Maitland Ward writes about her journey from soap opera and Disney stardom to conquering the adult world, and why age is an advantage in the bedroom.
“ALL YOU HAVE to do is just lay there and let me be Prince Charming,” my partner, who regularly groomed himself like a Ken doll, said to me as he readied to take my virginity. I nodded, because all I knew of sex back then was agreement. He’d move against me in ways that made him appear manly and had me shirking under the weight of his frame as the doe-eyed recipient of his masculinity. This wasn’t porn — that would come later and far better — but it wasn’t real life, either; it was a scene in the soap opera I starred in, The Bold and the Beautiful, and I felt neither. I was seventeen, and all of it seemed scary and embarrassing and, in a way, painfully real to a girl like me who had just lost her cherry in three pumps to a nerd in his high school bedroom. And what’s so different from three pumps and a soap opera set? At least on television I would be swept off my feet in romance. Though neither scenario had me walking my own steps.
But was I supposed to? Wasn’t sex a thing a good girl experienced lying down?
To be a soap opera heroine is to be a virgin, especially in the Nineties. A blank slate for some chiseled man on horseback to make swoon and some flower for him to attain. But once that acquisition is made — usually with violins playing, declarations of eternal love and enough candlelight to set a neighborhood on fire, the character is ripe for torment and heartbreak. Once my character was a real woman, she was tricked, tormented and nearly set on fire — not by the candlelight; by gasoline poured on her by her rapist in his bikini bar. She lived, but I didn’t survive the show. I was let go shortly thereafter, as there was nothing more they could think of to do with the un-virgin.
I dyed my blonde locks red to be noticed as something different. It actually came about purely by accident after dying my hair black to reflect my despair when I was tossed from the soap for being too depressing and too fat (fat being a size 6). My manager told me I had to get on with my existence and not look like a tool for death, so it ended up red. I liked it. Red was fiery and bold and would become a statement piece for my entire career. It also was one of the main reasons I was cast on Boy Meets World.
I was the sexy redhead on the show, though I didn’t feel it. Hollywood had brainwashed me into believing that no matter what I did, everything about me was somehow wrong. I didn’t fit into its mold of perfection, but I don’t think anyone did. I was always playing a game of catchup with myself while using what I knew of sexuality in the scenes, which wasn’t much. During my run on the eternally popular sitcom, I was always the butt of the jokes, which usually involved my butt, and a degree of shaking of it for the studio audience to applaud to. The boys on the show would read my diary and rummage through my underwear drawer, while I’d teach them lessons by flitting around in my towel post a spy-worthy scrub-a-dub-dub and washing dishes in my most provocative lingerie. I’d go up time and again to the Disney production offices to do wardrobe fittings in bras and panties, just to make sure the lingerie wasn’t too sexy but still sexy enough.
This was a confusing time for me. First, on the soap, for my value to be in my virginity and that I was punished for its loss, and then on Boy Meets World being tasked to be “Disney sexual” (a term referring to the furthest boundary that can be pushed before the Mouse tosses his cheese), I was constantly trying to prove my value by both sharing and hiding my body –- and walking the line between both in some strange scenarios. I once choked on a hot dog and was given the Heimlich by Matthew Lawrence, which looked exactly like you’d think. When I wore too little or spoke too much, I was told to be quiet and cover up or I’d be considered at best displeasing for the audience or at worst a whore. When I was more chaste and quieter, I’d be told I need to “sell it more.” That boys at home don’t like a prude.
But what did I like when it came to my own sexuality? And how could I possibly know?
The discovery of my clitoris by my hand was a huge day for me, and it didn’t fully happen until an evening with a glass of wine and a lavender foam bath in my twenties. After watching an episode of Sex and the City, I lit a half-done Christmas candle on the perch by my head and allowed the warm stream from the faucet to run down there. I was shy at first, but I shook it off, quickly rationalizing that the only things watching me were myself, one paper-peeled eye of Santa Claus, and a cascade of flowing water aimed to please. The water wasn’t apologetic about anything; it kept coming and coming until I did. I felt power in my control of the nozzle, something I hadn’t felt before. I could adjust the strength and temperature to whatever I liked. So, I relaxed, listening to the splashing against my flesh and the feelings that were so vibrant. At that moment I was having the best orgasm of my life. And it was all mine.
While this newfound spark had lit something in me, my full sexual awakening didn’t come in my twenties, or even most of my thirties. It was when I turned forty and I became a porn star.
I didn’t just wake up one day and say I want to have sex on camera. I spent the decades between Boy Meets World and joining the adult industry learning who I was not only as a sexual being but as a human who needed to recognize the value of her desires and needs. I hadn’t been treated as a complete human in Hollywood much before, and I don’t think that’s an unfamiliar feeling for women in all walks of life. We trudge through our days pleasing others and being of service and we forget to take care of ourselves. It was in these years I committed to myself that I gained confidence in my body by using it how I wanted. I tip-toed into new experiences that I eventually ran with. I, like many women, didn’t know at 17, or 22, or even 30 who I was and what I wanted. And I discovered it comes with many hours and years standing with shaking toes at the edge of the high board before finally making the dive.
I slipped into a hotel room with a thousand dollars in my pocket and lingerie that didn’t have to be approved by Disney this time to have sex with a British man. He was a professional that I would pay to star in my first full sex film; one that I would sell to my fans. My husband was also there to capture it. This would be my first time filming penetrative sex with another man, for my fans and since I got married. It wasn’t just for profit; I had something to prove to myself. This had been something I’d wanted to do for years — meeting up with a stranger in a hotel and having raucous sex and doing it all on film. But could I really do it? I had discovered I was an exhibitionist and a daredevil and my husband had been so supportive of me throughout my years of personal sexual discovery, but still we wondered how this would go. For a moment, I recalled the many times Hollywood told me how I should perform and behave, and how mixed up that got me, but this time, right before the real thing, I felt confident in taking control for myself. The whole thing was over in a glorious, sweaty flash. My screen partner said he was surprised I wasn’t nervous at all, and he was right — I wasn’t. And, contrary to what everyone believes happens to a marriage in a situation like this, at the end of it my husband and I were fine.
And from there my career was born.
Society tells us that women of a certain age aren’t supposed to embrace their sexuality. Once we leave our twenties our appeal begins to wane, and by forty we’re all shriveled up. I was told by a publicist when I was in my late thirties that no one wanted to see me sexy. That if Hollywood wanted a girl to get naked, they’d get someone who was 25. He claimed he was being helpful and maybe he really thought he was. He was a person who walked the line given to him, but I was not. Still, it made cry, but it also made me think. Why have we been glued for so long to the idea that moms and grandmas grow frigid with age while grandpas keep hopping beds until death, with some of these bed-hops being the cause of their untimely demise? Fuck that, I told myself. I would forge my own path because I knew my publicist was wrong. I would be validated by how wrong he truly was in the weeks and months and years ahead as I built a brand and career off of the thing that he said I could never make a dime on. He didn’t take into account my drive, or my fervently supportive fan base. And he for sure never accounted for the pop culture tidal wave of The MILF.
The term MILF — Mother I’d Like to Fuck — is one of the top searched terms on porn sites across the board. Sexy older women, who are confident in themselves and know exactly what they want from a young lover thrive in scene after scene. While the story of a young man being sexualized by a mature woman has long been a popular taboo, MILFS are now so sewn into our culture that the term is regularly referenced not only in music and mainstream media but also in everyday life. Fergie drove this home with the song, “M.I.L.F. $,” which showcases powerful female celebrity moms thriving in their kickass careers and demonstrating their sexual appeal. The driving force in the popularity of this genre has been younger men who clamor for this content and are more than willing to spend major money on it. The greatest example is the success of mature female creators on OnlyFans.
It shouldn’t be lost that a large number of the highest-earning accounts on OnlyFans are from women over the age of 40. The idea that porn is only a young girl’s game has been debunked by this platform wherein fans can interact with their favorite stars and earn them millions. These women, who in the past may have been aged out of the industry, are finding extraordinary success and proving that the sexual value of women in the world of adult entertainment only increases with age. For someone like me who was told I could never make money being sexy, being a top earner on the site is liberating. For so long, it was carved into our psyches by Hollywood and history that this could never be the case. It was a way to keep women in their places. But thanks to the rise of social media and websites like OnlyFans, women can now write their own narratives when it comes to sex and rake in big bucks.
I got to play with this genre recently for the new Vixen Media Group site MILFY that I helped launch, and I had wicked fun. It felt good to be a woman celebrating my own age, who was unapologetic in her desires and went after exactly what she wanted — namely the handy-dandy fix-it man. Gone were the days of my youth as a soap opera heroine waiting to be made love to and later a Disney princess in little purple lingerie. Those years had seen me as unconfident, shy, and fearful of my own body and being, but now I wasn’t any of those things. I was happy. I was on top in more ways than one. And I realized something: Women don’t lose anything as we age if we don’t want to.
Sometimes I do wish I could tell that young girl doing her first love scene on that soap opera that it will all get better one day. That there will come a time when she’ll discover who she is and what she wants, and that she won’t be waiting endlessly for Prince Charming to come. She’s going to come first.
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