I lovehate Sasha Grey. I love that she's smart and multidimensional (more on that later). I love her look. I hate the solipsism and pretentiousness. I hate the over-the-top, exaggerated performances.

Yes, I do think she's smart. She's had an intuitive sense of branding and has delivered on her brand from the tender age of 18. She identified a niche market and exploited it (fanbois who need to rationalize the desire to debase women). She's articulate. She has a broad range of outside interests. She's a hard worker and is by all accounts a consummate professional.

That said, maybe she's smoked a little too much of her own dope with the "I want to push the limits of sexuality and give permission to women to yadda yadda yadda". You can do that off-camera, easily. There is nothing in her body of work that hasn't been seen before a million times.

I also can't help but find it a little bit sad that someone with her brains aimed so low. Smart as she is, I'm not sure she fully understands at the age of 21 that her decision to become Sasha Grey will impact her for the rest of her life, and not in a positive way. 200-250k a year, if it's that much, seems to me like a piddly amount to have your choices limited so severely.

The irony (and I know I'm not using irony in the correct sense of the word) is that she would have made a much better high class whore than a porn whore. I think she would have been the rare one who socks her money away while putting herself through grad school and walks away with her privacy intact.