The title of my article is inspired by the legendary English essayist Charles Lamb’s “In Praise of Chimney Sweepers”. The reason for this inspiration lies in some similarities which I noticed between the lives of chimney sweepers and porn stars. First, to brief you on Lamb's essay, it is an account of some young kids who have to do the menial, risky, tiresome, and laborious job of cleaning huge chimneys. These poor little kids have to wake up very early, with sleep refusing to let them go off her warm embrace, and go about their business. Meagre diet and humble cottages are their lot. Their dark hands and sooty faces look repulsive to many. Sadly, people don’t realize that if it were not for chimney sweepers’ dirty looks, their unclean chimneys would look much more repulsive. For the drudgery, the young boys get neither respect nor money due to them. They do a thankless, underpaid job.

Porn stars share the fate of chimney sweepers in several ways. One, many of them are forced to work in the blue industry. Two, they are loathed by the same people whose sexual fantasies they help to quench. Three, chances of sexual assaults drop significantly as repressed erotic urges find an outlet; yet porn workers are considered the root cause of these assaults, because some rapist confesses to the court that his animal passion was ignited by a porn movie. There is no denying the fact that some porn art is filthy, stinky, perverted. Yet, from hard-core to soft-core, the porn menu is long and varied. Choice is yours.

Porn stars render a unique service. Nearly everybody enjoys it (though some do secretly). But this service is hardly recognized, let alone respected. On the contrary, porn stars are condemned, disgraced, humiliated, and what not. Their worst condemnation comes from moral cops who are led by the priest. Devoid of common human sense, they brand porn artists as the most disgusting and disgraceful tribe. I believe porn stars are more spiritual than the priest because they give you pleasure now and here, in real time, unlike the latter who promises pleasure somewhere in the heaven, sometime in the future. Porn stars believe in the present moment. That is why, with the priest, your mind may still wander away from what he is offering. It is never the case with what porn stars offer.

No child chooses to blacken his hands to clean others’ houses, not many porn stars choose to blacken their names to clean others’ heads.

At last, if you were to choose to live i. without the porn star ii. without the priest, what would you choose? You need not answer, everybody knows what everybody else would choose.