This feature article appears in the March 2025 issue of X3 magazine, dedicated to capturing the genuine personalities, passions, and stories of emerging and established stars. X3 is published by XBIZ Media.
When Penny Barber took home the 2025 XMAs trophy for MILF Performer of the Year, she was 39 — but she’d already been telling people she was a MILF for almost 20 years.
“I got into the industry as an 18-year-old back in 2003,” she confides to X3. “A couple of years later, I started calling myself a MILF. It was silly at the time, but I ran with it. I was like, ‘I can play older!’ I felt like I had a very maternal MILF vibe in my content, even at that age. But I had a baby face, so I wasn’t fooling anybody!” she laughs. “Eventually I got older and grew into what I’d always liked.”
What Barber liked turned out to be what quite a lot of fans liked as well, as demonstrated by the size and enthusiasm of her devoted following.
Sitting down for coffee at North Hollywood’s iconic Republic of Pie — where she will most definitely not order the signature strawberry-rhubarb pie because “Strawberries? Ew!” — Barber talks about the challenge of catering to her legion of fans while also maintaining a healthy boundary between her public persona as “Penny Barber, MILF extraordinaire” and her private life.
“I try to keep it a hard delineation,” she explains. “The only thing I really talk about publicly is the fact that I’m married. I’ve sometimes been advised not to, but it’s kind of on-brand, right? ‘You know, mommy’s married.’ I do get some fans leaving comments like, ‘Oh, I wish you weren’t married…’ But I am very happily married and have been for 13 years. He’s not going anywhere, guys!”
What exactly does “on brand” mean for Barber these days?
“Fit suburban mom, as polished as possible,” she summarizes. “I don’t have tattoos — I just have my ears pierced.”
The “fit” part is a more recent development, helping her to stand out in the crowded MILF genre.
“I started working out because I was sleeping with this dude who really liked fit women, and so I decided to get ripped,” Barber reveals. “Now I guess it’s a thing. Yup, I did it for dick — and the dick is no longer around, but I’m still ripped!”
Another important aspect of the private Penny Barber that overlaps with her public persona is her relentless passion for cinema.
“I finally just started a Letterboxd,” she announces. “My girlfriend put her foot down and said, ‘You need to have one!’”
Each of her top four films on the site reflects a different kind of sublime artistry. Three are darkly whimsical animated features: “Blood Tea and Red String” (2006), “Son of the White Mare” (1981) and “Empress of Darkness” (2020). The fourth is an erotic romance: “The Duke of Burgundy” (2014).
“It’s this beautifully shot lesbian film,” Barber gushes, livening up instantly when the subject of cinema arises. “There’s no men in it at all. It has this really gorgeous, kind of subdued natural color palette. I really like it because — unlike a lot of love stories, which are either about the beginning or the end of a relationship — this one is about the middle of a relationship. It’s a BDSM relationship between two women, where the dom is having trouble fulfilling the sub’s fantasies. This is the kind of film it is: They had a perfumist! I would love one day to make a film that was so fetishistic and so aesthetic that we had to have a perfumist on set.”
Barber’s career has led her from “kinky mommy dom” fame and taboo/fetish content to directing her own projects, a pursuit to which she applies her high personal cinematic standards and auteurial vision.
Asked to describe that vision, Barber reflects for a moment before offering, “Dark. I like a subversive element in what I’m doing. So much content gets put out that is just a couple of people fucking, to be blunt. I don’t really know why people pay for it. To me, it’s boring, and also you can probably get it for free. When I do something, the storyline is very important to me.”
To demonstrate her point, Barber cites the example of the Japanese market, where performers’ genitals are pixelated.
“You can’t see anything, but they’re spending way more money,” she observes. “Why is that? Production values and storyline. My husband is a big fan of Japanese hypnosis porn — what we call ‘mind control porn’ — and now I’ve become a huge fan. A lot of times there’s a more involved storyline and they’ll do special effects. There are no subtitles so I don’t even know exactly what they’re saying, but the acting is so on-point that I can still follow the storyline and I know what’s happening. I think that says something.”
Although mind control is not one of her biggest kinks, Barber admits that she is drawn to fetishes that “blur the line.”
“You know that saying, ‘Everything is about sex — except for sex, which is about power’?” she asks. “I think that’s what it is with consensual non-consent. That’s certainly what I enjoy about it: the power dynamic. I’m a switch, so I like being the one who’s being coerced or the one who’s doing the coercing. I’m happy either way. And it’s all ultimately consensual.”
The constant search for the perfect combination of dark themes and enhanced production values is the potent formula that drives Barber as a creator. She spends her time honing her skills through reading — she recommends the “Master Shots” series — and studying video tutorials like the Full Time Filmmaker YouTube community. Her film and TV consumption is similarly purposeful.
“I just started watching the Korean thriller series ‘Mask Girl’ on Netflix,” she shares. “It’s very slick, high-tech cinematography that really serves the story, which is about the internet. Sound design is also extremely important to me. I would never skimp on sound design. In adult, sound design has gotten better, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. If you want to make porn that is elevated — and as a business you do because that’s what people are likely to pay for — you have to assume people are going to watch with the sound on, and put a little money on that. It’s so worth it. You don’t need a special lens or a special helicopter or anything. You just need to take the time to do it right.
“Whatever I make, I want it to be ‘ne plus ultra’ — the best version, the superlative version of that thing. Whatever I’m going to do, I want to go all in and just 1,000% do that. If we’re going to do something really raunchy, that needs a very hand-held, gritty look to it. I think that the most important thing is to fully embody the genre.”
Barber has also learned by watching her colleagues and working for the masters of the craft. As one of a select few performers chosen to help launch Vixen’s MILFY brand, she starred in multi-award-winner Kayden Cross’ 2023 title “Perfect Touch,” which she cites as a particular inspiration.
“It was me and Dante Colle,” she recalls. “Kayden got all these beautiful slow-motion shots of me cooking. I remember when I looked at the script, I was like, ‘What is this?’ It looked a little odd to me, and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. But then I got to see it all cut together and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been in.’ That was a true learning experience for me.”
Parlaying that inspiration into action, Barber recently shot a special Valentine’s Day scene with Jasmine Sherni, for which she made her costume, booked a location, selected the lenses and even set up the lights.
“I was the one standing on the bed, duct-taping a tube light to the ceiling and trying to make sure it wasn’t going to fall down,” she says. “I think it is absolutely gorgeous, and I’m especially proud of it because I did everything for it.”
If she could time-travel back to the mid-2000s and give her baby-faced, MILF-wannabe younger self a few pointers based on what she has learned during her climb to the current high echelon she occupies in the adult realm, Barber says she would reassure that greener version of her, “Effort is always rewarded. Always.”
“I’d also tell her that it is worth it, especially in today’s industry, to learn all the skills you can on your own,” she affirms. “Take the time to educate yourself and just try, try, try. I myself am always trying to make beautiful, cinematic porn that I’m proud of. Anybody can churn out content and make money, but so much content is disposable. I don’t want to make content like that. I want to make stuff that becomes a cult classic, that people watch over and over and over again because they love it.
“I’m trying to make something beautiful,” she concludes. “Something that’s going to stand the test of time.”
To view the full pictorial in X3 magazine, click here.
