There's a bit of a terminology problem. I remember Alisha Klass talking about her burgeoning "mainstream" career which consisted of a couple of featured extra spots as a stripper. Howard Stern is "mainstream" to them. Anything involving not having sex for money is "mainstream."

I've always wondered why some girls will go the slasher and sexploitation films while others jump right into the double-anal circus. And a lot of it is persistence. The shit you see on Cinemax is cut-rate and filled with more ridiculous subplots than porn but breaking in at least requires more than some seedy "agent" with a shaved head and goatee shoving his dick in your mouth for a POV "audition".

And though shorter and less explicit, the films are actually hotter than anything that the "feature directors" in XXX have shot, probably because of the tease factor. "How much am I going to see?" With porn, there's not much doubt you're going to see anything and raincoaters would burn the rental house to the ground if they didn't see it all.

With the exception of a few notoriously good looking chicas in porn, like my stalkee Taylor Hayes, most girls in softcore are better looking, too. With chicas like Maria Ford, or the ex-Playmates like India Allen or Lisa Boyle, it's like seeing a supermodel with her clothes off. And without parolees.

I'm not exactly a big fan of either, but softcore is pretty much the ceiling of "mainstream" for these girls, and most of them don't have much opportunity there, either (there was that one guy, Robert Lombard, who said he was casting them). I don't see why more couldn't do it if they could be bothered to read a script, keep from tattoooing their bodies into a Triple-A roadmap of Topeka and getting some professional headshots done. They might not be as attractive as some of the above but they're probably cheaper.