Say what you will about Jenna Jameson (link to her Internet Movie Database entry, not her super porno homepage), but the woman sure knows how to make money.

I caught the E! True Hollywood story about her the other day — during which I swear to God I saw someone that I remember from my old Uber days, so Carly, if you’re reading this, was that you as the porno expert? — and there’s no denying that Jameson lead an unglamorous life before getting into the business, which makes for a compelling story: Raped at 16, then turned stripper, nude model, porn actress, crack addict, popular porn star, huge brand name, producer, director, studio owner, entrepreneur.

What’s most interesting about Jameson seems to be the way she’s built up her brand through the porno business, and how she continues to adapt it in order to break into the mainstream. One of the most poignant themes in the otherwise very funny Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy is his desperation to become a mainstream Hollywood star, and how he’s thwarted by his own legendary persona over and over again. Jeremy understands the limitations of even his stardom, persumably like anyone else in the porno business, but can’t find a way to overcome it.

Jenna Jameson, on the other hand, seems to be very capably moving over into the mainstream, by two means:

  1. By expanding her persona through an autobiography that is simultaneously vulnerable and hardcore, if reviews are to be believed, and
  2. by using her celebrity to drag porn as a whole out into the daylight, where everyone can see it.

Just like Ron Jeremy, people who haven’t ever even seen a porn movie know who Jenna Jameson is; unlike Ron Jeremy, Jameson has found a way to use her porno image to market herself into the mainstream, and porn has found a way to use her to market the rest of the industry in kind. Obviously you can’t credit the general demarginalizing of porno entirely to Jenna Jameson — the internet deserves most of the credit — but it’s no stretch to see her as the poster girl, and as a canny businesswoman to boot.

Now, with the advent of moan tones, Jameson’s brand name is extended into the growing market of mobile media. For about three bucks, you can buy her utterances and random filthy talk to act as a ringtone for your cell phone; for a few bucks more, you can see her sprawled in various naked shapes and forms on your phone’s background.

In fact, this isn’t new — a cursory search of Google will show that giants like Playboy have already entered this market with offerings of their own. But isn’t it telling that you don’t see the story trickle through Yahoo News until it’s got Jenna’s name attached, which gives some clue to the weight of Jameson’s brand name.

Granted, the core difference between Jameson and Jeremy’s success might have to do with pure anatomy. I think I can safely assume that both men and women would prefer, if forced, to look at and listen to Jenna Jameson before they’d do the same with Ron Jeremy, and is doubly true if we’re talking about them naked. Is anyone going to pay for the privelege of having a naked picture of Ron Jeremy on their phone, or worse yet, hear the guy moan when their phone rings?

Mike: So anyway, I said to him, you can take your TPS reports, and you can–
Ron Jeremy on Mike’s Phone: Ooooyyyyyyyyyy!
Scott: Uh, what the hell was that?
Mike: Never mind. So like I was saying, the TPS reports, and uh–
Ron Jeremy Phone: Oooohhhhhhyyyyyeah baby!
Scott: I think I’m going to throw up.

More than that, though, Jameson is clearly a woman who quickly learned how to sell herself, and has now developed the capability to do it on a grand scale. She has so effectively managed her public image that she is a filthy porn star, a sympathetic self-made woman, a remarkably successful businessperson, and a celebrity whose name is better known than half of Hollywood and most of Broadway. She has a clear understanding of the commodity of fame, and seems fairly expert at cultivating hers.

When otherwise-entirely-pointless celebrities like Paris Hilton or any of the former cast of Baywatch want to gain a few minutes in the spotlight, they just have to “accidentally” allow a sex tape to reach the public eye. But for someone like Jameson, for whom fucking on video is central to her career, the most scandalous thing she can do is just the opposite — remove herself out of the almost alternate universe of porn and very comfortably take up residence in the mainstream, talking candidly about events and adventures that even rock stars would fantasize about while they play pocket pool, without apologizing for any of it.

In other words, while the most visible distinction between Jameson and Jeremy is anatomy, the key difference is savvy. Both have a tremendous pop culture presence, but where Ron Jeremy simply occupies it, Jameson capitalizes on it for every dollar, dime and cent.

Like I said, say what you will about her, she knows how to make money. And with all of this in mind, I don’t think I’d want to mess with her.