Nina Hartley Featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine

NEW YORK — Cosmopolitan magazine is continuing its love affair with the adult industry this time profiling legend Nina Hartley.

Hartley chronicled her early days in adult for the magazine, talking about her dancing in San Francisco in 1982 at the Sutter Cinema and later on at the infamous Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. She also discussed her penchant for being a feminist.

“I was dancing one day a week and going to nursing school five days a week. Dancing was the culmination of a longtime history of public exhibitionism. I'm a '70's feminist, and I was told I had the right to live my life sexually on my terms and the responsibility to do it in a safe manner. For me stripping was that way. That was the place for women to go to be looked at naked while remaining safe,” Hartey told Cosmo.

The star also recalled her personal life experimenting with long-term relationships of more than one partner and just why she still performs in her late 50's.

“I do it for my own jollies, but also because in our culture, sexuality is sick and sick people need a nurse's care. People are suffering with sexuality, suffering from not being able to be at home in their bodies, at home in their skin. They're suffering from not being able to make human connections with other people on a healthy and safe and pleasurable level,” Hartley said.

She explained that people were hungry for sexual information and how to pleasure their partners back in the day, and how her dancing gave her insight into their plight.

While a dancer, Hartley said she always wanted to be in porn and got her opportunity after meeting Juliet Anderson, whom she described as the original MILF before it was a category. Hartley went on to star in Anderson’s directorial debut, “Educating Nina” in 1984.

Now, categorized as a “mature “performer, Hartley is candid about how she’s aged in the business as a MILF.

“Porn capitalized on that concept very well and came up with a category. Cougars and MILFs — it's been going on for about 10 years. A lot of decent, middle-age, middle-class married guys are parents, and it creeps them out to watch women who are their daughters' ages. Also, wives have a lot of power over what kind of adult material gets brought into the home. She's not going to have her husband watching twentysomethings, but she's going to be OK with him watching thirty-, forty-, or fiftysomethings. Boomers are aging, and a lot of boomers would rather look at someone who looks more like them,” Hartley said.

But the legendary actor feels she’ll still have legs in adult even after she quits performing. She said, “I see myself as a mix between Dr. Ruth and [sex educator] Betty Dodson. I love the idea of helping other people have sex.”