SexHerald: Do you do print stuff, magazine layouts and such?

April Flores: Yes. I do print stuff. I’ve been on the cover of Big Butt Magazine twice. I do pretty much whatever comes my way and I feel like it’s a new opportunity for me. I’ll try it. So yes, if I get more opportunities to do print work I’ll go for it. I love being in magazines and I love still photography. It’s how I got started. I’m very comfortable being in front of a still camera and I love the outcome.

SH: Tell me what Voluptuous Life is about. It is a documentary?

Flores: It’s kind of like an erotic documentary. We shot it over a year, year and a half, all over the country, throughout my travels with friends. Each girl in the scene is a friend of mine, so that added to the intimacy level. As you saw, there were many different body types, body shapes, ethnicities and sexualities. I’m just trying to play with redefining what’s beautiful; helping women who may not be the quote unquote “skinny perfect size.” Helping more normal girls feel that they can express their sexuality and feel sexy even though they’re not a size 2.

SH: Exactly. I don’t think a girl has to be a size 2 to be sexy, and I hope to see more big women in porn. I think most guys like big women.

Flores: Yeah, because most women are closer to my body type than other body types because this is a more average body type. There are so many people that like so many different things.

SH: What I liked about the movie was seeing you perform with thinner, smaller girls which is something you rarely see in porn but I’m sure it happens all the time in the real world. I don’t understand why we can’t see it more often in porn.

Flores: Right, that’s true.

SH: So, thank you for depicting that. Normally you only see two big women together or two thin women, never a big woman with a thinner one. Here you have different body shapes going at it.

Flores: Thank you for saying that. Kimberly Kane is a good friend of mine and she did a scene with me. She invited me to be in her film, Morphine, which she directed and it’s coming out soon. So you’ll see another juxtaposition of a bigger girl with a skinny girl. I think our bodies look really cool together because we have a similar skin tone. We’re just so different in our body shapes. And that’s something else I wanted to touch on with Voluptuous Life; [that] is, not only looking at the body in terms of skinny or thin but just looking at them as shapes, like forms of art: visually juxtaposing all different types together and playing with it that way.

SH: Do you get a lot of fan mail, emails from fans who admire your shape or just in love with you?

Flores: Most of the emails I get are from women and I love it. And most of them are reinforcing what I’m trying to get across that we can be bigger but we can also be sexy. We can show our bodies, we can dress sexy and feel sexy, and we’re not going to let our weight determine our self-esteem.

SH: Did you have a particular audience in mind with this movie? Who were you most trying to target?

Flores: Carlos Batts directed the movie and he and I have been working together for eight years now. Our purpose has always evolved, but it has always been the main purpose of showing a different body type and showing it in a different light. So I don’t want to say that there was a particular audience that was in mind, but the message of being bigger can be sexy was definitely the message. Audience, there wasn’t a specific one. I’m sure men, but also women, and couples. I get a lot of emails from couples and they enjoy my website (FattyD.com) and the movies.

SH: I got the feeling that this movie wasn’t really made for the big girl, niche audience. The audience was more general.

Flores: Right, and we were trying to make art as well as some sexy stuff.

SH: There was a scene where you were pole dancing. Do you strip? Do you do erotic dancing?

Flores: No. That was my friend. She is an amazing dancer. She works here in LA. She was giving me a lesson on the pole. I tried. [Laughs] I’m just not really as coordinated, or maybe if I could have more practice, maybe I could pull off a few tricks. But no, it was for the story and for the visual.

SH: Who are the other girls in the movie? You mentioned Kimberly Kane before. Who else stars in the movie?

Flores: The dancer’s name is Cherry; she’s a really good friend of mine. The drag queen is Frida. Peppermint Fatty was in there. She had on a matching outfit as me, like a striped dress.

SH: Do you consider yourself an adult star, a porn star, or an erotic entertainer? What would you consider yourself?

Flores: I would consider myself an erotic entertainer. I’ve been playing around with different ways to define what I do because for me it’s pretty hard to label things and define clearly what I’m doing and what I do. So, I’ve been playing around with the words erotic performer.

SH: How would you define beauty?

Flores: I would say definitely confidence equates beauty. Self-love. I would mainly say confidence equates beauty because if you’re confident within yourself and you’re happy with yourself, then you can feel beautiful and no matter what anyone says to you, it won’t penetrate you or get you down. So, I think that’s beautiful.

SH: So if I asked you what’s sexy, would that be it as well, confidence?

Flores: Confidence. Sexiness is, of course, confidence but there also has to be sense of humor. Confidence and a sense of humor, and also the way one carries himself has a thousand percent to do with their sexiness. Just how the way that you carry yourself.

SH: Do you hope Voluptuous Life will show people that big women can be beautiful? Is that a goal that you have?

Flores: Definitely. And I also want to challenge people who don’t think big women are beautiful. I want to spark something in them and maybe have them challenge themselves as to why they feel that way, or not. Whatever. But if I get a reaction from someone, then the job is done.

SH: Do you like the term BBW, and would you consider yourself a BBW?

Flores: The term BBW is OK. Like I said earlier, I don’t feel comfortable with labels and terms that define body types which can vary so much. Big beautiful women does sound beautiful but I prefer the word voluptuous.

SH: BBW almost sounds comical in a way.

Flores: Yeah, it could have a different type of connotation. I think voluptuous, curvy, meaty [are better].

There’s nothing wrong with that term at all. I just feel like it’s too narrow of a term. It’s just three letters that are used to define so many other things. So I think that there needs to be more terms created to give it more variety because all the women, including BBWs all the way down to my size or smaller, we’re all different. It’s a big language so we can find other terms to describe us.

SH: In general, what kind of people are you attracted to?

Flores: I’m attracted to people who are confident and funny. I try to be funny a lot but I’m never funny. So if someone is funny, it’s really something that’s sexy to me. And also the way people carry themselves. I like people who are friendly and not negative. So I try to surround myself with positive people and I like to be around people who are creating stuff and doing stuff, supportive and positive.

SH: You are bisexual. Are you more attracted to men or women?

Flores: That’s something again that there is such a broad scale—be straight or gay. I love women. They’re so sexy, so beautiful, they’re the best kissers. I love going down on women. Every woman has a different taste. I love tasting them for the first time. I love eating a girl out. But, I do love men.

SH: Have you always been big?

Flores: Yeah. I was never the skinny girl in class. I was never the biggest girl in class. I was like I am right now, kind of in the middle.

SH: Were you teased because of it?

Flores: Not extremely teased but yeah, I had comments made by random people. One thing that really hurt my feelings was once I was just playing tennis with my church group, and I had bent over to pick up the tennis ball, and these two random boys just rode by on their bicycles and they screamed “Fat ass,” to me. That was the most hurtful thing ever because I didn’t even know these guys. I didn’t do anything to them, they just felt the need to say fat ass to me. That was devastating. For a lot of my preteen and teen years, I felt my happiness was directly equated to my weight. I thought if I was skinnier, I would be happier. I always idolized thin. I wanted to be skinnier, I wanted to lose weight. And I thought I wouldn’t have any problems if I was skinny.

Then finally I did lose a lot of weight. I was like 120 pounds and was skinny, and I realized my life is the same. You have the same problems no matter what your size is, your happiness is determined in your mind. If you want to be happy you have to work at it, and it’s not based on your weight. So once I learned that, once I started gaining weight again, everyone around me was freaking out. “Ohmigod, you’re gaining weight!” But I was happy in myself and confident finally. I didn’t care. I knew it was OK and I was going to be fine.

SH: Did you have any serious weight issues or starve yourself to lose weight?

Flores: No, I never had an eating disorder. When I lost all that weight, it was during some weird time in my life where I was eating once a day and I was going through so much. I guess eating that much a day will make you lose that much weight, but it wasn’t a healthy way to do it. My weight just started coming off because I was in a bad relationship and I was just so stressed out. The stress would give me anxiety and the anxiety would make me not want to eat. So when I would eat it would just be that little bit. So that’s how I lost the weight. But it wasn’t a healthy road or anything that I would want to do again.

SH: Of course, now you’re happy with the weight.

Flores: Yeah, now my happiness is determined by my brain and my head. If I want to lose weight, I will do it. I will exercise and eat less, and that’s what you do. It gets on my nerves when people focus on how fat they think they look. If you think you’re fat and want to lose weight, just eat less, exercise more, and shut the fuck up! [Laughs]

SH: Would you consider the Voluptuous Life a porn film?

Flores: I don’t know. I guess some people would consider it porn, most would not because it’s not the straightforward, five sex scenes, whatever the general format is for a porn. There is a sex scene in it but I would consider it more like a documentary/art film with sex in it.

SH: And how far do you want to go in porn? Do you see yourself doing more hardcore stuff, features, doing boy/girl scenes . . .

Flores: Doing the men I’m not really sure right now. It’s not something I want to do right now. So far, I’ve done all girl/girl scenes. I’m so lucky that every scene that I’ve done so far has been with a friend. So there’s already the mutual attraction and the established trust and friendship that I think comes across in the scene. As far as doing more hardcore, I just finished filming a film with Carlos Batts which is called Kiss Attack. There are two hardcore scenes in there with two of my friends, so I just kind of go with the flow of what happens. Doing more hardcore, I think yeah I’m going to keep doing that. Doing it with men, I’m not sure yet.

SH: What kind of women are you sexually attracted to? Do you have a particular type of woman you like?

Flores: That’s the weird thing. With me and the way I’m attracted to men and women, I don’t base my attraction on looks. I base it on chemistry and just that certain something that you can’t really explain but just makes you attracted to certain people. It’s more on that level for women. If I get along with her and she’s cool, you break that level. If she’s friendly, then you break another level. Attraction has different levels for me, especially with women when you first meet them. You have to say to yourself, “Is she nice? Do we get along?” So it’s more of the thing where you can’t really explain it but you’re just drawn to someone, and I’m the same with men. I don’t base anything on looks or size or weight or anything, or race.

SH: So, it’s personality then.

Flores: Personality and that whatever else. The X factor I guess. I don’t know. [Laughs]

SH: Who have you enjoyed working with?

Flores: I loved working with Belladonna. She was amazing. She’s a very nice person. I’ve worked a lot with Kimberly Kane. I hope we can work together again in the future. She’s a great girl. So, it’s pretty much all the girls I’ve worked with. I admire them and I love them.

SH: That scene you did with Belladonna in Evil Pink 2 was hot. She looked really into you and looked like she really wanted to fuck the shit out of you. You were the submissive one in that movie.

Flores: I think so. It was my first scene ever. So, I didn’t really know what to expect so I just kind of followed her lead. That’s a good example of attraction because the first time I met her she was very sweet and we had eye contact, and there was an attraction there. The way the scene started off in Evil Pink was just us really heavily kissing and making out. I think that set the tone for the rest of the scene.

SH: If you had the power to change something about porn, what would you like to see changed?

Flores: I think it would be really great if they could all organize a union, that way they could get healthcare and have someone represent them if they ever get into a sticky situation. I think a porn union would be a great idea. I think that would help out a lot.

SH: Do you have any personal goals?

Flores: I just want to keep evolving and taking every opportunity that comes my way. I do a lot of erotic modeling. I do some burlesque dancing. I do a lot of stuff so I just want to keep growing as an individual, whether it be in porn or just in every aspect of my life.