Becoming Belle Knox is a five part docu-series about the story of Miriam Weeks, the Duke University student who gained prominence when it was revealed she was doing porn to send herself to school.
Known by her stage name “Belle Knox,” also as “the Duke porn star,” Weeks says it was Condé Nast who came to her with the concept for the series.
“I was approached by Condé Nast about doing a documentary about my life. I feel like with my story there are a lot of misunderstandings about who I am, and nuances about being a student and a sex worker,” Weeks said in a report. “The documentary really humanizes me. I’m proof that porn stars can be real people.”
Condé Nast Entertainment, the publisher behind Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, produced the docu-series on their digital site, The Scene. The series hopes to reaffirm the idea that no one but sex workers should be able to decide what’s best for sex workers.
Is porn really empowering Belle Knox or degrading her?
In the documentary, the Duke porn star talks about how she loves what she does, and why she makes no apologies for joining the adult industry to pay tuition. She also admits to having grown a great deal since she started doing porn: “I think my experiences have aged me,” she says in the documentary. “I don’t have the mind of an 18-year-old. I kind of have the mind and the emotional baggage of somebody much, much older than me.”
The series is a glimpse into the world of porn, showing details like how Knox got tested for STDs among others. Both moving and illuminating, it tries to dispel the misconceptions and fantasies the public has about the industry.
In talking about how life has changed since she was outed, the struggle of attending school, and being cyber-bullied, Knox reveals the burden that sex workers are forced to bear as a consequence of the cultural condemnation of their profession. At one point, she says flatly, “A lot of sh*t in my life has been ruined because of sex.”