This feature appears in the August issue of AVN magazine.
LOS ANGELES—Reyna Belle was nine when she saw her first stripper. She was playing Saints Row. It was then that she realized what her mother did for a living.
“I’ve known she was a stripper since I was seven,” said the now 21-year-old Ohioan. “She told me, and people talked about her because of it. But I never really knew what a stripper did until I saw it in the games.”
Belle continued, “She said she made money from men giving it to her. She told me about the job and the drama with her friends and co-workers. I saw every side of stripping, good and bad. It turned me off to it.”
Though she’d never touch stripping with a 10-foot pole, sex work was still on the table for Belle, who at 18 was flipping burgers while studying International Affairs in college. “I was a broke college student, working a job on campus—making $80 paychecks,” she said.
Belle discovered camming and suddenly supersized her earnings. “I made so much money. My first cam show, I made $300. I was live for only two hours! I was shocked,” she said. “I didn't have to suck anyone's dick. I just had to pull my tits out. And, as you get more popular, more money pours in.”
But Belle couldn’t leave cock behind. She pivoted into porn at 19. “If I enjoyed masturbating on camera, I'd probably enjoy having sex on it, too,” she figured. “Once that thought was in my head, I had to do it. I signed with my first agent and flew out a few weeks later to shoot my first scene.”
Belle made her porn debut playing a Gender Studies major on NetVideoGirls. “The camera is my friend—that's what I told myself the entire time,” she recalled. “Pay attention to the camera. Make sure you look good!”
Belle continued to shoot during school breaks, building a body of work and a community of friends she could trust in the industry.
“When I did my first porn scene, I remember thinking, if I cry after this, I'm never gonna do it again, but I felt amazing,” Belle said. “I didn’t expect people to be nice.
“Back home, nobody could understand—none of my friends could understand—how I could have sex for fun,” she continued. “Deep down inside, everyone saw me as a victim. And it's not like that. I trusted my intuition in making this decision, and I feel it’s going well.”
Now represented by the Spiegler Girls Agency, Belle is focused on career goals and having a good time. “I’d love to do more girl/girl scenes,” she said. “I enjoy anal. Once I do more anal scenes, I’d like to get into DPs and double anal.”
She still plays games in her free time (Sims 4 is a favorite), and her mom knows she’s in porn.
“She was one of the first people I told,” Belle said. “She was, like, ‘That’s okay.’ That’s all she said. But I don’t go to her for advice because she kinda scares me. She’ll be like, ‘Don’t make friends with the girls, don’t get too attached!’”
Photography by @kogafoto
