The Addie Andrews story: How an oppressed Mormon missionary turned her back on the church and embraced porn
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been a great experience for 17-year-old Addie Andrews - until it wasn't. She had friends and fellow church family members who readily accepted her as their own and were warm and welcoming, to say the least. But, it turned out that sexual repression wasn't something Addie could deal with.
Growing up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, Addie was born to really strict parents - so strict that they gave her little to no freedom, except that she was allowed to pick her own church. She decided to go Mormon. "They were very welcoming and seemed to really want the best for me," she says in an interview with MEA World Wide(MEAWW), "It became my home away from home."
Addie went on to earn a bachelor's degree in Communications from Brigham Young University, named after the 19th Century LDS leader who led the Mormon Pioneers to settle in the Utah territory. She has also gone on a statewide mission to add members to the church for 18 months. She had felt fulfilled and happy but the sexual purity was pretty extreme for members. It isn't just that pre-marital sex is denied, it is treated like a "serious sin". It was almost like being a nun, she says.
"The deeper I got into the religion, the farther from my own identity I got," Addie said, "Religious culture has a way of doing that to you. You want to fit in, and to belong." Having had sex just once before she joined the church, she couldn't get any until she was 26. She was increasingly getting alienated from her friends and family as well.
If her friends would ask her out to a movie, she couldn't go - she had Sabbath. But the turning point came in 2014 when she couldn't be her sister's bridesmaid because of a Mormon dress code. The code says that every person must wear a garment under their clothes at all times except while swimming, sports, and sex. So, if Addie had to remain true to her faith, she couldn't wear the bridesmaid dress because it was "immodest". She had to turn down her sister's once in a lifetime request.
It impacted their relationship deeply and things were "a bit rocky for a while." "But I’m pretty sure she knew I was just as heartbroken about it as she was so it didn’t take too long to mend things between us," she recalls. She eventually stopped going to church in 2017.
Then, her life changed.
In November 2018, she moved to California in the hopes of making it as an entertainer. She ended up broke and took up a waitressing job. During this time, she identified sex work as a viable option. She started with webcamming and tried her hand at exotic dancing. Her initial days were pretty good, she says. "I got more work thrown my way than I could handle. Honestly, my initial shoot was so much fun and I had a lot of fun on most of my shoots after that. However, I had a lot of typical new girl health issues (none of which were STDs or STI’s) which kept me from shooting more than I would have liked to," she says.
The Florida based entertainer who was recently named Penthouse magazine’s ‘Pet of the Month’, thinks it's a pretty viable career option for young girls. However, she does have one warning: look before you leap.
To those of you who want to try it out but don't know for sure yet, try those avenues of sex work that don't involve revealing your identity, she advises. "Especially if you’re leary about exposure," she says.
"I could literally write a novel on this and I haven’t even been in the industry for a year yet. To sum it up I’d say, don’t just dive in. Not because it’s a bad industry, but because it’s not something you can take back," she says. Just because she's happy with her decision, doesn't mean it could be right for you too, she says. Just keep your options open. "There are risks with every reward, and pornography is like a tattoo on your soul, it’s not wise to do while drunk, and you gotta make sure you really want the tattoo," she says.