Celebrities & OnlyFans

By: Makeda Cheru

With time and technology, all things are continuously evolving— including sex work. OnlyFans, the content subscription service, has flourished within the last year and and particularly so for sex workers. Although OnlyFans is technically a service for people to sell whatever content they want to their subscribers, it is primarily used for sex work. As the site became more and more popular, for many sex workers it has been their main source of income. However as with most popular platforms, soon enough trouble occurred: rich celebrities conquering and capitalizing off of a service that was used primarily for working class people.

The most major scandal to come from this happened when actress Bella Thorne joined the website and made one million dollars in a single day. Interesting how someone whose net worth is already between five to twelve million dollars found the need to dominate this industry this way, when it’s not even her primary source of income.

Bella makes bank by charging people $200 for nudes, but she only sent photos of her in sexy lingerie, thus causing an uproar of refunds. Her actions resulted in OnlyFans lowering the amount subscribers are allowed to charge and tip content creators, and the platform also decided to change their payment method from weekly to monthly.

Since then, various of other celebrities have joined the admired website including Tyga, Jordyn Woods, Blacc Chyna, among others (although Chyna might be the only one to sort-of get a pass, as she was a sex worker before fame, but that’s debatable).

There are a plethora of problems with this. Why do celebrities who are consistently making at least one million dollars a year, and have access to practically anything they need and/or want (given their celebrity status and connections) feel the need to create more revenue on a platform that is so clearly meant for sex workers, an already marginalized community? Celebrities already have a such a visible platform of their own that now when they join OnlyFans, they become the top earners, solely based on their celebrity status. In doing this, they steal opportunities from hard-working sex workers who actually earned those spots and most likely worked their way up from essentially nothing.

The fact that celebrities view OnlyFans as a hobby whilst others are struggling to pay their rent and bills, reeks of class privilege. Also, the fact that the interest in cam-girls has risen is something many people couldn’t have predicted (considering the fact that we now have free porn online), so for sex workers to be able to be making a substantial amount from the comfort of their own home and laptop is a much easier and safer way for them to make money.

In short, please do not indulge celebrities with extra funds on top of their fortunes, especially considering that sex work isn’t their main source of income. Trust and believe that it is not worth it to spend $200 on nudes from Bella Thorne whose net worth is valued at 25,000 times that amount. Spend your money wisely and ethically by supporting your local sex workers!