Porn Valley- Sinnamon Love, www.sinnamonlove.com was on the Sports Swami show describing how she had to take six months off from the business due to ovarian cancer. Love said she discovered she had it when she came back from the AEE show this past January.
“I wasn’t feeling very well,” she said. “I was in a lot of pain. I wasn’t really sure what was going on.” It was then about four days later that Love discovered her condition. Love said she spent a few days in the hospital and had some surgery. “I went through some chemo and some radiation and a lot of pills. I was pretty much dealing from the surgery and hopped up from the all the drugs they were giving me. I was pretty much out of commission.”
Love says she’s been in remission since June and feels better now. Asked if she got help from the industry or was left to fend for herself, Love said she didn’t tell a lot of people about what happened. “The people did know- Obsession, one of my best friends- came to the hospital the night I went in. She came back the next morning before I went into surgery. Kitten, also one of my best friends, came and stayed with me when I came home and made sure that I took my pain meds.
“They stuffed me full of food and tried to help me out with that.” Love said the publisher of Fish N’ Grits magazine for whom she’s been working a lot the past year picked her up from the hospital. “The industry tends to be fairly lonely,” Love conceded. “But I really didn’t make it public. There was someone else in the business [Jessica Darlin], I heard, who found out this year she had cancer as well. I guess there was something on her website and people were talking about it. I think if you make it public and you let people know what’s going on, there are people that will step up to help you.”
For her part, Love said she’s been dealing with ovarian cysts since the age of twelve. “This is the second time I’ve had surgery. The first time was malignant. Since I’ve gone through this before I didn’t think this was something I needed to have a ton of people to know about it at the time. Especially since I knew I was going to have chemo and, physically, my body was going to get a lot weaker. People in this business tend to think the worst. You see somebody who’s gotten really skinny and puking all the time, you’re not going to want to believe it’s something like cancer, that it’s something much worse. I tried to keep my business as much to myself as I could at that time.”
Love said her mother came out to stay with her for a month. “She tried to get on a plane the day I went to the hospital. I had Obsession making calls to my mom and one of my sisters and my boyfriend. My mom was ready to get on the plane right then. I made her wait a couple of weeks because I knew that within a few weeks when I was ready to get up and about and was going to be much better, that that would be the time I would need my mom.”
Love’s mother came out to make sure that her house was running smoothly. “I think it’s hard for anybody when they see they’re family is going through something like that. I think it was harder for everyone else in the family than it was for me. I’m pretty much a hard ass. I was pretty much a bitch to my doctors. I didn’t want them to soft sell me on what the problem was. I just wanted to know exactly what I was looking at. I was more concerned on whether I was going to lose my hair from the chemo than anything else. I tried to deal with it as best as I could. And having my family around definitely helped me out a lot. My mom was just wonderful to have here with me for that week. It made me feel a lot better.”
Love notes that she started a company, Urban Eye Candy Entertainment about 2 1/2 years ago. “My focus then as it is now is to bring focus and attention to women of color in the business- not just black girls, not just Latin girls but black-Latin, Asian, middle Eastern, Indian- I want to really focus on women of color in general and to really present them in more of a positive light and to really focus on building a solid base of girls to work with.” Beside getting them work in adult and magazines, Love said she tries to get them work in the mainstream, as well, such as the liquor industry and trade shows. The adult industry, unfortunately, doesn’t stress artist development, Love feels.
“Usually that’s something that’s done by a company- they find a girl that’s really talented and think as a good look that needs to be primped a little bit. But the companies don’t do that with the majority of the girls.
“As a management company I take on that aspect of the business instead of waiting around for a company to do it,” Love stresses. Love was asked if there was any black talent out there whom she feels could have received a better push than they did. Love was quick to name Ayana Angel.
“She’s a very hot commodity in the business. She’s taking her place as a contract girl over at Video Team. But I knew her main issue for leaving the business was because she didn’t get the publicity that she thought she would get. I would have loved to see her do a lot better than she had.” Love mentioned a couple of others including Courtney Divine, noting that a company could bring in some good revenue with such talent, properly molded.
Asked if there was a realistic market for African-American or Latin starlets, Love thought so.
“Unfortunately most companies don’t know how to market that talent. It’s unfortunate that the majority of the product line out there that features women of color- whether they’re black, Latin or Asian- is very stereotypical. It’s either women who are very similar to their blond haired blue eyed counterparts, or it’s very base. Very ghetto. Or Asian girls that are in the submissive stereotype or Latin girls where everything about them is supposed to be ultra hot, ultra sex. There’s no normal run of the mill, middle of the road hot girls that just like to fuck without the stereotyped attached to that. You just don’t get that as much with women of color as you do with everyone else.
“When you see companies like West Coast Productions,” she continued, “their lines are doing really well- I think that’s because they don’t really input the stereotypes in their product line.” Love’s of the opinion that the 18-35 male market doesn’t want the negative stereotypes. “They just want to see hot girls that look like them. Most people will buy those movies. They don’t need to see a Me So Horny Volume 10 in order for them to pick it up.”
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