Want to sell nudes?

Many are. There’s no shortage of girls trying to sell viewing rights to their flesh. Onlyfans has about 450000 creators and 30 million subscribers. The number of women trying to make money via the platform skyrocketed during lockdown, as indeed did the number of fans. 

 

Commentators trip over their priggish selves to declare this trend outrageous. Let me try to persuade you instead that women taking charge of their bodies and utilising them creatively to run their own business won’t see society unravel. On the contrary, it’s a glorious, profitable slice of sheer joy, unless you find the idea of women enjoying and benefiting from their sexuality abhorrent, in which case you’re a terrible human being and should feel free to stop reading and fall in a lake. 

 

My son has a friend working on a zero hours contract for a high street sports shop. If it’s not busy, they send her home and don’t pay her. If it is busy, she’s on her feet for twelve hours a day with a 30 minute break, selling trainers made my tiny foreign children, to parents who can’t afford them, in a bid to prevent their own children getting beaten up. Sometimes the mothers cry when they see the price tag, but then again, the children cry if they don’t get the trainers. She earns £4.81 an hour for this privilege, or £57.72 for a 12 hour shift. Could you live on that? I couldn’t. And yet the headlines decry Onlyfans as outrageous, rather than these minimum wage monstrosities. Teenage girls make money from selfies and texting shocker! For as we know, teenage girls simply hate staring at their phones all day, almost as much as they hate making money, the poor wretched saps. 

 

The Onlyfans creator is, I would argue, living the Marxist dream. Sole proprietor of the means of production (phone, flesh), working from home, engaging brain and talent to make what she possesses pay. No chance of alienation when you yourself are the product, and the whole of you (brain, charm, wit, talent, character, fizzog, physique) is required to turn a profit. And you get to to play all day long.“Let’s get together and make some content!” is all I ever hear from my kinky friends. I’m a creative sort, and the idea that you can make money simply by being a creative is staggering. All my literary and theatrical chums have to beg the Arts Council for assistance, which is a sight more humiliating than getting your tits out, and 80% of the time they refuse to pay for your time and degradation, after making you endure months of it. With Onlyfans they cough up first, then you get to choose what you’ll make.

 

But apparently I’m the one being exploited? Lying on my bed in a pretty silk negligee, snug and safe in my own home, glass of wine to hand, creating content I find interesting and appealing, then hearing fans tell me I’m awesome? Where does the exploitation occur, exactly? Unlike most career paths, there is actually a direct correlation between the amount of work you put into Onlyfans and the amount of reward you will receive. Post daily, consistently;  tend to your twitter profile; collaborate with others: you will make money. 

 

And what must you do for that money? 

 

If you answered, whip your skanky baps out, you’d be wrong, by and large. Tits are everywhere, gratis. In particular, you don’t have to look very hard to find my tits. If I ever meet a man who hasn’t seen them I’ll apologise and shake his hand. Even minge isn’t all that interesting really. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. I’ve worked in sales, a bit, and recall that whatever you purport to be selling, it’s actually your personality they’re buying. Let them. Tell them how a shoot felt, how the photographer behaved, or misbehaved. That stuff is funny and interesting. Your subscribers want a narrative, with a hero, character development, plot. This is where it helps to be a writer. I know how words work, and words are what entice people to your Onlyfans, not images. I can weave a narrative around my life, create a more interesting version of me. That’s all I do when I write, and all I do on Onlyfans too. And it works. The only real difference between my literary career and my sex work is the second keeps me solvent. 

 

“But – but -“ the prudes stutter – “surely being on Onlyfans might affect a woman’s future if the pictures are leaked?” But that’s only an issue if we, as a society, agree there is something shameful about women profiting from their sexuality, and I do not agree. I’m perfectly happy for any nurse, vicar, teacher, anyone, to have an Onlyfans account, should she so choose. It’s a sure sign she’s creative, clever and confident, and these are attributes to encourage in women. Hell, in anyone. An urge to dress up, play, write, explore, chat with some, collaborate with others, pose, pout, earn, doesn’t make you a terrible woman. It makes you fun to be near.

 

 

Note I say “woman”, because men cannot make money on Onlyfans. The poor devils can’t give dick pics away, still less turn a profit on them. It’s a business model where money flows almost exclusively from males to females. Feminists should encourage it. Poverty is terribly bad for your health, happiness and family life, and it’s your solemn duty to avoid it.

 

 

Turns out sexualised imagery isn’t a tool of male oppression: it’s actually bloody good fun and extremely profitable. Gee, I wonder what it is about the idea of women enjoying and earning from their sexuality that a patriarchal, capitalist society might find so frightening?