Graphic credit: Jon Millward
In my never-ending quest for insight into social and economic differences between Virginia and other states, I stumbled across an unusually revealing data set. Blogger Jon Millward analyzed a database of 10,000 porn stars to build a profile of sex actors on a range of attributes from ethnicity to cup size. Among the data points he gathered was the porn stars’ self-reported place of birth. The largest percentage by far hailed from California (is anybody surprised?), followed by Florida and Texas, in numbers far out of proportion to their population. Other states paled by comparison, with Virginia barely registering.
Even Washington, D.C., a den of iniquity if there ever was one, appears as a mere pinprick in the porn star constellation.
But before you unleash your inner puritan and praise the Mid-Atlantic region for the relative virtue of its citizens, consider another piece of research by AshleyMadison.com, an escort service: No. 1 on the list of Least Faithful Cities, based on the number of sign-ups per-capita in its database, was… Washington, D.C.!
Downstate Virginians have no grounds to snicker about the perfidy and tawdriness of the nation’s capital. As it turns out, Richmond, Va., landed in 6th place nationally. Perhaps the main difference between the Mid-Atlantic and the Land of Nuts and Sluts is less our fascination with sex (a universal human preoccupation) than our desire for discretion.
— JAB
