This week one news story in particular seemed to stand out to me. It was about the secret life of a teenage girl. On the surface, she seemed like a normal college student. The girl went by Emily Sander among her friends, but was actually porn star Zoey Zane.
It’s something you hear about every day, on a smaller scale. Emily, however, tragically lost her life. Isreal Mireles, 24, a Mexican national is now a person of interest in her death. Apparently emily told her parents on Thanksgiving that she signed a contract with the Web site ZoeyZane.com, of which she was posing nude on it. Her boyfriend broke up with her because he didn’t approve.
I think it’s a shame that some girls are so desperate for money that they would resort to such dangerous acts as pornography. It is such a shame that this girl who was just beginning her life had to have it cut so short because of her secret life. She seemed like such an intelligent, fun, beautiful girl. Friends at Butler Community College in Wichita, Kansas held a candlelight vigil for her and a memorial is now being planned.
What are your thoughts on this horrible tragedy? It seemed like something that just stuck out to me, a girl much like us who just fell into the wrong world.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Jamia // Dec 4, 2007 at 1:10 am
Thanks for blogging about Emily. The thing that made me so mad about this was how the media framed it, in addition to some of the comment posts I have seen online by people judging and damning her and using terrible words to describe her. It is a major tragedy…everyone is focusing so much on the fact that the woman who died led a secret life as an internet porn star, and less on the loss of life and the ruthless abuse of power that caused her to die.
I wish the media would talk more about how issues of education, economic class struggle, and sexism could lead to a young woman being involved in a situation like this…
Our society needs to take much more responsibility… It is sad, but our societal compulsion with consumption can lead us down so many dark paths.
2 Maddie Lear // Dec 5, 2007 at 8:33 pm
It’s so sad. It’s really confusing too, all of the mixed and different variety and expanse of feelings that come out of hearing a story like that.
3 Martina // Dec 7, 2007 at 8:39 am
Well, two thoughts:
One, I’m not sure if it’s accurate either as an observer or from Emily’s perspective that she thought of herself as a porn star. She did her performances on her website for profit, but it was maybe more for fun and a little money than for a career. It’s a small point maybe but maybe not, the title “porn star” makes more of an impression in the story of her death than one may realize, more than it maybe should anyway.
And two, from what I’ve read there’s no connection that’s been concluded by the investigators between her sexually explicit website and her death. It’s an assumption that one may make based on that “porn star” label, as if there’s a connection between porn and crazies who murder women, or who want to murder porn stars in particular.
There is an epidemic of violence against women, but I don’t think there’s an epidemic of violence porn stars or caused by porn stars, or amateur “solo artists”, or “Suicide Girls”, or whatever.
If Emily Sandler had been a waitress at a local family restaurant, or even a stripper at some roadside club, there might be as much connection to her smiling at certain crazy customers or her performance as a unknown stripper to someone who wanted to hurt her as there is in this case with the guy who is a suspect and still at large.
But at least we’re hearing about Emily’s case, right? If it is common for nameless women who are killed by guys who go at large to get little press outside of their community, it it took Emily’s website and her personna as “Zoey Zane” for the media to make her case known, maybe it’s better that there is some angle to this story which I’d find maybe inaccurate so long as the word gets out and the guy — who is still at large — is better pursued.
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