A wise person pointed out that we really should prioritize posting all the interviews from last AEE before we go to AEE again and get a bunch more. Wise people can be really annoying, although we will admit that visiting with Lena Polanski again did keep us from whining too much.
Conversation with Lena Polanski
Performers in this business have been known to change their names with some regularity. Certainly no one gets surprised by that anymore (although the model release database people do tend to get rather annoyed). Someone changing her name FROM the famous Penthouse Pet one TO another name, though, now that doesn’t happen every day. We caught up with Lena, a.k.a. Destiny Rose (July 2022 Pet of the Month) at the AEE to ask her about that … and a few more things.
Penthouse: We are here at AVN 2024 with our Little Polish Angel!
Lena: Actually… You know what? Last month I had a project for my class. It was a marketing class, and we were supposed to create a marketing plan for a Brand. I chose Penthouse, and I had to do 30 pages of analysis, of marketing, of Penthouse and its social media. … So far you’re doing a great job.
Penthouse: Thank you! We appreciate you saying that. OK, first question, what should we call you? Because we printed you as Destiny Rose, but we know you have stopped using that name.
Lena: That’s correct. Many of you probably recognize me as Destiny Rose or Little Polish Angel. Probably six months ago or so, I decided to change my name because I wasn’t feeling in tune with Destiny Rose. It’s very hard to explain, but I feel like so many creators right now decide to have those animated characters that they present online. I was just tired of it. … I was very tired of playing this not very smart character, because that was my strategy for a long time. I was just Destiny, a fun blonde girl. Meanwhile, I actually like the side of me that goes to college is educated. I love being Polish, and for a long time I was very ashamed of being Polish.
When I came here, a lot of my friends in college would joke about my accent and about me being… a charity case from Poland. And I started being very proud of who I am, and I also decided to rebrand myself towards being more of a mainstream creator. Before I was just … I was an OnlyFans model with social media. I decided to try to be a social media creator with an OnlyFans.
And that became a milestone. … Changing my name.
Penthouse: Nice! We love to hear that. So, what have you been doing since you were crowned Pet of the Month?
Lena: Wow, it’s been an amazing year. And also it was a very brutal year. … After I became a Penthouse Pet of the Month, a friend of mine in college, my ex best friend leaked my photos from OnlyFans.
She actually sent out my OnlyFans to many of my friends in Poland. She sent it out to my professor, the school board…. It was a really big mess, a pretty awful story. She was very jealous, very insecure. But it also was very hurtful for me because I was hiding it, you know, until being Pet of the Month, I was hiding, having OnlyFans.
I was just a normal creator. I just was not ready to, you know, show off like as an adult creator…. So it really hit me. I wasn’t ready for that. So I took a gap year, and I was the most amazing gap year of my life. Right now I’m back in college since the fall, but I travel … I went to Bali. I went to Italy. I went to Kenya. So that was incredible.
Penthouse: We are Sorry to hear that happened to you. But at least you did something positive after. All of your travels looked beautiful, we saw all of your social media posts. Now that you’re back in college, what is your major?
Lena: I started as an international business major, then into business management. And right now I’m doing communications. Well, yeah. Communication. That’s how we call it “communication.”
The program’s a little bit different. I’m there on the full-ride scholarship. I’m there as a scholar who is supposed to do research. That’s my main goal for the next two years, to do research. Actually, I’m researching communication and marketing in adult entertainment. So, it’s been a very, you know, how do you say, a taboo topic? No one wants to do it with me. … At first it was very hard for me to find a sponsor for this thesis, and my entire research project. … Professors, I guess, are just ashamed of it. Eventually I came up to a professor who really likes me and he said, “No, like my wife wouldn’t approve of it, even if it’s supposed to be a scientific research.”
But I decided to push through anyway, so that’s what I’m working on.
Penthouse: So, did you find a sponsor?
Lena: Yes and no. It’s complicated. I actually did with one of my marketing professors, where I did my research for Penthouse, because I was very passionate about Penthouse. I felt like, it was a big Brand. … So I just decided to do this big project on Penthouse marketing. And he responds, “Wow, you can actually be very graphic – because he didn’t know, he was one of the few people who didn’t know I was an adult star. So he was seeing me just as a very talented student. Later he found out, about me because he saw a TikTok of me with Anna Kendrick. … Do you know this actress? Well, anyway, we did a TikTok together and he saw me with Anna, and he asked me, “Is that you?”
I was like, “Yes…”
“Because I had no idea that you’re an… I’m sorry. I never expected from such an academically-oriented student…”
Then he said, “All right, I will sponsor you.”
Penthouse: That’s so nice.
Lena: That’s very nice. He’s such a talented professor. He has been doing research for many years, even for Cambridge. He’s a very, very talented person.
Penthouse: You mentioned Anna Kendrick. Do you know her, or did you just bump into her at a party?
Lena: That’s a great question.
We had seen each other around other parties. For whatever reason she just, happens to have friends in this industry. And during this one party, I did not expect her to recognize me at all. She walks in and she’s like, “Oh my God, Lena…”
I say, “Anna Kendrick? You remember me?”
We start having a little chat. And she’s very flirty. She’s… hypnotizing. Now I have a major crush on her, and I even have her phone number. The other day I texted her to ask if she wants to see me, but she didn’t reply … so I don’t know what to say. …
Penthouse: Oh, no…
Lena: No, I will try again. I will try again the next time I’m in Los Angeles.
Penthouse: Now we don’t want to say the name of your school … but you’re a woman from Poland studying in the United States. How did you end up there?
Lena: I’m not supposed to say the name of my school, because that’s what they instructed me to do. …
Because I’m coming from an extremely poor family in Poland, an underprivileged family. But I was always a very, very ambitious person. … And just one day – I’m not joking – one day I woke up, and I had this feeling of wanting to study in America. And I told everyone, I’m going to America.
It was around my second year of high school – in Poland you have three years of high school – it was my second year, and I just decided, I’m going to do it.
Everyone was laughing at me because I had like minus $10 in my bank account … and I just started studying really hard. I was going through all those resources online trying to find out how to study in America. … And then I passed the SAT. I passed with a really, really, really high score. I applied to many schools here, but I need to find schools where I’m given a full-ride scholarship. I had zero money. Plus I have always been a very academically-oriented person. I was on the national team for Taekwondo. So my resume was, I wouldn’t call it impressive, but it was definitely appealing to many colleges here.
They like diverse students. With [my school now] I applied and they sent me an email that I should come for a competition here. … They sent me tickets, so I came in, I passed and got passed the interviews, but at first I didn’t get the scholarship. I was the first one on the waiting list.
Only seven students per year in this college get a full-ride. It’s very competitive, with a scholarship worth almost $90,000 a year. It’s incredible.
I was first on the waitlist, but I was certain. I kept telling myself, “Oh, no. I’m going to study there.”
I was emailing them every single day. I was the most annoying person you can probably imagine.
I was emailing them every single day, and I guess that at some point they were just like, “OK. We can’t stand this girl anymore.” So here I am. Of course instead of being just an academic, I turned into an adult entertainer. It was three years ago now.
Penthouse: So you’re in your junior year of college?
Lena: Yes. Yes, that’s right, I’m a junior in college.
Penthouse: What’s the enrollment at school?
Lena: It’s a small private college, so in total they have 6000 students or so. … But it’s still nice. And they are incredible. They pay for my housing. They pay my food. They pay my tuition. … It’s also challenging, though. You need to study very hard. It’s not like I can fully devote myself to a career, while attending. I have to have straight A’s, at a minimum.
Do they require extracurriculars?
They would expect me to have all of those other activities, but I just don’t see a lot of sense in all those organizations, having all those passions outside of college.
I know I’m in adult entertainment, but I find myself to be different in this circumstance, because I’m looking at it like a scientific way of marketing. That’s why I didn’t get an internship. My whole life right now is one big internship. I can’t explain how many doors the adult entertainment opened for me.
And, you know, it’s a ‘pretty privilege’ too. It’s good to be a hot girl everywhere in the world.
I love studying, I really do … but sometimes … the professors – especially because my interest lies in modern social media marketing…. I sometimes feel like I could teach there. They have amazing professors, but it happens sometimes where they only teach from textbooks. In general, I feel like the teaching system is outdated. Textbooks are not always effective. The average span of attention with a person is seven seconds. … Everything should be, evolving, and I feel like it’s not.
My college is really good at that. I think we’re the prime of really expensive colleges, so we do our best work to improve the learning experience and then provide amazing opportunities.
That’s the most important aspect of my college, such a small private college. A lot of famous people come out of there, very successful people. So we bring them in to speak, or we sometimes get opportunities for internships. For example, I went to an internship at Wall Street. They have this program called … I can’t say the name because someone can look it up … but it’s a program basically for girls who have interests in working in finance or the economy. They sent us to New York for two weeks for an internship on Wall Street.
Come to find out, I hated that. … I thought that was my passion. I actually started school with the intention of going into finance, but I hated that time. The rat race is just not for me. But my college gives opportunities, and I feel like that’s something that matters the most for me.
Penthouse: Finding out what you don’t like can be very important.
Lena: I think, is probably most important because you can grow from there. Finding what you like is so random. Whereas finding what you don’t like can help you set boundaries and set your life path.
Penthouse: So you found out you didn’t like finance, but that led to discovering that you do like marketing and communication.
Lena: I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. … I feel like finance is so important that everyone should study finance. Even this semester I’m taking finance classes because I have great professors and it’s important to have this knowledge. But also because of my career, I focus on psychology, communication, marketing because that is what helps me with everyday life.
And that’s also what I’m doing my research on. Because, I have everyday interactions with those things.
Penthouse: You can run your own business….
It’s not all finance and money. That’s not how it works. You need to bring people to you. You need to create a brand and market yourself.
You need people to bring traffic to all platforms and counter all the negative spin. I personally think that scarcity brings out the best salespeople. … Let’s say with strippers, it’s all marketing. It’s all sales. You learn human psychology in this industry, more than you would learn anywhere else.
Think about it. Basically, now the competition has gotten so high around OnlyFans. Everyone has OnlyFans. Everything is OnlyFans. But you need to ask yourself a question: what makes a girl successful?
In my personal opinion, it comes down to having your own brand, showing yourself and your true self. Because there are so many companies with “gurus” that want to take your money to do what you can do on your own. Everyone can shake ass. Everyone can show tits. Everyone can dance in a bikini, but the women that are really successful show their personally. They’re very likable. Influencers make the most money of all of us because people like them for who they are.
If you drive a person [to OnlyFans] from social media just with your body, they lose interest easily. If you’re just yourself, and people like your personality, they will stay there for yorel=”shadowbox”u.
Penthouse: So true! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us! We know you’ll continue to excel in college. And we cannot wait to see what is next for you.
Lena: Thank you, it was nice seeing you guys here.
Honestly, nobody around here would complain if we got to see Lena every year at the show — or, y’know, every day at breakfast. By the time we all reached coordinated schedules, it was very late in the day, and we were dead tired. Then Lena showed up, and we were all ready to conquer the world (or at least have a drink with it) again. Lena has that effect on people, which you will be able to tell should you visit her under either Lena or LittlePolishAngel on Instagram. Tell her we say, “HEY!”
