as a giantess compared to them. There’s the giantess fetish and the shrinking fetish, which are actually two separate things but they do tend to overlap. Some guys who like giantess fetishes also like shrinking fetishes. But some guys want to imagine you’re already a giant, and some guys want to imagine that you’re growing. And there’s the shrinking fetish guys who just want to fantasize about being shrunken. Lots of layers to this stuff.”
Has there ever been a request from a client that she’s not been able to fulfill? There have been a few. “I’ll get weird requests that just don’t really go with what I do or what I’m comfortable with, but I’m not offended by it. I think it’s great if people want to do it and it’s consensual and whatever, as long as it’s safe. … I’m still respectful to the customer and I just say it’s not my thing, and maybe I’ll refer them to someone else.”
Does Doll ever produce content that features other performers? “I’ve never directed, but I would love to do that. That’s actually something I’m very interested in for the future,” she states. “I’d love to help people get going on producing their own content, maybe as a mentor. I do content with other sex workers as well, mostly other dommes—what we call double domme content. Mostly my friend Breton MacQueen.”
She adds, “I’m interested in working with female subs, too. I haven’t done a lot of that.”
These days, Doll focuses a lot of her attention on AVN Stars, which launched last year at a time when she was looking for something different. “I was in a transitional phase where I was sick of doing just clip sites or just sessions. I needed a change,” Doll recollects. "After using AVN Stars for just a short time, I thought, I’m really into this and I started heavily advertising to my clientele and my fan base and pulled them on over. They love it too. They like that there’s just one space for everything I do, basically.”
In addition to continuing her sessions with clients and creating content, Doll says she may even go back on cam—at least on AVN Stars. “I never thought I would go back to camming, actually, but the live feature on AVN Stars has been fantastic for that because it’s just my subscribers, it’s just my fan base. … I won’t have to go back to the sites where I’m streaming for anybody who watches. I can use the settings to restrict it to just my subscribers and my fans. … It’s actually been nice getting back to it in this positive, supportive environment of people who are just there for me.”
