By Alex Wunrow | Photos by Patrick Wright

Valerie Dodds, perhaps better known as Val Midwest, was at the center of one of the most controversial stories in Lincoln this year. She made national headlines when she took provocative photos at the Pius X high school campus. She’s been arrested four times for public nudity, and after all of the media coverage, she was invited to star in a photo shoot for Hustler magazine. She is the cover girl, centerfold and main story of Hustler’s holiday issue (in newsstands now). Despite a chorus of negative comments, Val has continued to churn out content on her amateur website, conduct radio and print interviews, all the while waiting to see what her sentencing will be on Dec. 20 for her public nudity charges. She took some time out of her busy schedule to sit down for an interview and a photo shoot with Seeds Entertainment.

Seeds: Can you sum up your career currently, what you do day to day, and how things have picked up for you (since your Hustler cover story)?

Val: Pretty much after I got on the news my facebook blew up, and everyone wanted to talk to me. I’ve been doing some radio interviews, and I have this radio show in Alabama that I do every friday. Then aside from that it is pretty much interviews every single day. I also work out every morning, and I have two dogs that I take care of.

Seeds: What do you think the impact of your Hustler centerfold and cover story will have on your career?

Val: Well I have a couple of reality TV show offers, where they would want to shoot basically what I do here in Lincoln. Then, I’m hoping it gets me magazine offers and other things like that. Playboy hasn’t hit me up yet, but Playboy TV has asked me to run a reality TV show. So I’m guessing the magazine might come with that. I do promote for Girls Gone Wild and they promote me all over their website.

Seeds: So how did you get into this, and when you decided you wanted to get into it porn, how did you think it would go? And have things gone the way you expected them to go?

Val: Well, no. I first saw that Melissa Midwest had an article saying that she was looking for new models. And I had heard of her, but then I went to her website to see what she was doing, and I was like, ‘oh my God, that is nothing like anything anyone I know is doing.’ My friends were all going to college and a lot of them have dropped out because they were partying too much. And I decided I wasn’t going to go to college just yet and risk wasting a bunch of money. So I decided I was gonna go fuck around, and then when I want to be serious I want to go to college. After that I decided to go set up an interview with Melissa, and she was like, ‘Oh my God, you are perfect.’ They were looking for a new face of the company, and it was awesome because I got the “Midwest” title that Melissa had had for a long time. And I’m doing way better than we expected as far as getting the cover of a magazine. Melissa took longer than a year until she started getting noticed. But for me it has been less than six months.

Seeds: You said you’ll think about going to college when you “get serious,” what age do you define as time to “get serious?”

Val: Well I’ve grown up a lot in the industry, I’m the youngest one in the room a lot of the time. Everyone is always older, they’re all at least 21 and they’ll go out for drinks after work and I can’t go. I was at the Hustler shoot and everyone was talking about going to the club afterwards, and I was like, ‘Oh… have fun…’ and it sucked because they were like, “Dude, we’ve never ran into the problem of a girl not being old enough to go out drinking with us.” And it sucks not being able to get the full experience, but I’ve grown up a lot through all of this. I used to go out and party here before I got in to all of this, but now it’s work and I feel like I’ve grown up as far as all of that stuff goes. So college is actually something I was looking into, and I was going to start this current semester, but then everything picked up and I don’t really have the time for it right now. And it’s obviously something I’m not going to do if I don’t have the time to do it well. I barely have enough time to handle all of the interviews and everything else I’m doing right now. I don’t know, I mean I still want to go to college, but right now it isn’t really an option. Things are going pretty great right now, and I’m just going to see where this takes me. But you can still always go to college, at least in my mind. I want to do interior design, and I’ve also thought about doing criminal justice. I’m super into, this sounds creepy, but people who do crazy stuff like kidnap people. I just like finding out why would they do that, and what is wrong with them. So that’s the type of person that I am. But after I started redecorating my house recently I was like, ‘Hmm, I really like doing this.’ And I don’t like hearing sad stories, and criminal justice is full of sad stories. So I figured maybe I should stay away from criminal justice. I’m a positive person and that type of thing can wear you down. I actually thought that all of the negative comments that I’ve got from all of the stuff I’ve done here in Lincoln would wear me down, but I actually have a really positive outlook on that. I just don’t let anything bother me, people all the time will say mean things to me, so it’s important for me to keep a positive outlook.

Seeds: Are you pretty good at tuning out the negative comments?

Val: Yeah, I actually don’t tune them out. I’m a fighter, so I like to fight back. I like to piss people off, so if someone is like, ‘You’re so ugly,’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ Then they’re all, ‘Well, duuhhh I don’t know.’ And then someone else will say, ‘Oh, you’re a ho,’ and I’ll just say, ‘Ok, I’ve heard that one before.’ I’ll walk through the mall here in Lincoln, and someone will come up to me and tell me I’m a slut, and I’ll just say, ‘Oh stop, you’re turning me on.’ If I took everything seriously I would turn into that girl in the Hustler magazine with fake boobs and fake lips, but I’m all natural and just don’t let anyone tell me what to do. I’m comfortable with the way I look, and if I was actually ugly I wouldn’t be getting on the covers of magazines, so I try and take everything in stride.

Seeds: We can talk about some lighter stuff for a minute. What was your favorite movie this year?

Val: Well I just saw the Hunger Games 2, and I really liked it. It was super awesome. It’s funny, I went with a group of guy friends, and they were all, ‘This is a chick flick.’ And I just told them, “It’s kids killing other kids, how is this a chick flick?”

Seeds: What are your thoughts on the upcoming sentencing you have, and how do you expect the local media to cover it?

Val: I always have the local media that calls me, saying, ‘Hey, what’s going on with everything?’ It’s funny because Shane [Val’s manager] called me and told I had court, because they had new evidence. And when I was there the judge didn’t really tell me anything, and I had left without being told I was guilty or not guilty. So I called Shane and told him that they didn’t know what they were doing yet and that we would find out in a couple days. And so the next day Shane is calling me, and I turn on the TV and I see: ‘Local porn star is found guilty.’ And I’m like, ‘What the fuck, how do they know before me?’ And Shane is like, ‘Dude, why didn’t you tell me?’ So I just told him I found out from the TV, and they hadn’t told me or my lawyers beforehand. It’s weird, I just think I should have been notified first. So, my sentencing is Dec. 20, and they will tell me if I have to go to jail. I don’t think I will have to go to jail, but I did get arrested four times for public nudity, so it could be a possibility.

Seeds: What are the typical sentences for offenses like that?

Val: It’s a misdemeanor, and normally people don’t have four of them. Normally it is just a fine, but since I have four of them they are going to try and fuck with me and play games. Which is cool, because I’m a game player. We will see how that goes, I hope I don’t have probation because if I do get the reality TV show I’m practically stuck here. But if things continue to go great like they are, I do want to move to either Vegas or Florida. Vegas is just closer to Hustler and Playboy out in Cali, but I am in love with Florida. If I could just relax and go down there and get away from the craziness that would be great. Maybe I just need a vacation. Normally the news media, the only thing, there is a girl who writes for the Journal Star, and she wrote an article about me that was rude. So I called the lady, because she had just wrote about how I didn’t have any plans, and I told her if you ask me to do an interview I will, you can still write mean stuff about me, but you need to get your facts straight. Because I do want to go to college, I just decided to put it off because I was watching all of my friends fail out and waste a bunch of money. And she just told me that she wants to write an article a year down the road just to see where I’m at. So I told her okay, and that I would probably be farther and farther and farther away from you. So we will see if you can get ahold of me.

Seeds: That kind of ties in with my last question, because people like the woman who wrote that column tend to say ‘oh, pornography is bad for women, it just treats women terribly.’ But you seem to genuinely be enjoying your life and what you are doing. How do you respond to that?

Val: They don’t see the other side of what we are doing. It might look crazy, but I think it just depends on who you are. Because when you get into the business, you can let the business run you, or you can run it. So if you let them run it for you, you will be on drugs, and you will be fucked every position, and your pussy is going to be worn out. You’re going to be that washed up girl, so I think it takes a strong person who isn’t going to listen to other people. Because if you do that you’re gonna get fake everything, and that is just not me. So I think I run everything my way, as far as I don’t let anyone tell me what to do. I don’t even do anal anything. They do try and get you to do it, but then I’ll just push back and say, ‘Do you even want me to be here?’ And then they’ll usually apologize and we can move past it. I think girls just let other people tell them what to do too much. You just need to be a strong woman when you go into it, and say I will do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and how I want to do it. That’s how it is, and that is how it should be.