subject: Here's How It Happened: Joanna Angel Was Just Another Student Attending Rutgers University [print this page] Here's how it happened: Joanna Angel was just another student attending Rutgers University. She wasn't a stripper, hadn't watched - let alone performed in - any porno, and didn't think of herself a model. Then her roommate asked her if she wanted to start a porn site. And she said yes.
"I had no intention of starting a porn site or a porn company or a porn anything/ Joanna says, "It just sounded like fun, like starting a band or something. I didn't know anything about porn, it just sounded exciting."
She also had the idea to mix the naked pictures with other content on passion-girls.biz, like interviews with friends' bands. An English major. Angel was excited by the opportunity to write some funny and erotic stories and to so licit them from friends.
"We were punk rock kids in college," she says. "It was kind of like starting a zine and it became a reflection of my life. The only people that were going to be on the website would be our friends. We kind of tried to go to our sluttiest friends and we found it ironic that none of our sluttiest friends wanted to be on our site/
Armed with a complete lack of knowledge of the industry they were trying to break into and no money, they persevered. In order to get things started, Joanna realized she was going to need to get in front of the camera herself. She pulled out a bra and underwear set that she'd bought to wear for a boyfriend on Valentine's Day and she was ready to go.
"It was fun," she says. "I felt like a little sexual demon was in me. After that I became a very good cheerleader for my own cause. I thought it was oool and I didn't see anything wrong with it.'
The site launched with photos of Joanna and three other girls, five sets total. Updates were every six weeks (compared to the current four times weekly schedule). The target date was the day of a big punk show at a New Jersey skateboarding venue because they wanted to hand out fliers at the concert.
"We thought if we didn't get it up by that day there was no point in doing it at all," Joanna says, admitting that she doesn't even remember who was playing at what, at the time, seemed like the biggest show ever. 'So we did it. I think if somebody has an idea, the best thing to do is to just get something up, even if it's awful, because then you're going to work on it and make it better. Otherwise you can have an idea in the works for years and just keep trying to perfect it before unleashing it. It's like a Irving, breathing thing that you can fix and work on. You have to make the commitment and once you go online you are going to get some kind of reaction from someone.'
