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You wouldn't know it by looking at her now, but porn star Belle Knox used to feel very insecure about her body.
Knox, a Duke University student who made national headlines in February when she was outed as an adult performer, describes her "nerdy" high school self as having faced some serious hardship in a new documentary web series, "Becoming Belle Knox."
The series follows Knox, whose real name is Miriam Weeks, as she goes about her dual life as both a porn star and a college student. In the third episode, below, while on set for a photo shoot, a makeup artist is shown carefully covering up the scars that stripe Knox's inner thigh.
"When I was like in eighth grade, I cut myself," Knox explains in the documentary. "I had like a hand mirror and I punched it, and I took one of the shards and I wrote the word 'fat' into my thigh, so it would always remind me when I looked in the mirror, that I was fat."
Knox wrote in XOJane last March that "Like many young women grappling with depression, I used to take it out on myself."
She's been "clean" from such self-harm for five years now, she said. The revelation of her previous self-harm is juxtaposed with the photo shoot, where she puts on display the body she's since become proud of.
"I like the assertive, passionate person that I'm becoming because of porn," Knox explains in episode two. "It's such a contrast from being that helpless little girl who had no control over her body to being Belle, this sexually in control, empowered porn star."
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Watch the full series at Thescene.com. Please also note that the clip below is NSFW.